Human Resource Management PBL Exercise : Setting up and Designing a New Workplace Vivienne comes from a well-off family that had immigrated to Australia from Hong Kong when she was small. Her parents had worked hard and become well established in Sydney's Chinese business community. Despite their success, they believed their children should learn for themselves how to work hard and how to value money. Vivienne and her brothers had all worked in restaurants part-time and over the holidays while they were studying. Vivienne was just about to graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, majoring in human resource management and management. Her two brothers had done degrees in accounting and law. Vivienne's hobby was cooking – she was a keen follower of MasterChef but also enjoyed other cooking shows, and read recipes and books about food and travel to relax. Now her parents had come up with a great idea – they would set Vivienne and her brothers up in a restaurant in Newcastle when they graduated at the end of the year! It was a big challenge. Vivienne, Walter and Stephen had talked about what type of restaurant they would like. They decided on a restaurant that would have excellent food – a Chinese restaurant that would specialise in seafood, have great Hong Kong style dumplings and yum cha. They also wanted the service to be really professional – friendly, knowledgeable, efficient. They wanted their restaurant to be a little bit 'hip', to attract young people, particularly the overseas students in town; but also to be a place where people would be comfortable bringing their families. So - great food, great service, but good value. Where would they begin? The three of them decided that Walter and Stephen would be in charge of setting up the business and accounting arrangements, ordering systems and so on. They would all agree on the design and location; they had decided to find some premises that would take about 30 tables – about 80 people – plus a small bar. But Vivienne's job was, in the first instance, to think about some of the most important issues in what sort of workforce they should find. Usually owners begin by employing a chef to be in charge of the kitchen, but Vivienne wanted to be very careful and not make any mistakes. She wanted the staff to be really engaged in making the restaurant a success. How was she going to achieve the dream that she and her brothers shared? TASKS: What steps must Vivienne and her brothers take to set up and then design and fill the jobs in her new restaurant successfully? (1500 Words, References are and appendixes not included) And also Appendix Summary : Write : 1. FACTS: What do you think are the key facts in this case? i.e. the 'concrete' things that stand out to you about the case that might be relevant later. What do you know and what did you learn during your research? As you make multiple iterations of the PBL process, you will be generating a bank of concrete facts that you can use to articulate and justify your analysis. 2. IDEAS: When you think about these facts, based on your developing knowledge and experience, what ideas or personal theories come to mind? The idea is to try speculate about possible antecedents and consequences, causes and solutions and so on. This is meant to be a 'brainstorming' step to stimulate a research process. 3. LEARNING ISSUES: Based on your speculative ideas, what information is missing? What key learning issues are generated? In other words, you need to identify what you need to know or clarify before the issues can be resolved and a resolution can be reached. It is a kind of 'Gap Analysis'. So, it is a good idea to develop a set of research questions to guide the process in the next step. What are some of your unanswered research questions? 4. ACTION: Now that you have a set of research questions, you need to take steps to answer them. This means conducting some kind of research, which may involve consulting academic or industry journals, searching company websites, seeking out subject matter experts, locating newspaper articles, talking to colleagues and so on. So, based on the learning issues, where could/did you find this information? Make a list of buzz words that might be in the forefront of your mind as you conduct your research. As you conduct your research, make a note of the answers that you find, which are now the 'new facts' that you can add to your bank of facts.