500 words solution for a Business course's final group paper (1 topic)

All in a Day’s Work

Stan was successful Operations Manager at Bev’s Brewery. He had helped the small brewery grow from a two-person startup in 2014 to a vibrant brew pub chain in three cities in Metro Vancouver.

Bev’s Brewery had its origins in Surrey, BC and now had teams of employees operating in Surrey, Vancouver and Chilliwack, BC. Surrey was the major hub of activity where the senior management team had their offices in space adjacent to the brew pub. Each pub operated independently, but the Surrey brew pub, brewed most of the beer. They had about 30 employees each at the brew pub and about 15 employees at head office. Most of the head office people handled administration such as technology, supply management, payroll and accounting and marketing. With its rapid growth over the past 5 years, the organization didn’t even have a published organization chart and sometimes even Stan didn’t know who the new people at head office were and how many employees were in each location. He reflected how it had been a long time since he had been given a bonus or training session. Ah, the good old days, he lamented. Now, he was just busy.

Bev’s Brewery was founded by Bev and Dave Kumar, sister and brother. They had grown up in Surrey and after both graduating from university with business degrees, though it would be exciting to launch their first business together. With the help of family and friends, they got a bank loan to establish the first brew pub in Surrey. They were inspired by their father Arvin’s, who had always home-brewed beer in the garage while they were growing up. They loved to watch him carefully, wash the bottles and then fill them up with a new amber concoction about every six months. They funny thing was that their dad didn’t even drink much beer, but he enjoyed making it and giving it away to his many friends. So, in the spirit of honouring their dad’s hobby, Bev and Dave thought the brew pub was an ideal start to their business endeavours.

Stan had been the first brew manager hired. He lived in “Bird Land”, a small community nestled high above the Fraser River in North Surrey. He and his family had lived there for over twenty years and when he heard about a new brew pub opening from a family friend, he leaped at the chance to help. He was an easy hire, with his many years of experience at the Molson Coors brewery which was rumoured to be moving out of Vancouver sometime in the next few years. He loved the short commute to work now and enjoyed working with Bev and Dave. He loved the friendly, family vibe of Bev’s Brewery.

Bev and Dave prided themselves with being “Theory Y” managers. That meant being there to support others to be their best. They also allowed managers to pretty much run the brew pubs independently with little oversight and focussed on supplying quality beer products, marketing, planning and expansion. Stan’s job was to make sure the operations ran smoothly.

It had been a busy six years of operations for Stan. Five of those years, had gone smoothly, but in the last year, Stan noticed that he was spending more and more time on phone issues and less time on actual operations. It started out as a petty disagreement, between the Vancouver and Surrey brew pubs. Vancouver was accusing Surrey of getting better service and attention. For example, Vancouver had run out of stock of some popular brews over the Christmas holidays, while Surrey had not. Vancouver blamed it on the poor relationship that Stan had with their manager, Tees Chan. Stan tried to explain to Tess, in an email, that it was nothing personal, but the grapevine said otherwise. The Vancouver brew pub attracted many employees of Asian or European ancestry, while Surrey had many employees from India, some even speaking Punjabi in the workplace. Chilliwack had a variety of staff, many of Scandinavian descent, and were managed by Ben Rand, who never seemed to say much. He just kept to himself and Stan assumed all was going well in Chilliwack.

They were definitely selling a lot of product in Chilliwack and it was growing rapidly from what Stan could see.

Stan didn’t care where you were from as long as you did your work effectively and he assumed Tess and Ben felt the same way.

The other friction Stan had to deal with was from older employees who complained to him that some of the new hires had their eyes on their phones instead of on customers. This was an issue across all locations. Stan thought that phones were useful and that some employees were just exaggerating the issue.

Bev’s Brewery made a point of engaging customers in an online app survey after every experience. Stan could not ignore the fact that customer satisfaction survey levels had been declining over the past year at all three locations. Additionally, the annual employee survey showed declining job interest and motivation amongst employees. “What was happening?”, thought Stan, “Can’t everyone just get along and get their work done? Isn’t that what’s required in a proper day’s work?” Stan grew increasing frustrated but didn’t want to worry Bev and Dave with these operations issues.

In the meantime, Bev and Dave were talking to Stan about expansion to online sales through a facility store which would be stablished in Chilliwack, due to the lower cost of real estate. They were even talking about hiring a new Operations Manager. That worried Stan. All the more reason, not to reveal some of the conflict issues going on. Little did he realize that Bev and Dave were thinking of promoting him to a new Senior Operations Manager role where he would be responsible for operations at both the brew pub and online facility. That would be a huge promotion.

It was apparent to Stan that the company culture was eroding and that it was affecting operations. Setting aside his anxiety of expansion and possibly being replaced, maybe even finding himself without a job, Stan realized that he would have to take action to solve the growing operational people problems. His main goal was to make sure the company could grow successfully, and he felt he owed it to Bev and Dave who had always trusted him so much.

Knowing that he didn’t have the experience or even the knowledge to get to the root causes, Stan has hired your team as Organizational Behabviour consultants to advise both him and as well as Bev and Dave on solutions to people problems plaguing the company. Your team needs to identify all of the issues and needs of company and make recommendations to assure its successful growth.