Report Paper Sample on QuikTrip's Plan: Investing Heavily in Workforce for Competitiveness

Introduction

QuikTrip has a plan that specifies the design for resource use as they relate to the organization’s business strategy. The organization’s primary operations strategy is focused on the employees and through the identification of worker talents, skills, and abilities. The company aims at remaining at the top by outperforming its competition every year. One of the strategies that the organization applies to gain a competitive advantage in the market is through investing heavily in its workforce. The company treats its employees as assets instead of perceiving them as commodities. QuikTrip was named as part of the top 100 best companies to work for in 2003 through an article by Harvard School of Business (Moore, 2019). In 2010, the company was ranked 37th on the Forbes list of United States largest private firms.

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Employment

Since the firm was established, it has always aimed at sourcing the best employees, training them, paying them satisfactorily, and giving them promotions. During QuikTrip’s first decades, most of its employees were sourced from the military, but the autocratic leadership model failed due to the clashing of cultures (Moore, 2019). However, the company changed its culture to ensure that the needs of its employees are catered for and that there is an excellent organizational culture. The firm’s new culture is dependent on factors like performance evaluation, disciplinary actions, and sales policies. The customer experience at QuikTrip is excellent. Before hiring, the human resource department studies and evaluates all the high-performance indicators like the education levels and retail experiences of the applicants (Moore, 2019). The people who qualify for the various job positions at the firm are then taken through vigorous training that can take up to two weeks. The wages and salaries given to employees are substantial, depending on the job description. Furthermore, the firm offers other tangible and intangible benefits like job stability and annual leaves.

Another strategy that the firm is using to gain a competitive advantage is by opening ten more stores and employing the most qualify people to work there. The firm needs employees who can attract customers quickly and deliver high quality services. The primary goal of having presentable and qualified employees is to attract more customers and establish consumer loyalty to maintain stable growth in the industry. Over the years, the firm has been employing at least 50% of the locals to transfer a significant portion of its culture to the new markets.

Operation Management Services

Operations management includes all the business practices that are performed in an organization to ensure the highest efficiency level possible. QuikTrip ensures that customers shop conveniently when they visit the stores and delivery is immediate. All the firm’s stores are kept clean, organized, and tidy at all times in the effort to enhance customer experience. The environment at the stores is friendly to ensure that customers shop with comfort. The inventory arrangement and the layout designs in all the firm’s stores are similar to deal with its clients efficiently. Thus, one of the most efficient operation management services at QT is the fast delivery system, thus making the company a quick selling point. The inventory is arranged in such a manner that it is easy for customers to find. QT ensures that all cash registers are maintained, and every employee has access to them at any time. No private firm can beat QuikTrip in its inventory system even after trying to follow a similar pattern and design.

QT has two primary systems of maintaining stability. The systems are the Daily Shoppers Program (DSP) and Daily Activities Worksheet (DAW). DAW assists managers in ensuring that all the tasks in the organization are completed every day. DAW consists of three fundamental parts. The first part involves looking at the work done while the second part is for checking all the work that is related to the cleaning of the firm’s stores and trash disposal. The final part of the DAW is the timing of the register. The firm hires many hidden shoppers at its stores to check various activities once every week. The hidden shoppers’ identities are not disclosed to the rest of the employees.

One of the operation management challenges that QT experiences is inventory shrinkage. The inventory for normal selling items is filled after every three months while that for the most selling products is filled after every forty-five days. Managers re supposed to fill the inventories during their shifts. However, most registers often show about 0.3% increase in sales, thus increasing the total costs. Thus, many inventories are wasted due to the negligence of managers. QuikTrip can solve the issue of inventory shrinking by maintaining an online entry system. Secondly, the firm there should be high penalties for managers who misuse the system.

The second challenge involving operation management at QuikTrip is that employees are usually under a lot of pressure to complete their duties within the required time. Thus, most of the employees feel overburdened, and their morale reduces. Regarding the issue of overworking employees, QuikTrip should provide a flexible time frame to enable workers to complete their duties on time.

Quick Trip’s Value Chain and Its Effectiveness

QuikTrip’s significantly pays attention to its supply chain by ensuring that customer satisfaction is at its optimum. Thus, the firm ensures that its services and products are of high quality and that purchasing them is convenient to its customers. One of the ways in which the firm enhances the effectiveness of its value chain is by maintaining its store networks and ensuring high customer performance.

The effectiveness of QT’s to operations in terms of quality is based on its products. High quality products lead to higher customer satisfaction. The firm’s effective supply chain management increases its competitive advantage in the market. The value chain involves the collection of materials from the suppliers and collaborative brands which is then saved in the inventory and transferred to the firm’s warehouses to be delivered to customers later.

The effect of the value chain on value primarily involves the working terms and conditions of employees. An excellent workforce portrays a good image of the firm in the market, thus leading to increased sales. QT is providing multiple advantages to its customers, thus enhancing its market value.

QT’s value chain has a significant effect on customer satisfaction, and the ratio is high. QT’s high levels of customer satisfaction are due to vigorous human resource management which trains and develops employees leading to excellent performance. Thus, the firm’s value chain prioritizes on customer satisfaction by providing the best services to its customers. Therefore, the company’s supply chain management plays a significant role in ensuring customer satisfaction and making sure that clients get benefits like discount offers.

Performance Measurements

The first performance measurement that can be used to measure QuikTrip’s service delivery system design is the BARS method. BARS method can be used to measure and define the rating of the performance of every employee, and the toll will indicate how and worker behaves in specific situations (Kell et al., 2017). Thus, BARS method will enable the firm to rate its employees based on their performance. The BARS method is a combination of two other strategies. The BARS technique contains the rating scale and the critical incident method. In the critical incident technique, employees are asked to recall and describe an instance when their behaviors and actions positively or negatively impacted a specified income like accomplishing a given task. The critical incident technique is not similar to the asking standard like the one used in interviews. Critical incidents can be captured using questionnaires, structured diary studies, and user interviews.

The second method that can be used to measure the firm’s service delivery system design is the management by objectives, and it is the most effective strategy to measure performance. The strategy requires managers to set different objectives for employees, and the workers are supposed to achieve them within a specific time. The method could be effective for QuikTrip since it increases employee motivation after being rewarded for completing their tasks and achieving the given objectives within the timeline that is set for them (Kaźmierczyk et al., 2016). QuikTrip should use this method to measure its employees’ performance according to their needs; thus, workers will significantly benefit. An increase in employee motivation is good for the firm since productivity increases. In conclusion, the management by objectives design will lead to effective staff and employees who will be working towards their best performance.

Technologies

One of the technologies applied to QuikTrip’s service operations is the Pump Shield. Over the years, QuikTrip has experienced many defrauders in the stores who steal details of shoppers at the firm’s stores. The Pump Shield technology that QuikTrip adopted is to curb cases of defrauding. The technological system is applied to 760 of the company’s outlets to safeguard its customers from scammers (Gawande & Tambe, 2019). The technology working mechanism is that when an unauthorized shopper uses the card, the pump shield produces a sound that immediately stops the pump. The technology helps in the prevention of scamming activities at all the stores.

The second technology that QuikTrip has invested in is the automated system of keeping all the records of its employees. The system enables workers to be accountable for their actions and complete their tasks as required. Employees should be answerable to their actions and behaviors (Gawande & Tambe, 2019). Thus, the technological system assists employees in having a sense of responsibilities as they perform their duties. QuikTrip stores also use the automated digital assistant’s system into the stores’ inventory system (Gawande & Tambe, 2019). The other benefit of the automated system is that it allows employees to receive feedback regularly and continuously (Sharma & Garg, 2016). However, the primary function of the automated system is to ensure that critical actions regarding inventory stocking are performed.

Conclusion

The technology that QuikTrip has adopted plays a significant role in strengthening the firm’s value chain. For instance, the use of automated digital assistants enables the managers and supervisors to get the updated status of the inventory and to inform the distributors on what is needed on time (Sharma & Garg, 2016). Thus, technology ensures quick and effective delivery of inventory, thus ensuring that stock is available to customers at all times.

References

Gawande, M. S. P., & Tambe, S. B. (2019). Inventory Management System for Warehouse.

Kamierczyk, J., Kamierczyk, J., & Aptacy, M. (2016). The management by objectives in banks: the Polish case. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 4(2), 146-158.

Kell, H. J., MartinRaugh, M. P., Carney, L. M., Inglese, P. A., Chen, L., & Feng, G. (2017). Exploring methods for developing behaviorally anchored rating scales for evaluating structured interview performance. ETS Research Report Series, 2017(1), 1-26.

Moore, M. (2019). Unapologetic Femme. Theater, 49(3), 107-117.

Sharma, M., & Garg, N. (2016). Inventory Control and Big Data. In Optimal Inventory Control and Management Techniques (pp. 222-235). IGI Global.