MBA Communication & Negotiation Skills: Case Study & Solutions

This case study examines communication challenges faced by Barry, a kitchen manager, due to cultural and linguistic diversity among his staff. The analysis identifies barriers such as language differences, a wide age range, and high employee turnover. Solutions proposed include motivation strategies, adequate training programs, reducing cultural biases, creating standard operating procedures (SOPs), and adopting a single language culture. The study emphasizes the importance of effective communication as a motivator for safe food handling practices, building trust, providing constructive feedback, empowering employees, and offering growth opportunities. Ultimately, the case highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to improve communication and create a positive working environment.

Running Head: Communication and Negotiation Skills
Communication and Negotiation
Skills
Case Study Analysis and Questions

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Executive Summary
The case study here states that Barry, who is the Kitchen manager, faces a lot of difficulty in
communication with his staff members, due to ineffective communication a lot of policies,
procedures, especially related to the safety and hygiene in the Kitchen goes for a toss. The
assignment here will answer four questions which are based on the challenges faced due to
ineffective communication, the reason for the communication challenges, and what Barry can do
in order to create a positive working environment in the Kitchen. Certain improvement to Barry
are suggested within the purview of the assignment questions which will help him in bringing
discipline in the system and also establish proper communication in the system.

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Table of Content
Question 1: What are the communication challenges and barriers Barry Face?...................................3
Communication challenges and Barriers............................................................................................................... 3
Workforce and Cultural Diversity........................................................................................................................ 3
English not being the Primary Language........................................................................................................... 4
High turnover at the Restaurant........................................................................................................................... 4
Lack of Training Hours on the Floor.................................................................................................................... 5
Personal Front.............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Question 2: What solution might Barry consider in addressing each of these challenges and
barriers?.............................................................................................................................................................................. 6
Solution to Tackle the Challenges at Hand........................................................................................................ 6
Motivation...................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Adequate training....................................................................................................................................................... 8
Communication Training......................................................................................................................................... 8
Working on reducing cultural bias....................................................................................................................... 8
Creating SOP................................................................................................................................................................. 9
Adopt a single language culture............................................................................................................................ 9
Posters across the kitchen.................................................................................................................................... 10
Stressing on the importance of food and hygiene....................................................................................... 10
Understanding of customer service importance......................................................................................... 10
Setting clear goals and expectation................................................................................................................... 10
Usage of social media.............................................................................................................................................. 11

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Question 3: What Standard operating procedure would be helpful for Barry to implement?.......11
Glove and Utensil Use............................................................................................................................................. 12
Tasting Method......................................................................................................................................................... 12
Equipment cleaning and sanitizing................................................................................................................... 13
Employee Personal Hygiene................................................................................................................................ 13
Hand Washing............................................................................................................................................................ 13
Holding of Food......................................................................................................................................................... 14
Hot food handling................................................................................................................................................ 14
Handling of Cold Food....................................................................................................................................... 15
Question 4: What are some of the ways Barry might use effective communication as a motivator
for the employees to follow safe food handling practices?..........................................................................15
Ways and Practices to be used by Barry.............................................................................................................. 16
Building trust and relationship with the team............................................................................................. 16
Effective communication to build team........................................................................................................... 16
Constructive Feedback........................................................................................................................................... 16
Employee empowerment...................................................................................................................................... 17
Rewarding the staff members............................................................................................................................. 17
Growth, Learning and Development................................................................................................................. 18
References........................................................................................................................................................................ 19

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Question 1: What are the communication challenges and barriers
Barry Face?
Communication is the essence of every business and it is the prerequisite for the success and
failure of any business. Effective communication plays a strong hand in the success of business,
and it holds true otherwise as well. Communication in the simplest of terms is the art of
transferring information, knowledge, and set of instructions, commands, instruction and order
from one person to another (Kurtz, Draper & Silverman, 2016). As simple as it sounds,
communication is one of the toughest challenge faced by present day business organization. Due
to high cultural and workforce diversity it becomes difficult for the business managers to
communicate effectively with their subordinates, thus, affecting the entire process of
communication. Communication in order to be effective has to be communicated in the simplest
of the language after establishing that people around understand that language (Lindof &
Taylor, 2017).
Barry has been facing a difficult time in establishing communication with his sub-ordinates, it is
due to inefficient communication, the business is suffering, the restaurant is unable to meet up
with the food and safety instruction, also the employees are unable to follow the instruction as
passed on by Barry. The major reason for high inefficiency in communication is the variation in
the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the people, and most of the employees do not have
English as their primary language, this makes it difficult for them to understand the instructions
passed on by Barry. Moreover, the employees working at the restaurant have higher age range,
for instance, the people employed in the kitchen fall in the range of 16-55 years, thus the
grasping power of the employees is different, which further makes the communication
challenge fierce in the organization. Based on the above discussion some of the communication
challenges faced by Barry are:
Communication challenges and Barriers
Workforce and Cultural Diversity
Barry is a 27 year old male who is working in the capacity of foodservice manager at a casual
dining restaurant and is responsible for supervising and managing the employees at the back of
the house, which is kitchen in the case of restaurant. The staff working in the Kitchen comprises
of individuals falling in the age range of 16-55 years, which is extremely large age range, as it

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comprises all the possible range of population, millennial, mid age people and old age people as
well. Due to this high age difference Barry at times finds it difficult to communicate with the
employees, which leads to plethora of troubles in the kitchen. At the very same time, most of the
working staff in the kitchen does not have English as their primary language, which is another
big challenge, as Barry who is the kitchen manager has English as his primary language. Staff
working in the kitchen belongs to different parts of the world and from different section of the
society, due to this high cultural, ethnic and language differences, Barry faces trouble in
communicating with the staff members, which is significantly hampering the operation inside
the kitchen and numerous violation of Food safety.
English not being the Primary Language
Barry is the Food and service manager at one of the highly acclaimed restaurant who is
responsible for managing and supervising the operations in the kitchen as well to manage the
kitchen staff. Barry’s Primary language is known to be English, but due to differences in the
culture and ethnicities, majority of the staff does not have English as their primary or native
language. This is one of the biggest communication challenge faced by Barry, as it really
becomes next to impossible to establish a communication or convey a message to the staff if the
language is not being comprehended with the people on the other side. Due to this difficulty,
nuisance is the order of the house in the kitchen. The essential thing in effective communication
is to have the common language, common language helps in better understanding of instruction
or the commands and sets the tone of the entire message, in absence of it, and it is a situation of
total mayhem in the Kitchen.
High turnover at the Restaurant
Employee turnover is the exit of employees voluntarily without any notice or giving a chance to
the management to handle their grievances and make them stick in the organization. Employee
turnover is a huge loss to the organization, as the entire resources deployed in training of the
staff, and the time consumed in making them learn the entire business process, policies and the
functionalities goes down the drain. Thus, employee turnover can be seen as a big negative
point for the organization and efforts has to be made to avoid the same at all costs. The
restaurant is clouded by the same problem, due to high turnover; Barry is unable to give in the
required hours of training to its employees, which leads to difficulty in establishing
communication with them. The staffs are sent half-baked to work on the floor and in kitchen
because of fewer workforces, thus creating troubles. In the absence of the required number of
training hours, the workers are unable to grasp the communication, unable to grasp the

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concepts and the policies to be followed, which is another reason for causing troubles in the
Kitchen floor. And to add, this significantly hampers the effectiveness of communication at the
Restaurant, posing barrier for Barry.
Lack of Training Hours on the Floor
As mentioned in the earlier section, Barry is troubled by the high turnover problems at the
restaurant. Due to high turnover of the employees, a time gap is created in filling up the position
of the staff, thus creating gap in the food and service delivery. The restaurant has a policy of
training, but due to the problem of high turnover, Barry is unable to give in the right amount of
training to the staff in terms of communication and culture to prepare them for the work in the
kitchen. Thus, the employees are rushed on to the job at the earliest, rather than giving them
good amount of time to absorb the knowledge, the language communication and the skill of
mastery in the kitchen. This is one of the biggest reasons why they are in a difficult spot to
understand Barry’s simple communication and also the implication of the posters hung in the
kitchen. The staffs get so busy that they fail to understand the importance of food and safety in
the kitchen, which is further intensified with their limited understanding of the English
language, thus creating troubles for the restaurant.
Personal Front
In the case study, towards the end it has been pointed that Barry is going through a rough day in
his life, due to which he is frustrated and in a very bad condition. On entering the kitchen
premises when he sees all the half cooked food lying here and there, with the utensils not
washed lying in some corners and no heads given to the posters he has pasted on the walls, he
loses his temper. This is a demotivation factor for Barry, as he is not getting any support from
the management, the training hours are inadequate, and the communication barriers are
increasing day by day. This has made him suffer at the very bottom, and due to this he is unable
to push himself to improve the conditions in the Kitchen.
Towards the end, it can be said that communication is one single largest factor which is ruining
things at the restaurant. It is the failure of the entire management and not just the staff, to tackle
the problem at hand. Communication challenge is the root cause of all the problems happening
in the kitchen, such as less attention being paid to food and safety standards, no attention being
paid to the big posters which are hung on the walls of the kitchen, utensils not being washed
and cleaned thoroughly and numerous more. It is a total failure of the entire system and
communication has the major role to play in it. The contributing factors behind this are high

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turnover, English not being the primary language and inadequate number of hours for training,
are the obstacles in the way of effective communication. High workforce diversity is a plus point
for the restaurant, but in this case, it is a downside, as people don’t have English as their
primary language. More, so, the people working in the kitchen have a lot of age gap, this can
seriously impact their learning abilities, which put them a step back while learning and picking
up a new language.
Barry on the other hand seems tired of this entire process of trying hard to deliver the best
training, instructions to improve the food and safety practices in the kitchen, but seeing that no
matter the number of hours he is putting in with the staff, he is unable to see any improvement
in the system. It is high time now that the management and Barry takes steps in mending the
situation and improve the communication scenario in the organization. The restaurant is at a
stage where even one of the mistakes in terms of food and safety could lead to shut down of the
store, thus to prevent any such damages from happening, Barry will have to come up with
strategies in order to improve the communication in the organization. The onus is both on Barry
and rest of the staff, to understand the gravity of situation and act accordingly. Communication
has to be highly effective to ensure the success of the goals and objectives of the restaurant.
Question 2: What solution might Barry consider in addressing each of
these challenges and barriers?
As mentioned in the earlier section, Barry is struggling to establish good communication system
in the restaurant due to plethora of problems he has been facing with the employees. The
problems are predominantly due to the difference in ethnicities and cultural background, which
is the reason for their language differences. Majority of the staff is unable to follow the orders,
instruction of Barry just because English is not their primary language. The hours allocated for
language training are less due to the problem of high turnover at the facility, so the employees
have to be sent on the floor half baked. Due to all this reasons the restaurant is unable to meet
up with the standards of food and hygiene safety. Thus, it is high time that Barry strategizes and
evaluates his option to work on the challenges he has been facing at the restaurant. After a clear
evaluation and analysis of the situation at hand, the solution Barry can consider are as follows:

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Solution to Tackle the Challenges at Hand
Motivation
Motivation in the simplest sense is the reason behind People’s actions, desires and needs, or it
can be understood as the reason behind the behaviour of a person and an individual. It is what
pushes a person to get up in the morning and continue progressively with his day. Motivation
pushes the person to go beyond his limits, overcome any challenges and work on the path of
enhanced productivity (Marsick & Watkins, 2015). It has been seen that there is high employee
turnover at the restaurant, due to high turnover employees do not get enough training hours to
learn the process, protocols and even the language. Thus in order to reduce employee turnover
and start with the first step of bringing stability at the restaurant, the employees have to be
motivated. Once the employees are motivated, they will not leave the restaurant, thus will have
better training and over the communication challenge. Barry has to thus understand what
motivation theory he can use to push the staff and convince them to stick with the restaurant,
happily (Samovar et. al., 2015).
(Source: Martin & Nakayama, 2015)
Every individual is different from other, thus a combination of motivation theories will help in
motivating the entire staff, thus reducing the challenge of employee turnover reducing the
communication gap. Maslow Need Theory is one of the fundamental models of motivation, the
theory allows for motivation according to the different needs of the individual (Coombs &

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Holladay, 2015). For example, Physiological needs societal needs, social esteem needs and self-
actualization needs. Similarly in other way, Barry can use two factor theories to identify the
hygiene factors and motivation factors in the organization. This way, he can reduce the hygiene
factors and increase the motivation factors for the employees. More motivation theories such as
Adam Theory, Vroom expectancy Theory, Hertzberg factor theory can be used to motivate the
employees at the restaurant. The bottom-line here is, to keep the employees happy, motivated
and satisfied to work productively for the restaurant (Binder, 2016).
Adequate training
It has been mentioned in the case study that employees are unable to get adequate training in
terms of communication and other modules of food and safety in the kitchen. The lack in
training is another big challenge faced by the organization. The first step towards the training
exercise is identification of the training needs of the employees and maps it in accordance to the
skills required for the job (Katzenbach & Smith, 2015). The gap identified by the Current skills
and Required skills for the job will help in understanding the training need of the
individual .This scientific exercise will not only help the organization to come up with better
training calendars and module for the employees, at the same time it will assist the employees
to enhance their learning by polishing the skills they have been lacking at (Holmes & Stubbe,
2015). Training need analysis will make the employees also understand the skills they have to
master for their own professional and personal development. Thus, adequate training hours will
bring stability in the organization and do away with the challenges Barry has been facing at
present. Moreover it will also help the employees to work in an environment of learning, growth
and development which will act as motivation for them (Barak, 2016).
Communication Training
The biggest gap or the lacuna in the success of the restaurant is inability of Barry and his staff to
establish proper communication in the Kitchen. It is the inability of the staff to understand the
English language which makes it difficult for them to follow the instructions and orders of Barry.
This situation has to be changed at the earliest, or the restaurant will be doomed at a very
nascent stage (Kaushal & Kaddoum, 2015). Thus, in order to do so, communication training only
for English language has to be started in the restaurant. The training should focus on the basic
modules of English and focus on step by step learning and development of the language skill in
the staff. Thus, communication training will ensure that the staffs get well versed with the
language and are in a position to respond to the instruction of Barry and follow them for the
good of Restaurant and themselves (Brink & Costigan, 2015).

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Working on reducing cultural bias
Workforce diversity is a plus point for the organization, as it helps in cultivating multiple ideas
in the organization as well as improves the decision making process. In the case study here, it is
mentioned that the staff is culturally diverse; this might be one of the reasons for the troubles at
the restaurant (Gregory et. al., 2016). Thus, Barry has to increase the team building activities
and have to take session with his staff to ensure that any kind of resistance towards any culture
is reduced. In the environment of reduced or no cultural bias, staff will be in a position to better
learn, have great acceptability towards the culture of other people and work like a team of
achieve the goals of the restaurant(Caplan, 2014). Thus, cultural bias will solve a lot of trouble
for Barry, it will also serve as a motivation factor for the staff and also help in bringing positive
synergies in the team. Thus, reducing cultural bias at the restaurant will help in tackling the
challenge of communication, cultural diversity and bring the team closer with much acceptance
towards the differences and the focus on the goals of the restaurant (Lum et. al., 2015)
Creating SOP
Standard Operating Procedure of SOP is one of the ways which educates the employees and is a
set of step by step instructions compiled by organizations to help workers carry out complex
routine operations. The prime aim of SOP is to achieve efficiency, quality output and uniformity
of performance, at the same time reducing miscommunication and failure to comply with
industry regulation (Hall, Covarrubias & Kirschbaum, 2017). As mentioned in the case study, the
restaurant is under a lot of scrutiny for food and safety, thus creating Standard operating
procedures will be of added assistance to the staff at the kitchen, and help them in knowing the
correct process to follow in order to deliver the services as expected by the management/Barry
or the customers. Therefore, multiple SOP’s such as Food hygiene, cleanliness procedure,
cooking, cooking of food, taking order from table, procedures for cooking food, using
equipment’s in the kitchen etc. Thus, SOP is a great tool which would benefit the employees
tremendously and serve in improving the communication at the restaurant (Colbert, Yee &
George, 2016).
Adopt a single language culture
Communication is the key to success for any business organization or any business entity, thus
it is extremely important to set up a culture of one language in the organization. Setting up
single language for communicating in the organization will ensure that every one is following
the same language to communicate with each other in the organization (Cornelissen &

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Cornelissen, 2017). This will also improve the grip on the English language, thus ensuring
effectiveness of the communication among the staff and the management. Adoption of just
English language for formal communication will do away with most of the problems Barry has
been facing, at the same time will bring stability in the organization. This way the Kitchen will
be in order and staff will have a clear understanding of what has to be done more effectively
(Lee, 2016).
Posters across the kitchen
It is not necessary that communication has to be specifically verbal, signs or posters serve as a
good means of visual communication, thus helping the employees to better understand the
meaning and the underlying purpose of the communication. Thus, putting posters across the
Kitchen will not only create a better visual environment but would also help to establish
communication effectively in the organization (Serrat, 2017). Posters will help in adding to the
uniformity of communication, and the posters will also be a consistent reminders of what has to
be done while in the Kitchen. For example, Posters like, Do not keep the food open, Heat the
food properly, no item to be left uncovered and so on will help in ensuring the message is loud
and clear in the Restaurant(Czaja & Sharit, 2016).
Stressing on the importance of food and hygiene
It is important that the staffs employed at the kitchen are aware of the best practices of food and
hygiene in order to follow and adopt the best practices in the food business. Hence, Barry has to
set up a culture in the organization wherein every person employed understands the
importance of hygiene and food in the Kitchen. This will help Barry in doing away with the
problem of keeping unhygienic kitchen in the restaurant (Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger, 2017).
Understanding of customer service importance
This can be seen as the inherent understanding that why it is important to have effective
communication in the workplace, once the employees understands that in service industry it is
effective communication which is the yardstick of the company’s success; they will obey the
same (Farmer, 2017). The staffs have to be taught the understanding of importance of excellent
service in the restaurant. This way Barry will be in a position to tackle the problem of
miscommunication and indiscipline in the restaurant (O’Donnell & Macintosh, 2016).