Analysis of HRM Issues in Vivienne's Restaurant Startup Case Study

This assignment analyzes a case study about Vivienne and her brothers planning to open a Chinese restaurant. The assignment addresses key HRM issues in this context, including hiring and training staff, sourcing employees, legal considerations, and job design. It explores strategies for successful hiring processes, including online job postings and utilizing job portals. The assignment also delves into employee sourcing through various channels like university placement offices, online job boards, and social media. It highlights the legal aspects of starting a restaurant and emphasizes the importance of licenses and permits. Furthermore, it discusses job design principles, such as skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback, to make jobs more interesting and challenging. The analysis provides practical advice for overcoming challenges and ensuring the restaurant's success.

Running Head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Human resource management
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Question: What are the key facts/issues in this story?
Answer – To provide an answer to this; first, we need to share a background information of this
story. Vivienne and her family had emigrated from Hong Kong to Australia when she was small,
and currently, they own a successful restaurant in China Town. Vivian has pursued her Bachelor
of Commerce degree majoring in Human Resource Management and Hospitality Management.
Her brothers have held their degrees in accounting and law. With an aim to open her own
Chinese restaurant, she along with her brother decided to propose plans to open restaurant
(Văduva and Neagoie, 2016).
The story discusses the planning of Vivienne and her brothers about the type of restaurant they
would like to build. The idea of opening a Chinese restaurant included specialization in seafood,
an idea of lavish Hong Kong style dumplings and yum cha. Besides all these, they have also
planned to offer a great service in terms of professional aspect, friendly aspect, and
knowledgeability and efficiency.
The issues revolving around the incorporation of all these plans addressed to how to find a
unique selling point; which menu should be adopted; management; hiring and training staff;
marketing; capital and customer service. As owning a restaurant is not an easy task, and to open
a restaurant with from financing to staffing are very challenging, Vivienne and her brothers must
carve a successful niche behind ways to find solution to these issues and attempt to make the
restaurant a success which they dreamt of (Stam and Bosma, 2014).
Question: What steps might Vivienne and her brothers take to successfully fill the jobs in
their new restaurant?
Answer – Hiring can be one of the most frustrating and tiresome aspects of any business. In this
paper, we will review the steps which Vivienne and her brothers might take to successfully fill

the jobs in their new restaurant. First, they must propose a plan addressing how to hire restaurant
employees that would make the hiring process a little easier. Traditional methods for hiring
involves contacting known people such as close family and friends to fill potential jobs
(Chesbrough, 2013).
Posting a website addressing the hiring of restaurant employees is considered to be the easiest
way to get new candidates for filling the jobs. In order to ensure that Vivienne and her brothers
are making a good move towards getting quality applicants, they can do a few simple things such
as creating a page which asks questions pertaining to selection criteria, such as
“When should we take the main course to the customer?” Or “How long does it take to cook a
steak to medium rare?”
Vivienne and her brothers can also indulge themselves in making job postings at relevant
restaurant career job portals, such as Career Builder, Craigslist, Google AdWords and others.
Since, hiring the best employees and have them stay on board for decades are considered to be
the toughest part of starting a business, following the above-mentioned hiring protocols could
make Vivienne and her brothers to successfully fill the jobs in their new restaurant (Nikolaou,
2014).
Question: Where might they source employees?
Answer – Since selecting the best possible people who can fit within work culture and contribute
to the organization is a challenge, and an opportunity faced by hiring managers, Vivienne and
her brothers must indulge themselves in keeping the best people, once they find them ideal for
their restaurant profile of interest. These involve investing time in developing relationships with
university placement offices, recruiters and executive search firms who work in hotel
management domain and chef-line. Secondly, enabling current staff members to actively

participate in industry professional associations and conferences where they are likely to meet
candidates we may successfully woo. Thirdly, watching the online job boards for potential
candidates who may have resumes online even if they're not currently looking. Fourthly, using
professional association websites and magazines to advertise for professional staff (Ton, 2014).
Other strategies for sourcing employees involve undergoing a compelling job posting that
includes a compelling title, attractive content, and benefits of the job, and the company. These
strategies will definitely help Vivienne and her brothers to find some top people to the candidate
pool. Vivienne and her brothers can also source employees by finding right candidates for their
new restaurant in resume databases. They can take the help of an employment-oriented site such
as Linked in, Job fairs and offering Internships. In today’s era, social media is considered to be a
convenient platform for contacting recruiters and job seekers (Stringer and Rueff, 2014).
Question: Are there any legal issues to consider?
Answer – The legal issues involving around the opening of a restaurant/bar involves the same
issues as starting any other kind of business. One needs to be more concerned and familiar with
establishing a business entity. Restaurants can be capital-intensive, so if Vivienne and her
brothers have investors, they will have to be aware of securities laws as they prepare our investor
documentation. To be in a safer part, conditions might prevail that the area which they have
selected for commercial use comes under zoning issues. Certificates of occupancy, liquor
licensing laws, health department regulations, food service certifications, employment laws must
be registered by them so that their premises don't become overcrowded on account of violation
of laws (Shaw and Barry, 2015).

Thus, depending on what type of business Vivienne and her brothers have planned to engage in,
they may need to acquire various licenses or permits. At a minimum, they will need a business
license and tax registration.
Question: In what ways might they attempt to design the jobs to make them as interesting
and challenging as possible?
Answer - J. Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham (1980) proposed a job characteristics approach
to job enrichment aimed at enhancing the essential nature of the work performed. Vivienne and
her brothers can Psychologist Frederick Herzberg in his 1968 article named "One More Time:
How Do You Motivate Employees?" proposed that how the practice of promoting individual
jobs to make the responsibilities more pleasing and inspiring for the people can make job
characteristics more interesting and challenge full (Hrebiniak et al., 2013).
Vivienne and her brothers can design jobs that typically contribute to people's enjoyment of a job
to make them as interesting and challenging to the fullest extent. Following five factors of job
design, proposed by Hackman and Oldham can really help Vivienne and her brothers to design
the jobs that could make them as interesting and challenging as possible, such as
• Skill Variety – Enhancing the number of skills that individuals avail while performing work.
• Task Identity – Providing people a platform to perform a job, task or work from start to
finish.
• Task Significance – Engaging people in work has a direct impact on the organization or its
stakeholders. A good task highlights the individual’s performance before every staff and
members of the restaurant.

• Autonomy – Enrolling people in decision-making areas, and the freedom to choose how and
when work is done can enthrall them in encouraging employees, including job enrichment, job
enlargement, and job rotation.
• Feedback – By enhancing the amount of recognition for doing a job well, and communicating
the results of people's work can eventually maintain the decorum of job enlargement and job
enrichment.

References
Văduva, S., & Neagoie, D. S. (2016). Corporate Social Responsibility—From Concept to
Business Strategy. In Integrity in the Business Panorama (pp. 73-98). Springer International
Publishing.
Stam, E., & Bosma, N. (2014). Growing entrepreneurial economies. The Routledge Companion
to Entrepreneurship, 325.
Chesbrough, H. (2013). Open business models: How to thrive in the new innovation landscape.
Harvard Business Press.
Nikolaou, I. (2014). Social networking web sites in job search and employee recruitment.
International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 22(2), 179-189.
Ton, Z. (2014). The good jobs strategy: How the smartest companies invest in employees to
lower costs and boost profits. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Stringer, H., & Rueff, R. (2014). Talent force: A new manifesto for the human side of business.
Pearson Education.
Shaw, W. H., & Barry, V. (2015). Moral issues in business. Cengage Learning.
Hrebiniak, L. G. (2013). Making strategy work: Leading effective execution and change. FT
Press.