1. Manpower. Human Resource (Manpower) refers to the overall aspect of planning
and organizing the personnel who will fill-in the key-functions of business operations.
In a fast-food chain for example, manpower includes the store managers, kitchen crews,
storage and back up crews, dining area crews and even the guards on duty.
What will likely to happen if there are no appropriate manpower?
Without appropriate number of manpower, a business will not be able to get things
done or will not have a smooth operation. Another consideration to ponder in terms
of pooling/hiring personnel is that, entrepreneurs must be critical in looking at the
attributes that the applicant has since they will create a huge impact in our vision/mission. It
is a make or break situation in hiring process. Some of these attributes may vary depending
on the function/ job title that the company requires.
What are some of the attributes that you will take into consideration in hiring?
Hard Skills- are objectives, quantifiable skills gained through training, school or work
experiences. Some of these attributes are sufficient trainings, relevant experiences,
educational attainment, thus pertain to the hard skills.
Another thing to look at are those soft skills that your applicant has.
Soft Skills- refers to the personal attribute. Relates to how you work. This is an
important factor since majority of the accomplishment of the applicant may rely on
his/her soft skills like emotional intelligence that is needed in the workplace, the growth
mindset that he/she has especially when dealing with tough situations etc. Assignment of
each worker to specific task is equally important.
Example: Just like in basketball, there is positioning of players that way the
plays are executed perfectly to get to the goal of making basket points.
At work, delegation of every worker is very important to accomplish specific tasks.
Lack of training can cause damage to goods as well. Most companies give trainings for both
newbies and experienced workers.
For the new ones, they are normally given beginner’s trainings to give them a broad
understanding of the work that they are going to face. For the experienced ones, they are
given trainings to enforce their existing skills. Sometimes one of challenges that most
companies encounter with the experienced workers are the old ways or practiced
that they have with their previous companies. Because of that, some companies have
developed trainings that aim to teach these people unlearned those skills that are not
applicable in the current operations.
As workers who will do the jobs assigned to them, they are all expected to do and
deliver the same quality of outputs and therefore companies plan for future training programs
that will align both new and experienced individuals in the company’s workplace. As what
famous author of entrepreneurship books, Jim Collins says, “get the right people on the bus,
the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”
Entrepreneurs must be careful in planning human resource to make his/her business
profitable and sustainable.
According to Unilever Food Solutions (2020), entrepreneurs dealing with food
related business must organize their human resources by looking at the following:
1. Hire the right people. The appearance of the applicant must be neat/clean
and presentable, thus projecting a professional image. Possesses the qualities of your
company culture- service attitude.
2. Assign responsibilities. Delegate the tasks in different areas of operations. Example in
kitchen (follow the organization)
3. Ensure work safety. The protocols must be surely followed by all staff including. Use of
personal protective equipment, prescribed uniforms (chef’s uniform, toque, apron etc. for
kitchen). Assess efficiency. The obedience on operation/production manuals is critical in this
process. Scoreboard/Key-performance Indicators are some useful metrics to track efficiency
and productivity.
4. Staff rotation. It is necessary that your staff are empowered prior going to work. Enough
Sleep/rest is crucial in attaining their desired performance. When we have proper scheduling
of staff, we can ensure our team will achieve those desired performance. We can start
planning their weekly/monthly schedules and assignments including giving fair workloads
and shift hours to our staff without compromising their health and social life.
Keep communications open.
2. Materials. Materials are used in the primary production or manufacturing of goods and is
very important in the business operation. For the big companies especially, which sell high
priced products, they always look for high quality raw materials. Companies which care
about uniformity and consistency of their products, product output is always being looked
at and carefully decide what specific material to use and ratings of the product, where to
buy, and even specific suppliers. These are just few of the things some companies are very
particular with because they would like to maintain the product as they were wanted by their
customers.
In the car grooming industry for example, there are lot of car waxes that are
available, but carnauba waxes have the highest respect because it creates the most durable
wax coating, as well as the shiniest finish. Big car wax manufacturers import carnauba wax
raw materials specifically from Brazil which is the most known source of palm tree that
produces the best carnauba.
On the other hand, if you are venturing into Food Service
Businesses like a coffee shop, materials can be categorized such as utensils,
silverwares, glass wares, china wares, cutleries etc. Another thing to consider are the
paper/disposable cups with lids, cup sleeves, straws with stirrers, coffee cups,
tissues/napkins etc.
Materials are also those items that you use to prepare the final product (also known
as raw material).
Coffee beans, skimmed, and fresh milk, soymilk, sugar, frosting/icing/whip cream. For the
baked products, has something to do with fresh eggs, flour, baking powder, baking soda,
cream cheese, food colorings, etc. Take note that whenever we select materials, we must
ensure that the quantity, quality, and safety should always be our utmost priority. We must
anticipate our inventory/stocks by proper monitoring so that we can ensure that there will
sufficient materials to be used for a smooth flow in production and operation.
3. Machine. Machines are known to be automated devices that results to attaining efficient,
and better results/multi-tasking. These are devices that make mechanical work easier.
Few examples of machines in fast-food stores includes pressure cooker, POS
machines, computers, griddles, refrigerators, and many others.
If you are planning to put up a coffeeshop business, machine can be classified
according to: burner, cooking equipment, ice machine, display/showcase fridge for the
cakes, salads, sandwiches which is usually placed beside the counter/cashier, the
espresso machines, weighing scales, microwave oven and the likes are also
considered and has to be carefully planned based on the necessity of your
business.
4. Method. Methods are ways of doing things in a certain workplace.
In fast-food chains for example, you will hear about KFC's Colonel Harland Sanders' secret
original recipe with 11 herbs and spices. The process of using of frying pan or even deepfrying chicken in a wire basket that takes much longer time and less desirable taste due
to the dryness of the chicken has been changed and developed to using a pressure
cooker and produced tasty, moist chicken in eight or nine minutes. They also have standards
of measurements of every piece of ingredients, cooking time, delivering time, as well as
storage of perishables to make sure that foods are serve clean and fresh to their customers.
Even for the interactions with customers, big companies have ways to approach
customers and even protocols in conversing with customers to protect both the
company and its customers. Methods vary a lot as each company want to differentiate
themselves from the competitions. Some methods like KFC’s are even used as their unique
selling propositions (USPs) which even give them edge over competitors because of the
claim that they have original methods in doing things.
Bottomline is, the use of workflow is very essential in attaining a smooth
operation in different areas of business