Case Study #$1$: Holmes Restaurants Digital Transformation

MGMT $4010/$MGMT $5007$ Spring $2024$

$90$ points

Date Due: Sunday February ${18}^{th}$ by $11$:$59$ pm

Assignment elements: $3-4$ pages double spaced in a $12-$point. Your answer should use class related concepts and for full credit on this assignment you will need to answer all parts of the questions.

Betsy had been so excited for her opportunity at Holmes Restaurants. Holmes Restaurants is a well$-$regarded company in Ouachita Parish with three up$-$scale restaurants of different cuisine in the area and approximately $50$ employees.

Betsy was hired to be the first HR employee for the company. Owner Richard James had done needed HR functions for the company but had realized he needed to focus on strategy for his business, not the day to $HR$ related matters. Betsy was excited for the opportunity to have a major role in shaping the HR practices Holmes Restaurant would use going forward. She was sure her ULM business degree and HR courses she had taken had prepared her well for what was needed at Holmes Restaurants.

What she found though was certainly a challenge. Holmes Restaurants was a company still very much in the pen and paper era. Employees checked in to physical time clocks and pay checks were still literally paper checks. Employee information was almost always given verbally from manager to employee. Shifts were posted on a bulletin board in each restaurant. If an employee needed to miss work they called the main line of that restaurant and someone wrote it down on a piece of paper to give to the manager. Employees learned how to do the job and restaurant rules on the job from other employees in similar roles. There was no formal training.

If these old school methods seemed to keep Holmes Restaurants running smoothly, Betsy might have just let it go$.$ But employees had many issues with these methods. Time clocks required manual entry of hours worked and there were often mistakes. Work shifts could easily get unbalanced and even when people called in to miss work managers often didn't get the message and shifts were short$-$staffed. Employee performance levels were not well understood, with complaints and subjective manager opinions all that was used to decide on employee hours given and when someone was fired. Holmes Restaurants had issues.

Betsy had talked to owner Richard James and he was supportive of implementing new technology to make the restaurants more effective. He had been interested before in modernizing these processes but didn't have the time or expertise to take that challenge on$.$ While he supported some spending to fix some of these issues he also made clear to Betsy that he was not hiring more people in HR at this time. So whatever changes were made, Betsy was it for implementing them. So while Betsy had a lot of latitude in what would be done it needed be bounded in a way she could run it on her own successfully.

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Case Questions:

Based on the case, what kind of digital transformation and interventions would you suggest to Betsy? You don't need interventions for every issue in the case, rather some that you think help acute needs and that Betsy can successfully implement within this context. Explain why you think these would be helpful and offer the best value for the organization.

What kind of resistance to change might Betsy see and why? How might she help employees and managers see the value of this change? How might she present that value proposition for these changes?

If you could talk to Betsy, look at organization records, or talk to other employees what additional information would help you to advise what is best to do at Holmes Restaurants? Why do you think this information is important?