The company Art’s Food is an organisation with 28 years of history in the area of services. The company’s headquarters are located in Sabadell, although the services are provided in numerous points of the Catalan territory. The company has three areas (Educational, Hotel and Events), all related to catering.
The company achieves a higher turnover in the educational area, dedicated mainly to serving the catering of a large number of schools (currently more than 150). This area is a great entrance of money for the company, but it also requires a great structure and organisation. The feeling of the worker is that the future and the viability of the company mainly goes through the proper functioning of this area.
However, although in recent months the department has been meeting the objectives set and continues to gain public and private tenders (which means more schools and clients), there is widespread discontent among its workers, since the management does not know not how to handle the situation and that translates into a poor environment.
Raquel Torrà is the director of the educational area, a competent and proactive woman, with more than 10 years in the position. Above her there are only Josep Font, Chief of Operations, and Roger Art, founder and director of the company. They have a way of understanding the business world that is very classic and authoritarian, they do not take their workers into account, and they only move by objectives. In turn, they derive full responsibility from the area directors to communicate the decisions to their workers. They do not usually have direct contact with the workers and, if they do, it is scorched and hostile
Roger is only interested in obtaining good economic results without caring about the personal situation of his workers. An example of this is that, on average, workers in the educational area are having to do 10 extra hours a month to be able to fulfil their tasks. This situation is common in recent months and, far from solving it, their opinion is “they’re supposed to work, that’s what we pay them for”. He has also been heard saying, on more than one occasion, phrases such as “if they are not motivated it’s not my problem, they should come motivated from home” or “they should manage with the resources they have” when asked about strengthening the educational area team. All this situation is generating negative repercussions for the future of the company in general, and in the educational area, in particular, although management doesn’t seem to notice.
The educational area is made up of 19 workers. As has already been mentioned, Raquel is the director of the area and has a very experienced and prepared team, both in the operational and commercial sectors. In turn, she is characterised by having excellent communication skills and a very remarkable ability to lead, which is helping to relieve the bad environment somewhat, but she does not know how long she will endure.
Her team consists of 12 area coordinators who mainly perform the work at a distance during their working day, as they are responsible, in an autonomous manner, to supervise the proper functioning of the service of the schools in each area. The remaining 6 workers are two commercial employees, who are responsible for preparing and managing the active competitions; a personal assistant of Raquel, who offers direct support to her and to the area coordinators; an administrative assistant, responsible for customer service and various tasks; an office clerk responsible for managing routine actions; and a product technician, in charge of negotiating prices and managing incidents with suppliers. In general, there is a good atmosphere among all of them, although the continuous stress and the lack of empathy from the management are beginning to generate problems.