Farm to Table Staffing

Introduction

Farm to Table has been plagued with a problem all too common with many companies, staffing and retention shortcomings. This problem has been exasperated by EEO lawsuits and budgetary constraints that have compounded the problem. I propose moving Farm to Table away from traditional staffing methods to a more forward-thinking strategic planning model. This plan does not involve major changes to the budget, and will rather work on better utilizing the current budgetary needs of Farm to Table. It has been noted in the past that strategic staffing plans go a long way towards furthering a company’s success (Raguhuram & Arvey, 1994). With the focus being on thinking forward, this will be done with the current budget as well. While spending concerns are necessary, it is even more imperative that the correct amount of money is invested in an accurate staffing solution. I plan on adding a total of 2-4 new positions within Farm to Table to streamline the hierarchy of those within the company and to fill current vacancies. However, the exact number of personnel to be added to the team will be dependent on how many of the current staff members can be transitioned into the new staffing and business plan. The number can be made far smaller depending on the current staff employed. Farm to Table will work on its operating procedures and hiring and employee training programs to create a work environment where the best are brought in and retained through internal promotional opportunities. Keeping retention and promotion in mind it will be a cornerstone of this proposal to properly address titles and promotional steps for each position within the company. Moving forward the goal will be to focus on filling the correct needs of the company and the staff, versus simply filling vacant positions with no plan past that. The positions to be created and filled will center on having steps of accountability that are met with reward and recognition that allow room for those within the company to grow.

The Problem at Hand

In the recent months and years, Farm to Table has continuously come up against a plethora of troubles due to its current staffing problems. The company has been unable to hold onto its staff for a meaningful amount of time and has a very high turnover rate related to an unclear path for its employees. There are multiple reasons that Farm to Table has been faced with this problem and they are mainly related to initial hiring practices as well as effective retention techniques. To understand why retention has been such a concern it is important to trace the problem back to the start of the staff entering employment with the company. At the start Farm to Table brought in staff that were not necessarily qualified or a good fit for this company or their individual positions. This almost guarantees a staff that will resemble the rotating door staff versus a loyal motivated team. The team that Farm to Table had was continuously changing and new faces popped in and out of the employee line-up quite frequently.

The main problem was and has been selecting the correct staff for the company and the position, as well as holding onto those employees that came into the company fold. To make matters worse, Farm to Table has also had to battle numerous EEO lawsuits that have been related directly back to those hiring practices that have been failing in so many other ways. These lawsuits go a long way in shedding light on the ineffectiveness and shortcomings of the hiring practices of the company. Furthermore, the lawsuits can be seen as indicative of the retention problems as well. All of these problems continue to be magnified by budgetary constraints that make it that much harder to alter current practices without an intense fear of overspending to fix the problems.

Issues and Challenges

It is important to expand on the problems listed above in much further detail to understand where Farm to Table is now in its staffing situation. Much of the problems were brought on by the company’s inability to develop a clear hiring and position template. This causes a problem because those who do not see a clear path for themselves within the company will not be as productive as those who have a clear path and mission that is supported by their own past experiences and what the company can offer them in the future. The challenge here is to alter the way the company is seen both externally and internally by prospective employees and current employees. This is a challenge because although it appears easy enough, for a company to change from the core on an issue takes the involvement of not only one set of employees, but the entire team.

The first issue with Farm to Tables staffing predicament comes from its initial recruitment and hiring of individuals for positions. Not all individuals are suited for every position. A company must take into account the experience, education and current circumstances of an applicant to determine whether or not they are the correct match for a position. With respect to this concern, Farm to Table has been hiring staff based on whether or not they are simply “qualified” for a position. Whether an applicant is qualified or not is not nearly as important as the bigger picture of who that applicant is and where they want to be. Of course, Farm to Table should strive to hire exceptional individuals who are qualified, but it was not ensuring that those people were good long term hires who could find a niche within the company for themselves.

The finding of a path and a niche is the next area of concern with Farm to Tables current practices. Currently, Farm to Table has been challenged in its ability to retain staff, due mainly to the staff not believing the company was one to stick with long term. Once staff has undergone the recruiting and training, they're deemed qualified they are brought onto the team. However, there is no clear path for them to follow or to motivate them. The breakdowns of the positions as they stand now do not adequately allow for employees the ability to grow within the company with the exception of huge leaps. By this I am referring to the practice of simply having upper management and the “staff”, with no intermediary management or supervision team. What this does to employees within a company is force them to look outside of their own company for lack of promotional opportunities. Promotional opportunities do not need to be large to be effective, they just have to be an option and within reach. When there are no such opportunities, like the situation with Farm to Table right now, it leads to dissatisfaction and a mentality of the employees just being short term. When staff believes that their stay with a company is short term, you can be guaranteed of work quality far below those employees who see a future for themselves within an organization. The motivation for advancement and promotion pushes employees to work harder and more efficiently because they want the rewards that go along with it.

The final major challenge to addressing the issues that the company has would be the lack of clear Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) that document every recruitment, hiring, training, review and promotion standard within the company. Not having these brings into question how and why certain individuals were recruited or hired over others. Furthermore, this lack of uniformity and standardization leaves Farm to Table vulnerable to EEO challenges. Without clear and proper documentation and SPO’s the company is left to address all inquests on a case by case basis with no standard to compare all decisions to. It is vital that all procedures within a company have standards that puts all employees on some level of equal footing when it comes to human resource aspects like hiring, promotions and terminations.

Solutions

I plan on addressing the three major challenges listed before as the cornerstone of the solution to Farm to Tables staffing problems. This new staffing plan centers around creating SPO’s to address every step of the hiring and retention process, creating a company culture and positions/ titles that allow for staff to feel like Farm to Table is a long term career versus a short term job, and to change selection practices to focus more on finding the right candidate for the right position versus just filling vacant positions. This solution focuses will address their specific concern as well as inadvertently addressing some of the other problems that Farm to Table has been having.

The main challenge to this company will be to not simply change its staffing plan, but rather to change its company culture related to staffing. The best way to get started on this path is to clearly define all new policies, guidelines and expectations into clearly organized and accessible SOP’s. This new SOP’s will start at the beginning by clearly organizing the company structure into one that is neither rigid nor overly malleable. The new SOP’s will start by clearly state Farm to Tables beginning, culture and mission statement. This is important because employees need to know that a company has a history and a soul, and is not just a brick and mortar location with no life of its own. These new procedures will also outline how Farm to Table does its recruitment and what qualities and traits it is looking for. The same should be created for the actual application process and the initial and secondary interview process. The way I plan to streamline this is by creating a grading chart that focuses on a set of criteria and questions that focuses on finding people who fit the company’s mission statement and future goals while allowing for individuality to come through as well. The grading chart will assign a range of response options valued and looked for and assigns each one a value. This method will allow for the company to sift through applications initial and secondary selection processes by focusing on the highest ranking individuals for factors looked for in each position/ job category.

The goal is to turn subjective values into some level of quantitative values to be used to rank prospective staff members into categories of the best qualified to the least qualified for each available position. While it may appear as though this whittles applicants down to a number I must say that it does and it doesn’t. I will start with why it does, because it really does assign them a quantitative value. This is a good thing for the company as well as the prospective employee. The company can better defend itself from EEO claims if it is able to clearly demonstrate a hiring technique that is across the board equal in its methods. One more thing to remember with respect to this system is that it still allows for individuality to come through in the responses. The response choices on the application and interview tables are not static. These responses have ranges that they can fall into that allows for wiggle room in the applicants ability to gain points and rank higher for a particular position. This solution plan will address the EEO claims as well as the problem of hiring the wrong people for best positions.

The next concern that this staffing solution will tackle is the problem of not having a path for employees to follow once they have been selected for employment. Farm to Table will reassess its current management team to better assess the need for intermediary management to both allow for better workflow and for more promotional opportunities. This will also be a topic to address under the new SOP’s. Once the best have been recruited and hired they need to be trained and retained. When those employee guidelines and manuals are read the new staff member will see the great company culture and history that Farm to Table has and they should be asking themselves, “Can I grow with them in the future”. Farm to Table will be easily able to point to the company’s structure and show new employees that under the current organizational system there are opportunities for grown from within. Stories should be shared of success stories about employees who started from the bottom and grew with the company. It is actually beneficial to show some of these stories as starting out with skeptical new hires who never thought they would stay longer than a short stay at Farm to Table. These types of stories stick out to the cynics in your group. The reality of the job market is that it is tough and competitive for both employees and employers (Marmer-Solomon 1997).

Employers have to appeal to the cynics in the recruitment process because in today’s market they are a large group. The employees should actually be encouraged that top positions, as well as middle management positions, are all offered to internal employees before ever being offered to outside applicants. Promotional opportunities will also follow tables that allow the best of Farm to Tables staff to advance to top positions. Allowing for equality with promotions and allowing them to be internally based gives new and current employees something to strive for and something to work hard for. This is the most vital of all steps in retention because it gives employees something to stay for. Whether it is a medical practice, retail or food service, consumers always like to see stability with the staff of any business they frequent. Consumers also understand far better when their favorite server at Farm to Table is not serving because they are now a shift supervisor rather than they are working down the street at another business. Giving the staff promotional incentives keeps them happier and also boosts the confidence of consumers who frequent Farm to Table.

The final large hurdle to get over is the actual process of matching up the right people for the right position. It may be tempting to assume that simply because a candidate ranks highly on the application and interview portion of the hiring process that they are by far the best for a position. While you cannot presume to know the motives or intentions of any candidate, there are clear signs that an employee will be qualified but not right for a particular position. Filling vacancies for the sake of filling vacancies is wrong and has caused Farm to Table too much already. Until the “right” person is found, a position should remain vacant. The cost of hiring, training and terminating the wrong person for a position is far more damaging and costly than leaving it open until the correct candidate comes along.

The hiring and interview template will address this concern as well. Incorporated into the process will be flags that will draw attention to applicants that are highly qualified, but may not be appropriate for the position applied for. The entire picture of who an employee is needs to be assessed before any final decisions can be made. Since promotional opportunities need to be offered in house before being offered to outside candidates, this may cause concerns with filling certain positions. This concern shouldn’t be too burdensome because by offering the promotion in house first there is no need to recruit outside of the company. This alleviates the management being faced with super qualified applicants from outside the company because those outside the company would not be privy to promotional opportunities until it had first been offered in house. This clear documentation of standards and procedures should show how and why every decision is made with relation to promotions and filling vacancies. This will address both employee retention, by giving more motivation for internal employees to work hard to achieve promotions, and EEO claims by having clear unbiased guidelines for promotions and the selection of staff for open positions.

Goals and Objectives

Goals and objectives in relation to this staffing plan are mainly based on reducing EEO claims, streamlining the hiring and promotion process, and retaining the best staff once they have been hired. The major goal is to create SOP’s that address all needs of the company and its ethics, practices, policies and procedures, as well as culture, history and future. A major concern is a vulnerability to EEO challenges, and while this will always be a reality, it can be better combatted with appropriate paperwork and clear documentation of company practices. The goal here would be to show that the only employment factors Farm to Table is interested in is the performance and qualification based decisions with respect to its staff and potential staff.

Moving forward Farm to Table will have fewer EEO concerns and will be able to effectively address any EEO situations that may arise. The new table and ranking format will also push forward the goal of streamlining the hiring process. The goal here is to make this process as seamless and uniform as possible and the new hiring method will achieve this goal. The final major goal is to retain the staff that are a part of the Farm to Table team. This will be accomplished with allowing more room for small step promotions and by keeping promotions initially limited to in house employees. I am confident that this new forward thinking staffing solution will allow Farm to Table to meet all of its current goals and objectives in a timely and reasonable manner.

Budgetary Considerations

At the current time Farm to Table must keep its spending conservative due to budgetary constraints that it has been facing. You will notice a lack of mentions towards the budget because that is not a primary focus of this staffing solution. There are no immediate or even necessary need for an increase to the budget for this plan. It has been shown in the past that spending on a staffing budget is only justifiable if it furthers long term strategic objectives (Raguhuram & Arvey, 1994), and Farm to Tables plans are no different. There may even be an opportunity to save portions of the staffing spending and utilizing it in better ways. The current budget will be utilized to its maximum capacity, but only if it is felt that would be the best course of action. Recent budget cuts have already been made and I do not believe we should include further automatic cuts before reassessing the titles and positions within the company. The personnel changes to be discussed will highlight a plan based more on consolidating and assessing the need for each position in the company rather than on hiring or terminating staff.

Personnel Changes

Under this new staffing solution there is no immediate call to add positions. The number of servers within the company needs to be addressed to see within each shift what the business has been like to justify the number of staff working. Within this working staff it is important to assess the levels of supervision and support each shift has to make their work experience smoother as well as the most productive for the clients. This may be more of a matter of assessing and consolidating positions and only then will we know if more staff need to be hired onto the team. This will be more of an ongoing assessment that does not simply state a definitive number of people to be hired as the solution to the staffing problems and concerns. This personnel change, as well as this entire staffing solution is a living process, not a dead one that stops growing once a few solutions have been put down on paper. The number of staff to be hired can range from 0-6, all depending the suitability of current staff and possible promotional opportunities for said staff. The position to be filled are as malleable as the number to be hired. The main objective is to create more intermediary shift supervisor positions that give more accountability and responsibility to well qualified staff members. These positions can range from key holder positions, shift lead positions and point of contact supervisors for upper management. There can also be a focus on brand specialists within each shift who have additional training regarding the source of the product served; positions like this can be incorporated into current positions rather than being created independent of the current positions. This method will allow room for further responsibility and training leading to a better staffed business, better served customers and staff that are experts in their field.

Making Better Choices

Moving forward Farm to Table will focus its recruitment for top positions from within the company. In addition to this practice, further recruitment can and should be done at venues that bring people that share a passion for fine dining and the popular healthy and organic lifestyle. This will be done at locations like farmers markets which the local communities have quite a few of. Further recruitment can also be done at green grocery stores, organic markets, food co-ops and local expos. With the large number of schools within the vicinity there is always the opportunity to recruit recent graduates as well. These alternative sources for potential applicants will go significantly further in finding the right people than the current method of simply posting employment opportunities in local papers and recruitment centers. Farm to Table needs to find people not only interested in hospitality and food service, but those who love what Farm to Table does specifically. With such a large selection I am confident that we will tap into a large pool of qualified candidates that have the same passion for organic farm fresh food that Farm to Table does. It is also to remember that it is not only important to find strong candidates, but to also pinpoint staffing weaknesses and address them however uncomfortable that may be (Messmer 1999).

As stated before, the new selection process will have been made significantly easier with the implementation of the standardized table for assessing applicants on criteria important to Farm to Table. Each application will receive a final mark of either, “Superior”, “Highly Qualified”, “Qualified”, or “Not Qualified”. This ranking will be given after the application has been scanned for qualities that we are looking for. There will be questions basic to most applications, such as: experience, education and past training, as well as more Farm to Table specific ones, like: organic foods experience, raw, vegan, vegetarian and locally sourced food knowledge. This assessment will help Farm to Table find the most qualified applicants for each available position. More than just finding the best people, Farm to Table will be able to hold onto the best talent in the area. It has been stated in many leading business journals that those who can retain the best staff will continuously outperform competitors in their field (Ployhart 2006).

Conclusion

Farm to Table will implement this new staffing solution because it is the best decision for both the short term and long term goals of the company. Although this company has been plagued with many problems in the past, none of them are problems that cannot be fixed by following the solutions outlined in this proposed plan. Staffing and retention are complicated and ongoing concerns for many companies, and soon Farm to Table will be one of the companies that will be able to meaningfully address those problems. By moving away from traditional staffing methods and utilizing a more strategic plan catered to the future of the company, Farm to Table will see employee confidence and retention grow in the immediate and in the future.

References

Marmer-Solomon, C. (1997). Keep Them! Don't Let Your Best People Get Away.Workforce, 76(8), 46-52

Raguhuram, S., Arvey, R. D. (1994). Business Strategy Links with Staffing andTraining Practices. Human Resource Planning, 17(3).

Messmer, Max. (1999). Developing a strategic staffing plan.The National Public Accountant, 44(7).

Ployhart, R.E. (2006) Staffing in the 21st Century: New Challenges and StrategicOpportunities. Journal of Management, 32(6), 868-897