Kudler Fine Foods Reorganization

Every organization must deal with various aspects of organizational behavior such as job satisfaction as in Kudler Fine Foods. There are various ways to measure job satisfaction to assist in gauging how positive an employee feels toward his job. Some of these various ways include employee surveys, measuring employee absenteeism, exit interviews, retention statistics among many others. The following will discuss how managers can effectively can these various methods to measure the degree of their employee’s job satisfaction. Additionally Kudler Fine Foods is investigating restructuring their organization to create a more cohesive company structure for their continued growth. Numerous personality tests provide important insight to the organization for employee personalities. It is important to select a personality test that will provide accurate insight to promote team cohesion. The evaluations will provide feedback about an employee’s personality in various categories such as thinking, feeling, sensing, etc. The Jung Typology Test is a test that evaluates an individual’s personality by answering a variety of true or false questions.

The design of these questions is to discover the individual’s personal strengths in one’s personality. The test breaks down the results, on a scale from 0% to 100%, into four criteria, which are: extroversion – introversion, sensing – intuition, thinking – feeling, and finally judging – perceiving. The combinations of each criterion can be broken down into acronyms, ISTJ (Introvert, Sensing Thinking, and Judging) or ENFP (Extravert, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving) (HUMANMETRICS Jung Typology Test™, 1998). The Jung Typology Test is a personality evaluation, which Kudler Fine Foods can benefit greatly from by implementing this evaluation into their reorganization. The Jung Typology Test provides feedback in the various criteria, which are relevant to the organization. By having everyone in the company evaluate their personality, management will understand better how to interact with their team members and have the information to improve performance. Management will assign duties based upon personality with the expectation of a more cohesive team. The personality profile scoring will provide the employee with personality information that the employee may use to improve or modify his work behaviors to improve communication and performance. The website provides insight from three sources with personality descriptions.

Each source provides different insight to the employee’s personality profile. One source provides work habits and practices. The second source has academic information that the employee may use for continuing education. The last source has information specific to the employee’s personality. The employee may use the information to determine opportunities for improving their work behavior and other opportunities to leverage his personality based on the results from the survey. The organization may use the results of the personality profiles to realign staffing roles. Analysis of the results from the surveys may indicate certain employees are not at the best role or teams that are unbalanced. Balancing the team with diverse personality types may improve team performance. Teams with diverse personalities would change the culture of the organization. Creating a balanced team with the diverse personalities poses challenges for management, and the personality assessments become a valuable tool for team assignments.

The organizations reliance on the outcome of the personality assessments is higher, and the organization will need to adjust the team assignment practice based on analysis of the personality assessment results. There are three basic models for effective decision-making within any organization; rational decision-making, bound rationality, and intuition. As a manager of a food store, this person will have to use whatever method the companies have in place to make decisions determined on each individual situation. They are bound to the readily available information, and it is possible that some of their decisions must use intuition, depending on the employees’ personality. Each situation may be different, whereas they need to stick to basic guidelines for outcome determination. The rational decision-making model may use the appropriate method to follow; using either model requires the use of intuition as a part of the decision-making process. Kudler’s managers decide which employee best fits each area, depending on the employee’s abilities and skills. They would not place a butcher in the checkout line to help customers or to stocking shelves. A butcher receives a higher income because of a higher skill level than a clerk or customer service employee receives, and each employee is hired to perform specific tasks.

The Jung test is an excellent method of determining if a person is a good fit for an organization. The Jung test provides information regarding the personality of the test taker to determine the best job placement. Administering the Jung Typology Test will help the reorganization process of Kudler Fine Foods to ensure correct employee placement in the correct positions. Through the different means of feedback representation of various criteria, the managers will determine the best potentially fit into specific job positions based solely on their personality assessment results. The assessment results provide information about a person’s personality in categories such as team building, leadership, psychographics, and integrated solutions. Once the employees complete the personality assessment, management will go through the results and separate them through a process known as filtering. The design of the filtering process groups’ different classes together based on expectations of individual job positions.

There are multitudes of different possible groups, where anyone’s personality results may fall into more than one category. After filtering and indentifying the evaluations within a specific group, analysis for secondary identifiers will commence. To ensure that management found the person with the specific traits they wanted, they would remove anyone that did not have the primary and secondary classes. This process would continue to acquire a list of the top 10% in each job category using specific classes. After identifying the top 10%, the organization would administer further evaluations to find the best candidates for that position. Using this structured process provides the best method for choosing the best candidates for specific jobs based on their personality attributes. Job Satisfaction

Every organization must deal with various aspects of organizational behavior such as job satisfaction as in Kudler Fine Foods. There are various ways to measure job satisfaction to assist in gauging how a positive employee feels toward his job. Some of the various ways include employee surveys, measuring employee absenteeism, exit interviews, and retention statistics among many others. The following will discuss how managers can effectively use these various methods to measure the degree of their employee’s job satisfaction Job Satisfaction Model and Surveys

The study that stood out the most is the “Job Characteristics Model (JCM),” showing motivation based on five characteristics. Of these five characteristics, three of them are classified in one dimension of skill variety, task identity, and task significance. The other two characteristics are autonomy and feedback. By repeating a task, the employee eventually the employee becomes bored with his duties. Skill variety provides the employee the opportunity to perform several jobs and decreases the likelihood of boredom for repetitive tasks. Many companies increase an employee’s pay by providing cross training. The identified tasks are categorized by the job, which can make a significant change to employee’s attitudes and behaviors. This does not hold true for employees, but many enjoy the autonomous of varying positions. They inherently get more freedom and independence in carrying out their duties. This creates employees to view themselves as a valuable asset and important to the company. Employees consider themselves a worthwhile employee and will not want to leave his current position, which creates job satisfaction. The feedback portion can assist employees to evaluate how they are doing in that job.

When Kudler Fine Foods employees know that they are doing a job in comparison to his peers, he can feel good about what they are doing and resist changing position or companies based on other issues like money. As stated on page one of chapter 8 in Robbins and Judge (2011), by Woody Allen, “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” Money is a key factor in job satisfaction but not necessarily the most important one. People have taken a lesser paying position to increase their job satisfaction. Research has tried to make information about job satisfaction quantifiable. Motivation is a difficult subject to quantify, although there is a formula on page 244 of Chapter 8 discusses the “motivating potential score.” Motivating potential score formula states the at least one of the three factors must be high that led to experience meaningfulness for the calculation to show a high job satisfaction (Robbins & Judge, 2011).

Taking employee surveys is also a way to measure job satisfaction. Companies encourage current employees as well as exiting employees to complete the surveys. Surveys are built on several varying methods, but there is a broader outcome when they use multiple-choice answers. A survey is a measurable method for obtaining information on job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Employee’s job performance is also a method of measurement, but many workers perform his job with high performance scores and also are non-employees. Many employees at America Online (AOL), before closing their United States call centers, claimed to have high job satisfaction. An employee stated, as he filled out his exit surveys, the survey is completed in a way to get the company to believe that he is satisfied with the workplace (E. Letellier, personal communications, December 2007). Surveys can use True or False answers or can use multiple-choice answers such as most satisfied, satisfied, and least satisfied. Employee Turnover

A recent survey found the average direct cost to United States employers of unscheduled absences is $789 per year per employee, and this does not include lost productivity or overtime pay or the cost of hiring temporary employees to cover for absent workers (Robbins & Judge, 2011). Measuring job satisfaction by measuring employee absenteeism is counterintuitive. Organizations make allowances for employee absences by allocating a predetermined number of days for sick time or paid time off. Employee absenteeism beyond the allocated policy that becomes a trend would indicate job dissatisfaction. Collecting the data necessary to chart trends is time consuming; the data will prove valuable to determine if an employee is demonstrating absenteeism trends. Over a period, managers will have enough information to plan and create projects to reduce the employee absenteeism trend at or before peak intervals. Plans and projects to reduce employee absenteeism would engage and motivate the employee and improve job satisfaction.

Plans could include cross training for other jobs within the team or increasing challenges for the employee’s tasks and role. The manager needs to be aware of the situation and have a plan that will avert the problem before the problem spreads or affects team productivity and performance. Measuring job satisfaction during an exit interview is time late but the last opportunity for an organization to gain information about the exiting employee’s job satisfaction during the employment period. Providing questions to managers and human resources section that illicit job satisfaction answers would provide insight into the employee’s role perspective. Both parties have nothing to lose by speaking blunt truth, and the organization will gain valuable information with candid answers. Dudley (2009) provides 25 questions, but listed below are the first five questions that provide insight into the measure of employee job satisfaction:

1. What is primary reason for leaving?
2. Did anything trigger your decision to leave?
3. What was most satisfying about your job?
4. What was least satisfying about your job?
5. What would you change about your job?

By analyzing the answers, managers will have information to improve the situations with existing team members to prevent other members resigning. Employee satisfaction is a major importance to a company’s performance and profits. An excellent method of determining the performance is by giving the employees a survey. This information will determine in quantifiable terms, how a company is doing in terms of profitability, whereas it is the largest expense that a company must consider. The way a company can track a portion of this information is by giving their employees a survey on their job satisfaction. The survey can include items like benefits, pay, atmosphere, management treatment, happiness on-the-job, and more (See Appendix). The supervisor provides the survey to employees when appropriate. Kudler Fine Foods provides the job satisfaction survey via the intranet, but for purposes here, it is on paper. Higher level management reviews the scored results using the Likert scale. Leadership Roles

The organization’s leadership determines the culture for the organization and sets the pace for their success and satisfaction. Leaders develop a vision of the company to determine their future goals. This will establish the direction for the company. An active leadership will play a critical role in plans to create an efficient organizational structure, and watch over daily activities. This produces a positive culture and motivates employees so changes in the company for growth continue (Robbins & Judge, 2011). From research there are different leadership theories developed. The behavior theories provide insight that leadership behavior affects subordinates. In more recent years, researchers organized traits around the “Big Five” personality framework to include; extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional, and openness (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 138). Most of the traits in many leadership studies fit into one of these five personalities. The energy portrayed within these leaders demonstrates that extroversion is a strong predictor of leadership. Trait theories are to include behavioral, charismatic, transformational, and authentic leadership theories.

The behavioral theory consolidated leadership into the task and people-oriented styles. When a leader considers the circumstance of each situation, the method of leadership can change, but there are also contingencies to consider. The contingencies take into consideration how to make improvements to behavioral theory. Charismatic leadership has made progress for determining and understanding how leadership is effective. The characteristics of the leaders include willingness to take risks to achieve their vision and demonstrate extraordinary innate behaviors (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 388). This leads to the transformational leaders who inspire their team to follow the leader’s interest for the good of the company.

The transformational leaders awake their follower’s with an awareness of the company’s issues by looking at new ways to resolve the problems. The transformational leader accomplishes the follower’s awakening of awareness by introducing excitement and inspiration. The last approach it the authentic leader style. The leader has a deep-seated self-belief with excitable discussions to explain his values. By showing the values openly and freely, the followers develop trust for the leader. This is similar to when someone tells another to have a “leap of faith” with his decision. This is a new concept and more research is in the future (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 394). New Organizational Structure

The leadership of an organization has the responsibility to determine the organization’s culture; the culture will set a pace for the organization’s success and satisfaction. Leaders develop a vision for the company to determine future goals. The vision will establish the direction for the company. An active leadership will play a major part in plans to create an efficient organization structure, and monitor daily activities. This produces a positive culture, and motivates employees, so changes in the company for growth can continue (Robbins & Judge, 2011). Research developed different leadership model theories. The theories of behavior give attention to the way the leaders behave and how it affects their subordinates. Trait theories discuss a leader’s personal qualities and characteristics. In more recent years, researchers organized traits around the “Big Five” personality framework to include; extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional, and openness (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 138). Nevertheless, most of the traits in many leadership studies fit into one of these five personalities. The energy portrayed within these leaders demonstrates that extroversion is a strong predictor of leadership.

Trait theories are to include behavioral, charismatic, transformational, and authentic leadership theories. The behavioral theory consolidated leadership into the task and people-oriented styles. When a leader considers the circumstance of each situation, the method of leadership can change, but there are also contingencies to consider. These contingencies take into consideration to make improvements to the behavioral theory. With the charismatic leadership, this has made progress to understanding how leadership is most effective. The characteristics of these leaders are they are willing to take risks to achieve their vision, are excellent leaders, and show extraordinary behaviors of which they were born (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 388). Transformational leaders inspire their team to follow the leader’s interest for the good of the company. The transformational leader awakes his or her follower’s with an awareness of the company’s issues by looking at new ways to resolve the problems.

The transformational leader accomplishes the follower’s awakening of awareness by introducing excitement and inspiration. Decentralized organizational structures often have several individuals responsible for making business decisions and running the business. Decentralized organizations rely on a team environment at different levels in the business. Individuals at each level in the business may have some autonomy to make business decisions (Vitez, 2012, p. 1). Kudler Fine Foods decentralized organizational structure supports the organization for several reasons. Kudler Fine Foods is introducing new technology to meet the needs of the organization based on the organizations success and growth. More stores equal more employees and technology provides to tools to manage the administrative tasks. Systems to manage the administrative tasks include HR, payroll, inventory management, accounting, and website management. The use of technology requires specialized skill sets not associated with the core business, and the result is administrative growth. According to Robbins and Judge on page 505, “An organization’s size significantly affects its structure.”

Kudler Fine Foods started with one store that provided gourmet quality foods to a small customer base at one store. The success of the one store provided the means required for branching out into new communities and the search for the site for a fourth store is in progress. The Kudler vision was to create one store that would stock a wide selection of the freshest ingredients as well as all of the tools a gourmet cook could ever want (“About Kudler,” 2012, p. 1). The Kudler vision remains the same despite the growing size of the organization. Kudler Fine Foods expansion created a new environment at the organization. The unique locations for each store create new challenges for management. The challenges affect the environment at Kudler. An organization’s environment includes outside institutions or forces that can affect its performance, such as suppliers, customers, competitors, government regulatory agencies, and public pressure groups (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 506). The growth caused leadership to find new suppliers, develop new business relationships, and comply with different city’s regulations. Management/Leader Hierarchy

The management hierarchy will consist of the founder and president of the company, accounting, finance, administrative, human resources, information technology, customer service directors, and the individual store managers. The main functions of management will include decision-making, planning, strategizing, controlling, and leading the organization. Management will work together to establish the strategy, vision, and goals for the entire organization. Store managers will have control over their individual stores. The managers are the direct source for information flowing both up and down the management chain. Assistant managers will be on site to assist each manager with business functions. The manager and assistant manager share the charge of hiring, ordering, maintaining, and other business-related duties for each of the different teams within the store. Department Structure

The department structure will be broken down into five separate sections. A supervisor will lead each section and is responsible for the section’s performance. The different sections are Bakery, Meat, Seafood, Produce, Cheese, Dairy, and Home Delivery. The duties of the supervisor will include (parallelism with prior paragraph) delegating tasks, overseeing policy, dividing resources, and prioritizing work. The home delivery section will work directly with the other four sections to fulfill delivery orders. Within each of the four main sections, there are two, four person teams. The home delivery section has one four-person team. The organization will provide training to each member of the team to handle-related tasks and is cross-trained with the other sections to provide assistance as needed. Each member’s basic tasks include product knowledge and location, cashiering, bagging, stocking, pricing, and customer service. This new team structure provides new divisions for department management and resource utilization.

Role of Politics in Organizations

Understanding the role of politics in an organization, one must first start with the basics. It is important to understand the dynamics associated with politics in the organization. Politics according to the Webster Dictionary are “political affairs or business; especially: competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership” and “the total complex of relations between people living in society” (Webster, 2012, p. 1). Then knowledge of who participates in politics and whom it affects is a requirement. In most organizations, management is the one participating in politics. This is because management has the most authority in the company and is the representatives for the organization. Because management is representing the organization, the actions have positive and negative effects for the employees at the organization. By establishing an understanding of what politics are and who participates in politics, an understanding of why politics take place in organizations is the next step. Individuals and groups comprise organizations with different values, goals, and interests. Power and political behavior are natural processes in any group or organization. People exert power when in groups. When employees in organizations convert their power into action, this is described as political involvement.

This sets up the potential for conflict over allocation of limited resources such as departmental budgets, space, project responsibilities, and salary adjustments (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 430). Organization politics occur when groups take actions based on their similar interests, wants, and needs. Organizational politics comprise of two separate political behaviors; legitimate and illegitimate. “Legitimate political behaviors refers to normal everyday politics—complaining to your supervisor, bypassing the chain of command, forming coalitions, obstructing organizational policies or decisions through inaction or excessive adherence to rules, and developing contacts outside the organization through professional activities” (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 1). Organizational structure is an essential part for every business. To have success, the organization requires its employees to exemplify dedication, motivation, and effective leadership. Kudler Fine Foods has proposed changes within their organizational structure that will revolutionize the way they conduct business. The result will be an improvement in management hierarchies, department structures, and team environments that will lead the company in better performance and an increase in profits and revenues. New Organizational Changes

During the last organizational leader meeting, Kathy Kudler, president, informed management that it was a time for change. Kathy announced that Kudler Fine Foods was going to revamp the company into the matrix style of organizational structure. “The strength of functional departmentalization is putting like specialists together, which minimizes the number necessary while allowing the pooling and sharing of specialized resources across products” (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 1). The Kudler product is not only their good food but also their tremendous customer service. The management staff at each of the stores is the first modification made. There will be two supervisors devoted to the five different sections to include; one supervisor will oversee produce and home delivery, and the other will oversee bakery, meat, seafood, cheese, and dairy. With employee specialization in each section, the specialization eliminates the need for the assistant manager role.

The two supervisors will answer directly to the store manager (Kudler Fine Foods, 2012). The new system will allow many benefits to the organization. With fewer managers and less bureaucracies, the decision-making process is faster and new store innovation is easier. If a manager notices an issue, the manager may resolve the issue without consulting others. With these changes the employee’s job functions will also change, and receive cross training to enable the employees to work in different departments when needed. Many details occur within the changes that require the employee to pay attention to details. When the employees know other areas of the store, the employees will have a working knowledge of different departments to assist customers. The results of employees with a better store knowledge will assist the changes faster and easier. Kathy will rest easier knowing that any employee can handle any questions or issues that may arise. Managers must understand how certain decisions will affect the employees in the store. The new matrix style will begin to develop teams within the store that will create a harmonious working relationship.

Opening new stores provides promotion opportunities for tenured employees (Kudler Fine Foods, 2012). Performance, skill, and job knowledge are the basis for employee promotions at the new store. Cross-training and promotions will reinforce employee’s loyalty and job satisfaction. To maintain stores inventory, the organization will implement a new efficient computer-based inventory system with software designed for multitasking including an individual ordering system. When an employee notices a product is low from higher than normal sales, the employee will be able to place a quick order to increase inventory. The information technology department provide employee training for the new inventory system The human resources (HR) department is responsible for acting on behalf of the organization for matters concerning the organization and employee resources, policy maintenance, benefits, training, and development. A critical challenge for HR is supporting the organization by providing employees who are the best fit with the Kudler Fine Foods structure.

The growth of Kudler Fine Foods is changing the culture from a centralized structure to a decentralized structure. The change will require employees to be creative and more autonomous. Employee benefits provide incentive to prospective employees and provide the HR department a resource for recruitment. The increase of employees provides HR with cost saving opportunities to improve employee benefits. By providing more employee benefits Kudler Fine Foods expects to attract employees with higher qualifications and provide the HR department with better candidates for the hiring managers. The improved benefits package includes medical, dental, profit sharing, annual performance bonuses, up to 10 days paid time off, six holidays paid time off, annual training allowance, 401k matching plan, and cooking classes (Kudler Fine Foods, 2012). The employee benefits demonstrate the organizations goal to provide employee support that will provide the extrinsic motivation to promote employee performance and dedication. HR recognizes that the employee benefits package affects the employee decision-making process.

The importance for HR to promote the employee benefits package as an employee benefit is assurance to the employee that the organization demonstrates commitment to the prospective employee. As research on the motivational effects of rewards has accumulated, it increasingly appears extrinsic rewards can undermine motivation if they are seen as coercive. They can increase motivation if they provide information about competence and relatedness (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 230). HR is the liaison between the organization and the employee. The HR department at Kudler Fine Foods will develop and maintain policies that demonstrate and provide a support channel for employees for problems that immediate supervisors cannot resolve. Examples of employee support policies are maternity leave, grievance procedures, training, annual review, and employee disciplinary actions.

By developing, a reputation for fairness and caring the Kudler Fine Foods HR department will prove a valuable resource for the organization and its employees. Kudler Fine Foods currently uses a bureaucracy style organizational culture to run its organization. After researching different types of organizational culture, the president of the company has determined that a matrix style will be more beneficial. When looking at the company she noticed that there was too much bureaucracy occurring between the different levels of management. This was causing delays in the support efforts to solve the problems at hand. She believes that because the matrix organizational culture focuses on the two main forms of departmentalization: functional and product that it will promote a better work environment for all her employees. Management/Leader Hierarchy

The new system changes the hierarchy structure of the company. The most significant changes are in the department and team structures. Each department will staff one to two employees during business hours. As listed above, there are six departments, and this will employ eight to 12 employees during business hours. The store is open from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Kudler will have two working shifts available. This schedule provides more employees to work during the busiest periods. Employee cross-training will ensure that employees work in the appropriate role to support the shift. The reorganization of Kudler Fine Foods will ensure a more efficient managerial system. Changing the structure will cause problems, but when the change is complete, the company will function more efficiently. The reorganization will change or eliminate employee roles, but the organization will work to maintain employee satisfaction. This will enable Kudler Fine Foods to continue with their planned growth for the future.

References

About Kudler. (2012). Retrieved from http://kudlerfinefoods.info/about-kudler/ Jung Typology Test. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jungtype.htm Kudler Fine Foods. (2003). Strategic Plan 2003. Retrieved from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/cist/vop/Business/Kudler2/intranet/ad/StrategicPlan2003.pdf Kudler Fine Foods. (2012). Retrieved from http://kudlerfinefoods.info and https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/cist/vop/Business/Kudler/Internet/Index.htm Robbins, S., & Judge, T. (2011). Organizational behavior (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ. Prentice Hall. Vitez, O. (2012). Centralized Vs. Decentralized organizational structure. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/centralized-vs-decentralized-organizational-structure-2785.html Dawson, D. (2009). Top 25 exit interview questions: Give two cents before leaving your job. Retrieved from http://www.examiner.com/life-the-cubicle-in-national/top-25-exit-interview-questions-give-two-cents-before-leaving-your-job