In: Operations Management
You have recently been promoted to district manager of a large scale restaurant chain which specializes in affordable meals in a pleasant environment. In accordance with management objectives, you are responsible for increasing sales of appetizers by 20 percent by the next quarter for the 15 locations in your area. Keeping channel richness in mind, how will you make contact with the restaurant employees to facilitate the sales increase? Organizational Behavior
The amount of information which can be transmitted through a communication channel is called as channel richness. Channels like bulletins and memos have low channel richness whereas video-conferences and face-to-face conversations have high channel richness.
Keeping this in account, channels like letters or pre-recorded messages won’t be the recommended channel and we should be considering a richer channel. However, considering that it’s a large-scale restaurant with 15 locations, having a face to face conversation with all the employees might also not seem the best approach.
Considering all this, I would definitely start with sending an email to all the employees stating clearly about the management objective for the next quarter. In addition to this, I would conduct video conferences and group discussions with the restaurant managers to align with them on the objectives and discuss ways to go ahead with it. I’ll further inform the restaurant managers to conduct face-to-face group meetings with their respective employees and emphasize on the changes in the management objective.
Taking into account all these measures, I am confident that the message would be properly transmitted to the employees.