By Tony
Deblauwe
This week White Castle CEO Dave Rife went undercover to several WC stores and
processing facilities. He started things off by talking about the values his
great grandfather built the company on: honesty, integrity and job security. The belief is that happy team members make for
happy customers. As he experienced each job he would see these values in
action.
First job he met Geenie, the store manager. Her complaint was that new stores
send inexperienced people that end bumping into each other or standing around
more than helping. At one point she comments, “do they look happy?” In the
reveal, Rife brings in an employee from this store, Donna, who had health problems
and was trying to get on track with her weight. Rife decides to create a
wellness program and have Donna head it.
While I
think a wellness program is great, I’m surprised something like this didn’t
already exist especially in an age where most companies have some kind of health
awareness or wellness effort. Maybe it’s a nit, but I’m definitely glad – this is
a meaningful investment from Rife’s time spent undercover. Although the
staffing of new stores problem was not addressed, Rife walked away feeling connected.
Rife
visited the bakery for the buns. He botched the packaging machine process and
was surprised how angry he got. He destroyed 25 cases worth of bread that fortunately
would be sold to pig farmers for feed. Not sure what he learned here but it
seemed to me like the operation would use some better onboarding. Why would you
set a first day on-the-job trainee on a machine to risk so much lost
merchandise?
At the
next restaurant he met Jose, the aspiring culinary student. During the reveal
he gives Jose a chance to meet the culinary team and a $5K scholarship. Kudos
in aligning competencies with the right job. Jose was certainly happy and will
be better utilized. Rife’s reaction to why Jose didn’t think he had a career
with White Castle is similar to the reaction from the 7-11 episode where the
night shift manager had the job so he could go to school during the day.
That begs
the question – is these companies are so concerned people see the site level
jobs as dead-end - what effort is being done on career planning? I still
believe most people look at a job in a
Rife
visits a drive thru and once again is not up to the multi-tasking requirements.
He meets Joe who he finds friendly and highly efficient. In the reveal, Rife
offers Joe the opportunity to create a “Leaders of Tomorrow” program. I liked
this part. Such a program would go a long way to solve the career pathing
issue. And it would help establish benchmarks for the right talent profiles to
bring up the chain. Rife also gave $5K to help Joe’s visually impaired son.
In the frozen
packaging division, Rife uncovered disconnects between a supervisor and
employees. As he yet again could not handle anything mechanical and food
preparation related, he noticed that Brenda (the supervisor) was in the
breakroom while the employee (Vicki) was struggling on the line. In the reveal
Rife had both of them in to discuss how they could work together and improve
teamwork.
Hopefully
that will continue and I certainly hope that HR is involved with looking at
these issues in general. And I really hope that the security cameras
issue, which makes people nervous about following processes and procedures, is
not the way they will ensure teamwork is done.
At the
end of the journey, Rife says he will put faces behind the numbers. I think
this is the biggest reveal of all and what so many people think about
executives in general – they look at people as commodities. The us versus them perception
is based on that so if a CEO needed to go undercover to learn that lesson, and
become more mindful of instituting unrealistic goals and processes, so much the
better.
