Communication and management: Burger King

Burger King is the second largest chain of hamburger fast food. The restaurant opened for the first time in New Zealand in 1994. It expands through franchising. Burger king is touching the lives of people every day. They improved their quality of products and services with the time. All of them are open for late nights

Management of knowledge resources

Burger King is flamed-broiled burgers, fries and soft drinks at a good value, served quickly and consistently by friendly people in clean surroundings. Burger king primarily sells whopper, chicken tenders, tendergrill sandwich, tendercrisp chicken sandwich, drinks and deserts etc.

Preparation: Burger King cooks its foods in one of four ways:-boiling, deep frying, baking and microwaving.

My own research

I am working in a Swanson burger king in Auckland city. Last week when I was working I interviewed my branch manager for analyzing the whole type of communication and preparing this assignment. I have made a document and analyze the communication process in one of the world largest and successful food chain, towards the achievement of business goal.

So the primary data was collected by interviewing my branch manager. After the primary research, all the relevant findings were analyzed and evaluated on the communication theories learned from secondary sources through our textbook, lecturer handouts, online searching and the organization’s information resources. The communication process shows a great impact on three levels of communication namely:-

Interpersonal communication

Organization communication

Team communication

The research shows some communication barriers as well that affect the communication process towards the achievement of team goals and the organization’s goals as well.

4)

Interpersonal communication

Interpersonal communication is a communication between two people. There is a different definition according to the different books means some refer to face to face communication and some refers to when people are physically present with each other. So I analyze the communication between the manager’s and staff members and communication between staff members and the customers from my research.

Communication between managers and staff members

When I research on burger king where I am working, as like me all the staff members are from different countries and different backgrounds. Everyone is very educated and with good communication skills. There is a big barrier in the communication between managers and employees that is called language barrier because they all come from different countries and speaks different languages from each others. So they are finding a difficulty while communicating with each other.

Communication between staff members and customers

In burger king, mostly women are in front counter and attending the customers as they are treat the customers with very polite way and very friendly. The staff members are using non verbal communication to give detail to the customers about their new burgers and orders. They are providing good customer service to their customers by using active listening skills as well.

Communication barriers

There are some communication barriers between managers and staff members:-

Status: – status becomes a barrier in motivation. Some of the staff members do not talk with each other because of their status. New employees do not talk with the manager because of the same reason that is status.

Roles: – roles determine the way you communicate with each other. Sometimes employees hide their mistakes from the manager because of the personal relationship that become a barrier in the information flow.

Power: – power becomes a barrier in a motivation and control. An organization use communication to motivate the employees. When we communicate there is come element of power and control being exercised by one another or by both. If power is too much then the communication is frustrating..

Organization communication

In the interview I asked some to my branch manager to get more knowledge about communication and burger king. Organization communication is divided into two major parts that is:-

Internal organization communication

External organization communication

Internal organization communication

Organization goals: I found a goal of burger king on my research. Basic goal of burger king is on the basis of yearly. It also includes the waste of the burger king. They also want to give the fast customer service and decrease their waste as much they can do. The few goals of burger king are:-

CSO (customer service satisfaction) -100% burger king wants to give a fast and good customer service.

KVS (kitchen video system) -35% this is the time to make burgers and other fast food products in the kitchen after every order and it is normally 35 seconds.

Labor -26% burger king wants to save the labor upto 26% as they had given last year

Refunds – below 0.10%. the organization wants to give less refunds to the customers as to gain more profit.

Information flow within the organization

As per rules and regulations of the organization burger king information flows from higher level to lower level as if they are going to launch of new burgers or changing of rules firstly comes to restaurant manager and after that he or she pass on the shift manager and the shift manager pass on the information to the crew members by a team meeting or putting the information on the crew room so that everybody can read that information and especially when a new product is launching.

They create a group training team and they trained them how to make new product and Kinds of precautions they have to consider while making those particular product.

Organization culture and ethics within the organization

In this organization employees are from different countries. And mainly in this organization Indians are working with very few of kiwi staff. The restaurant manager is kiwi and almost all the other middle level managers are Indians in my burger king and including one manager belongs to china. In this organization everybody works without any racism and they are very comfortable with each other. The organization climate of the burger king is very good because everybody communicates in professional way and they can understand each other way of communication very well.

External organization communication

Dealing with customers

This is the way of the communication in the burger king where I am working which is to be used 24 hours to serve the customer. And it is used to handle the problems of customers as well. There is a specific pattern to deal with the customers which is described by the manager. In this part of communication is used to deal with every customer and this pattern is also written on the front counter and this pattern is divided into part and those are as follows:-

1) First smile and greet to customer.

2) Take the order correctly by repeating the order to the customer

3) At last say enjoy your meal and good bye and keep coming back.

Communication with Stakeholders

In this organization mainly restaurant manager and senior assistant manager communicate with the stakeholders and the organization like burger king plays a vital role in communication with the stakeholders because they have to always to be ready to give the customer a better service and not to get a stock out of anything which is used within the organization

Barrier in internal organization communication

There are many type of communication barrier in an organization like if crew and manager do not talk with each other then they cannot give better customer service. and sometime it happens in heaps of busy time because everybody is busy in doing their task as faster as they can. So to get rid of it managers they take the help of the other crew and manager which is available at that time to do a proper communication within the staff.

Barrier in external organization communication

There is a language barrier in the communication. as some of the employees which are from other countries they cannot speak as much good English to communicate and sometime it become barrier in communication in the organization.

Team Goals

In this organization team goals are very simple we have to make the plan. In burger king teams are trained well to follow the pattern. Leader of the team asks the team to execute a plan and the whole team follows the plan.

Group dynamics

Communication in a group is more complex then the communication between two people.

When two people communicate, there are two possible interactions.

A B B A

When three people communicate, there are nine possible interactions.

A B A C

B A B C

C A C B

B A B

A B C

C C C

Now in burger king teams split in to four parts that is counter 1, counter 2, counter 3 and the cleaning team. On the bases of counter one there are three members that is A, B and C. Now A talks with B and B talks with C but there is no communication between A and C.

A B B C

If C does not talk with A then there is no interaction between team member A and C. They need to interact with each other to maintain a proper communication inside a group. So they should have the proper communication with each other.

Communication with Networks

The burger king network is very fast and successful. The main branch (parent) of the burger king sends emails, memos and letters to their branches (child) if they have any changes in their services and they want to launch any facilities to the customers. It is a simple example of network between parent and child. On the other hand, the sub branches communicate with each other on the basis of staff recruitments and stocks. From my personal experience, I had started working in Swanson burger king but after some time they shifted me in downtown burger king because they need extra staff for their busy times. This shows they are connected with each other (in terms of networking).

Conclusion

Interpersonal communication

Communication between manager and staff members

According to the findings, I noticed that as every person working in burger king belong to different background and culture, language becomes a barrier as far as communication is concerned. Some of the employees hesitate to talk with the managers because their English is not too good.

Communication between customers and staff members

In my burger king both men and women deal with the customers because they are trained well before they join the staff. So to communicate with the customers well they have to meet the customer needs and have to speak correct English.

Organization communication

After having looked on the results of burger king organization communication we come to conclusion that both the internal and external communication of burger king is very necessary to run the business and earn profit.

Internal organization communication-

Burger king aim is to earn profit and give the customer better service and for that they are achieving their aim by targeting this point of view. And along with this all the important information in this organization flows from top to bottom level.

External organization communication-In burger king external communication is mainly with the customers and stakeholders. And this communication is done by both the crew and managers .The dealing with customers is done by both the managers and crew but the communication with the stakeholders mainly done by managers of burger king. A better communication skills in the staff leads to profit of the organization as if they can communicate well to the customers and as well as in the organization they can achieve their goals easily.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Interpersonal communication

Communication between staff member and customers is main part there. In this restaurant mostly women attend the customers. The staff is well trained and experienced. If the staff members are happy with their work environment, they can serve the customers better. Managers should also encourage members to deal with the customers to avoid any gender bias.

Create a positive climate

The communication becomes better by creating a positive climate. their communication. The employees should try to understand needs of the customers. Therefore, burger king’s good customer service is generated through employee satisfaction and a healthy work environment. Employees also try to learn more from old employees.

Communication between managers and staff members

Communication between managers and staff members can be better if the meetings are held at least once a week in the organization. The managers should ask the staff member’s questions about their culture and background to get to know them better and to understand their behavior, so their work environment could be set up according to their preference and comfort. Managers should also try to talk to the staff members as much as possible.

Organization communication – Manager should do proper meeting with crew members to overcome communication gap in the organization. They must take opinions of crew before implementing a new rule in the organization so they can work as a team all the crew members must speak English with each other apart from any other languages.