I don't know how you do it, Alice, said Maureen. I manage a Nutrition Services department in

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Question:

I don't know how you do it, Alice," said Maureen. "I manage a Nutrition Services department in a large hospital and continually receive lots of advice from our human resources department about a wide variety of special concerns that otherwise I would never know about."

Maureen was speaking to her old college classmate, Alice, who worked in the same city as manager for a fast-paced casual-service restaurant.

Alice's reply was expected: "Keeping up with legal issues and finding time to address a wide variety of other human resources concerns is a real problem. I try to do the best I can, but there are always fires (emergencies) that must receive a priority. Then, unfortunately, many things that are nice to know and do must be placed on the back burner."

"How do you stay out of trouble, then, Alice?" asked Maureen. "There are always legal concerns, benefits cost issues, and compensation studies, for example, that I would assume are necessary. There also must be lots of things that your employees want and deserve that require some attention," replied Maureen.

"Maureen, you're right! As a manager of a property in a multiunit chain, I do get some support from corporate officials, and I belong to several professional associations and attend meetings and receive updates from that source. I've learned some other tactics along the way, but obviously it's not possible to spend all of the time on human resources concerns that I would like to."

QUESTIONS:

1. What additional practical tactics can Alice use to obtain necessary human resources-related information?

2. What information applicable to Maureen's nutrition services employees will likely be relevant to all hospital employees? What specific concerns might Maureen have?

3. What tactics do you think single-unit restaurant operators without corporate level assistance can use to cope with the less-than-ideal human resources information they probably have easily available to them?