Superior

Training dilemma at Hardee’s

Case Study
Reference no 414-070-1

The case was written by Hammad Ahmad,Shumaila Naz

and Muhammad Rafiq under the
supervision of Ch Abdul Rehman, Rector,
Superior University, Pakistan. It is intended to be
used as the basis of class discussion rather
than to illustrate either effective or ineffective
handling of a management situation.
This case was made possible by the co-operation
of Muhammad Nawaz, T & D manager Hardees’.

© 2014, Superior University.

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 414-070-1

TRAINING DILEMMA AT
HARDEE’S
On a humid 10th June 2009, Mr Ahsan and Mr Khawar, the
Operational Manager and Area Sales Manager of Hardee’s
respectively, were invited to the breakfast table by the T & D
Manager, Mr. Nawaz to address some issues regarding employee’s
rapid turnover. The impetus to such a mode of discussion came as
an immediate reaction to the dreary comments of Hardee’s
Director Operations, Mr. Usama Ashraf, “Nawaz! you took the
responsibility of hiring and training the newly hired workforce. I
am amazed why forty workers have left Hardee’s before the
inauguration day. This situation is critically alarming. I want you
to submit a detailed report on this.”

Hardee’s background:

Carl N. Karcher was the pioneer of fast food industry as his Carl
Karcher Enterprises (CKE) rests in United States as a world
renowned fast food chain industry, now credited as a parent
organization to the Hardee’s. Wilber Hardee opened his first
Hardee’s restaurant in Greenville, North Carolina in 1960.
Initially, folks knew Hardee’s only for its biscuits. By the end of
the decade, there were nearly 200 Hardee’s restaurants including
an international location in Heidelberg, Germany. In 1970s,
Hardee’s introduced biscuits that soon became a hallmark of the
brand and Hardee’s reached an impressive milestone by opening
its 1,000th restaurant in just fifteen years of business. Hardee’s
wanted to maintain its growth, and therefore acquired a 650-unit
burger chef chain and later opened its 2,000th restaurant by the end
of 1980. In the 1990s, Hardee’s decided to pare down its menu and
focus on the hearty thick burger line made up with 100% Angus
beef. During 2000, the Monster thick burger made national
headlines as “audacity on a bun”. Finally, Top Management of
Carl Karcher Enterprises (CKE) decided to launch Hardee’s in

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Lahore Pakistan in 2008 as Lahore is known for its big food

market and eating trends.

Lahore fast food market:

Till 90’s, perhaps, the concept of fast food industry with

enchanting environment did not exist at all as propensity of people
lied towards the local traditional delicacies or simply called as
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Desi Foods e.g. Chicken Karhai, Mutton Karhai, Siri Paye,
Nehari, Bar B.Q. etc. But in 1997, KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken)
identified this gap as an opportunity and introduced Pakistan with
the novel concept of Fast Food Restaurants. KFC introduced a
variety of the ultimate chicken meals and became a pioneer of Fast
Food Restaurants while providing excellent ambience and
unlocking the idea of self-service. Within a few months, KFC
captured the whole Fast Food market of Pakistan.

After a year, in 1998, McDonald’s jaunted to Pakistan and

introduced Beef & Chicken Burger that thrived in a good start.
Now it was a big challenge for CKE to penetrate an already crested
contestable Fast Food market but, CKE took a leap in its contract
with Muhammad Din Sons (MDS) Foods Pvt Ltd who helped
them with outsourcing their offered franchise in Pakistan.
Noticeably,MDS Foods Pvt. Ltd that is an associated company of
Super Asia Group. Super Asia Group was founded in 1975 by
Mian Muhammad Din at a very small level that today has
prodigiously garnered into a conglomerate of companies with
diversified range of businesses. It deals in Home Appliances,
Automobiles, Insulation and Packing Materials and Fast Food
Burger Chain of “Hardee’s”. On 18th March, 2008, the signing

                                                            
1. Basically, the word “Desi”is mostly used in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India which means “Traditional”.
All over the world, the “Desi Foods”of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are very popular.
 

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ceremony was held between the MDS foods Pvt. Ltd. and
Hardee’s food system at 2PC (Pearl Continental) Hotel in Lahore.

Hardee’s strategy and management training:

Hardee’s wanted to maintain its multinational standard in Pakistan

but it was difficult to survive with the parent country employees
being away from the newly born offspring. Therefore in June
2008, Hardee’s hired three professionals namely Muhammad
Nawaz, Ahsan Latif and Khawar Khan, who were working as
Restaurant Managers at KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) at
different branches of Lahore. Hardee’s top management wanted to
utilize their four to five years experience in making Hardee’s a
locally attractive eating out place. So, they blended their local
management expertise with Hardee’s international style. The top
management decided to send the managers to Dubai for a training
of three months. The intention behind this training program was
that employees should know about the working environment of the
Hardee’s and get some international exposure of food industry. In
these three months, the Dubai’s Manager T & D had to train them
at both crew as well as managerial level. All of them were trained
at all operational levels for one week in one branch. After the
completion of one week, they were sent to another branch for
training purpose. With the three months schedule training program
coming to an end, they rejoined Hardee’s Lahore in October, 2008.
Muhammad Mahmood Alam (MM Alam) road was chosen to be
the location for the start of the operations that favored the arcade
road in a commercial hub with many restaurants, fashion
boutiques, shopping malls, beauty salons and decor stores. The
next bridge to cross by the team of professionals was the design of
menu that was done meticulously in order to sensitively align it
with Pakistani culture and taste.

                                                            
2.  PC (Pearl Continental) hotel is one of the prestigious and 5 five star hotels chain in Lahore. It has more
than 450 rooms and the hotel is fully equipped with all amenities of a 5 star hotel. 
 

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Workforce training:

After Dubai’s training, it was decided by the top management that

Mr. Nawaz would be responsible for the Recruitment and
Selection (R&S), Ahsan Latif to act as an Area Sales Manager and
Khawar Khan was appointed as an Operational Manager. Mr.
Nawaz got the pair of responsibilities after he convinced the top
management that he could train the workforce. Before the
recruitment of crew staff, it was a challenge for Mr. Nawaz to
amend the existing training manuals for the local employees
because these training manuals were not according to the Pakistani
context. So, for the preparation of training manuals, Mr. Nawaz
also collected training materials from different web sites and also
went through the training manuals of different national and
multinational companies. Basic objectives of this Training
Program were to align the staff with Hardee’s vision, concert
building among employees, and cordial socialization among them
and lastly, the orientation and adherence to SOPs.

Hiring strategy:

On April 2009, they started their hiring process. For managerial

and crew level positions, Mr. Nawaz posted ads only in 3 “The
News” and 4 “The Dawn”. For managerial positions, it was
specified that the candidates must hold a master’s degree in
business with minimum two years of experience in the relevant
industry. For the crew staff it was decided that they must be a
matriculate (10 years education) with experience not a
prerequisite. They received 600 applications for managerial staff
and 2000 applications for crew staff. After initial screening and
interviews, 9 candidates were hired for managerial positions like
Shift Managers, Assistant Shift Managers, Quality Managers,
                                                            
3. “The News” is the largest English newspaper in Pakistan, founded by Mir Khalil Ur Rehman.

4. “Dawn” is Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper and It was founded in
1941 by
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
 

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Procurement Manager, Training Coordinator, Data Entry Operator

and Guest Relation Officer. Moreover, 150 crew staff was pooled
in for crew positions like Dish Washer, Cash Counter Operators,
Floor In charge, Customer Service Representatives (CSRs),
Welcome Staff, Janitors and Security Staff. The salary was
allocated to the figure of Rs. 6,000 per month for each crew
member and the whole procedure took ten days. After completing
the recruitment and selection process, the next challenge for Mr.
Nawaz was to train the newly hired staff. At crew level, trainings
like customer service, cleanliness, product making, products
temperature, product holding time and equipment operating
procedure were required and revised.

Training design:

For this cause, Mr. Nawaz had to design some strategies regarding
training programs, training venue, training methodology and
training arrangements. Finally, a three month’s training program
was designed for the managerial and crew level positions alike.
Hotel Building on MM Alam road was selected as training venue
because they wanted to utilize their own resource for the purpose.
He had to arrange two different training sessions in two different
slots for Managerial as well as crew staff. The training sessions of
Managerial staff was conducted at 08:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and for
crew staff, the timing was from 02:00 p.m. to 06:00 p.m. After the
training, all the staff members were allowed to go back to their
homes. Mr. Nawaz was working there as a trainer with a single
training coordinator named Mr. Haisum. Mostly crew members
were from different villages. Due to the diversity in the workforce,
some issues were raised at the workplace among crew members
like personality clashes; difference in values, cultural fraction etc,
but Mr. Nawaz was determined and did not fail in meeting
challenges. The training environment was very conducive for
learning. There were air conditioned rooms, and superlative eating
arrangements. There was also one separate furnished room which
was used as a chitchat corner. Power point presentations, videos,
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handouts, group activity through charts, group presentations and

plastic burger kits were used as a training material.

Things went wrong:

The twenty five scheduled training sessions were completed

successfully but it was in October at 06:30 pm when Mr. Haisum
heard some voices in the training room. When he went near the
training room, he overheard some of the crew members discussing
the training sessions. The trainees were apprehensive. Mr. Haisum
reported the situation to Mr. Ahsan, but Mr. Ahsan did not pay
attention considering it possibly a mere harmless workplace
gossip, only to find later that 20 employees had left off for better
opportunities elsewhere. In Asian Countries, the tip system is so
common because it is considered as “Baksish” which is given as a
gift to poor people. But in fast food restaurants, the tip system is
not considered as compulsory. In under developed countries like
Pakistan, where workers are motivated by salary or tip rather than
the pride associated with work itself, workers look for a place
where the tip offering is lucrative and flowing. Consequently, the
trainees left and some trainees reported Mr. Nawaz that those
trainees never felt comfortable in the training environment while
acting as a de-motivating agent for their other counterparts. One of
the crew member also remarked “it’s better to go out and search
any other job rather just sitting here, watching Movies on TV; it’s
just a wastage of time and nothing special here” because during
training, different video clips regarding cleanliness, customer
service, product presentation etc. were also used.

At the time of inauguration of Hardee’s on 12th November 2009,

ten more trained crews did not show up and the situation worsened
when Mr. Nawaz saw Hardee’s jam packed against his
expectations and there was a lack of workforce to cater to such
amount of customers. Insufficient employees demanded the
increased work load on the existing one that again acted as a
trigger to release themselves off the loaded environment. Now,
Hardee’s Management like Manager Operations, Floor Manager,
Branch Manager, T & D Manager etc, was also on the floor to
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tackle the situation. But some cleanliness, product assembling,

orders delivery, parking and security issues popped up as expected.

Very next day, Mr. Nawaz invited Mr. Ahsan and Mr. Khawar for
breakfast to evaluate the whole training program and its
consequences in greater detail.

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