Performance capability case study

The organisation & issue

The organisation is a pub that also serves food at lunch times and in the evenings. It is quite a large establishment sited in a coastal resort and employs around 15 staff at any one time.

The Head Chef had been employed within the organisation for a number of years, originally as the second chef and then promoted into his current position. He has very strong cooking skills, copes well under pressure and delivers the food in a timely fashion to a high standard. However, since his promotion 10 months ago, he had failed to take on the effective management of the kitchen staff. This resulted in gaps in kitchen cover, staff coming in late, the kitchen being left in a dirty state at the end of the evening and the required kitchen documentation not being completed.

The owner of the pub had now had enough. He had spoken to him informally prior to our meeting expressing his concern but there had been no improvement. He had come to the decision that the Head Chef must go.

What PicassoHR did

• The PHR Advisor attended the business to discuss the problem with the owner. They talked through the various options of managing the problem and the business risks associated with each, particularly the dismissal route. In the end the owner agreed, rather reluctantly, to try a capability approach with the Head Chef. He agreed to the process because, although he was very frustrated with him, he did recognise that his cooking abilities were very good.
• The Head Chef was invited to a meeting to discuss the concerns regarding his performance and was issued with a number of objectives to be achieved which would address the concerns. During the meeting, the chef was sullen, defensive and refused to engage in any productive form of communication and at the end of the meeting, the business owner felt sure that the process would be a waste of time and that no change would occur.
• We arranged to meet with the chef again in two weeks time to see if things were improving.
• At the next meeting, the chef was quite a different person. He had decided that he would take up the challenge set by the objectives and had set his mind to achieve them all. On evaluating his performance, he had not managed to successfully achieve the required standards in each area but he had made significant progress. However, more interestingly, he had noticed that, by using the objectives to help him, he had made quite a difference to the atmosphere and effectiveness of the kitchen. The staff had started to respond to his requests in a more positive fashion because he was becoming consistent in his requests and the kitchen was clean and had passed a routine hygiene inspection with flying colours. He also reported feeling that the process was helping him to develop his managerial skills and that he was gaining a sense of satisfaction from this.
• During the meeting we agreed that we would meet again in a month to ensure that the progress was being sustained and that the objectives were being achieved.

Outcome

A month later, when we met, all the objectives had been achieved and the business owner was delighted with the Head Chef’s progress. We agreed that we would not need to meet him again formally going forward. However, when we communicated this to the Head Chef, he was disappointed and asked to have the meeting anyway because he felt that he had benefitted so much from the process and wanted to continue with his self development.

The PHR Advisor met with him two more times informally, to help him to continue his focus on his development and when she last saw him, he was acting as a senior manager within the business, assisting with issues within the bar area as well.

 

Home | What We Do | Our Services | Our Credentials | Our Clients | Site Map

---

Contact us on 01473 890037 Send email to