Assignment 1: Board Presentation

Hazel Hen is Australia’s favourite takeaway chicken shop and has served the Australian community delicious roast chicken and sides (for example, hot chips and salad) for over 50 years.  The company’s main competitors are Red Rooster, McDonalds, and other fast-food outlets.

The company employs a retailer-retailer franchise model.  Under this business model, the franchisor sells their product through a network of franchisees, who all use a common name and a standard set of systems and processes – so no matter which Hazel Hen Restaurant you visit, it will have the same menu and standards.  All Hazel Hen restaurants look the same and will share the same branding, logos, and marketing.  All employees wear standard uniforms and will be trained by Head Office.  All HR policies and practices are developed by Head Office for implementation by management in each restaurant.  

Each Hazel Hen restaurant has a full-time manager and between 4 to 12 crew members per shift.  The company runs two 8-hour shifts per day – the 7am to 3pm shift and the 3pm to 11pm shift.  Crew members at Hazel Hen prepare and serve delicious food and create memorable customer experiences through every interaction. They are required to maintain a well-presented, clean, and safe restaurant, whilst utilising strong time management and multi-tasking skills during the peak demand periods.  Crew members are responsible for preparing the food in accordance with the company’s specifications and are required to follow food and workplace safety regulations and standards.  Other tasks crew members undertake include taking food orders from customers, cleaning the restaurant and kitchen, and resolving customer complaints.  All crew members must greet customers on their arrival and thank them for their patronage as they leave – all with a big smile!

You have been working at Hazel Hen for two years now, and you have just secured a big promotion.  You are now the Junior Executive of People and Culture!  This job is an amazing opportunity for you, and you are very keen to impress.  You are working at Hazel Hen’s Head Office in Melbourne and report directly to the Executive Director of People and Culture, Dr. Vera Wing.  You are very excited – not only does this promotion mean a big pay rise, but it will also give you the opportunity to start to change the way the company views its human resources.  

For too long, Hazel Hen has treated its employees as if they were expendable.  Like other low-cost fast-food restaurants, Hazel Hen has deliberately kept restaurant worker wages low, and there are limited opportunities for promotion or development for crew members working in the restaurants.  Employee turnover is high – disgruntled employees are leaving the company in droves, dissatisfied with their pay, the poor working conditions, and the organisation’s culture.

But you know from your studies in Human Resource Management at La Trobe University that human capital is an important source of sustainable competitive advantage for organisations – even for companies that are pursuing a low-cost competitive strategy, like Hazel Hen.  These organisations can build human resource management systems that can drive innovation, create good jobs for workers, high performance for the organisation, and good returns for shareholders.

You have been talking to Dr. Wing about this for several months now – you are very persuasive, and Dr. Wing now agrees that Hazel Hen must change.  Dr. Wing would like you to prepare a brief presentation to the Board of Management, outlining your ideas.  Due to COVID-19, Hazel Hen’s Board meets via Zoom each month.  Dr. Wing would like you to prepare a 7-minute video presentation (a narrated PowerPoint presentation) to be included in the Board materials for their next meeting in April 2022.  In your presentation, you will focus on the following:

• Outline a new vision for talent acquisition and management at Hazel Hen – where crew members are viewed as a source of sustainable competitive advantage for the organisation

• To support your vision, explain to the Board:

• • the link between competitive strategy and human resource management practices, drawing on appropriate academic literature to support your argument 
  • the four key sources of sustainable competitive advantage, drawing on the work of Professor Jay Barney’s Resource-based View of the Firm
  • Provide three practical suggestions of policies or practices you may introduce to build a sustainable competitive advantage from your human capital.  One of these suggestions should focus on the introduction of HR analytics within the organisation, to provide a strong basis for evidence-based decision-making and planning.

Support your presentation with arguments and ideas with academic literature and practical examples. Your friend who works in IT at Hazel Hen has provided you with some instructions on how to create a narrated PowerPoint presentation (and these can be found in the LMS).