PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND STRATEGIC PLANNING:

Organization’s performance management system must rely on their strategic plans. The
behaviors, results and development plan of all employees must be aligned with the vision,
mission, goals and strategies of the organization and unit.

Organization's Strategic Plan:

Strategic plan of any organization starts with the analysis of internal and external factors of the
environment in which the organization is operating. There is a brief discussion of KFC strengths,
weaknesses, threats and opportunities that help the company to set its vision, mission, goals and
strategies.

ENVIRONMNETAL ANALYSIS:
 Strengths:
Strengths describe the factors that which the organization is good at and what separates it from
its competitors.
 Strong global presence: With a presence in over 130+ countries and with 21,000+
stores, KFC has an impressive global presence. KFC is the world’s 2nd largest restaurant
chain and market leader in a majority of the countries in the Non-veg food segment.
 Loyal Customer Base: KFC has its own loyal follower base and all thanks to its secret
chicken recipe. It’s the taste and the crunchiness of KFC’s chicken that is loved by the
consumers.
 Variety in Menu: One of the major strengths of KFC is the variety of food that KFC
offers to its customers. KFC tweak’s its menu and food offerings, basis the region in
which it operates. For example; KFC offers veg food in India just to cater to vegetarian
customers along with chicken lovers.
 KFC’s Secret recipe: Sanders’ Original Recipe of “11 herbs and spices” is one of the
most famous trade secrets in the catering industry. A copy of the recipe, signed by
Sanders, is held inside a safe inside a vault in KFC’s Louisville headquarters, along with
eleven vials containing the herbs and spices.
 Weaknesses:
Weaknesses stop an organization from performing at its optimum level. They are areas where the
business needs to improve to remain competitive:
 Supply chain and Distribution issues: Early this year, KFC has faced a major
distribution issue with the delivery of the chicken. This issue became so big that it led to
the closing of some of its stores in the UK. It took a KFC a lot of logistical and marketing
effort to come out of this coup. In order to avoid facing the same issue in the future, KFC
needs to take extra care of its supply chain and distribution of its raw materials like
chicken, spices etc.
  Managing Franchisees: Franchisee management is one of the critical issues in the
success of the fast food chains and due to conflicting operational issues between KFC and
its franchisees many of its outlets got closed since its inception.
 Threats:
Threats refer to factors that have the potential to harm an organization in the future
 Changing consumer food trends and preferences: Due to the emergence of Millennial,
the food trends and preferences are changing. Consumers are preferring foods that are
healthy in nature (low in fats and calories). This changing food preferences of the
consumers are putting additional pressure on the fast food giants like KFC.
 Food quality challenges: Food quality is an important challenge before KFC. KFC has
faced criticism in the past as well for the quality of oils it uses for cooking its food. Also,
the laws related to food quality has become quite stringent in different countries and is
becoming a major challenge for fast food chains.
 Competition from global and local players: Despite having grown very fast during the
past few years, it is still not at number one. KFC faces stiff competition from not just
global players but also local players as well. Competitors are introducing new food items
to their menu to grow their market share and customer base and KFC too needs to be on
its toes to beat the competition.
 Opportunities:
Opportunities refer to the factors which the organization can use to its favor to grow its market
share, sales, brand recognition etc.
 Expanding to new Geographies: Emerging economies, changing lifestyle of consumers
and their increasing buying propensity is allowing fast food giants to explore new
geographies to increase their market share and revenue.
 Exploring new food items in Menu: Catering to the changing food demands and needs
of the millennial, KFC has a big opportunity to introduce healthy foods in their menu that
are low in fats and calories.
After the environmental analysis, the organization’s leverage, constraints, vulnerabilities and
problems are revealed that guide the company who they are and what they do. That means,
environmental analysis helps in the formation of vision and mission for the whole company.

VISION:
The vision of KFC as a company is
“To sell food in an environment that appeals to consumers”

MISSION:
The mission is
“To become an internationally renowned fast food industry in the world and to increase and
maintain the quality in fast food in world industry”
GOALS:
The KFC Company has two main goals which reflects its vision and mission. These are:
 Build an organization dedicated to excellence
 Deliver superior quality and value in products and services

STRATEGIES:
KFC uses different types of strategies to achieve its goals. For example; company uses the
Differentiation Strategy by providing unique taste, Retrenchment Strategy by introducing
different menu items to keep up with local competitors and Turnaround Strategy by updating
technologies in service and production unit.

Unit's Strategic Plan:

Next step is the determination of unit’s vision, mission, goals and objectives that should be
congruent with the overall organization’s vision, mission, goals and objectives.
There are three main departments working in the KFC Company. So, the vision, mission and
goals are to be set to achieve the goals of the whole company. The departments include:
 Marketing Department
 Finance Department
 Service Department

VISION:

The vision of Marketing Department is

“To be the most competent and innovative organization in the world”
The vision of Finance Department is
“To be the most profitable business in the world”
The vision of Service Department is
“To entertain the large number of customers with the best quality food”

MISSION:

Mission of Marketing Department is

“To serve food in attractive and clean surrounding”
Mission of Finance Department is
“Generate consistently superior financial returns and benefits owner and employees”
Service Department has a mission
“To provide good food for customers that puts a smile on their faces, and makes them want to
come back for more”

GOALS:

Now, goals are set in each department to fulfill the vision and mission. For example;
  In Marketing Department, goal is to attract new customers from a particular
neighborhood.
 In Finance Department, expense goal is to keep food costs at less than 40 percent of all
revenue. And the revenue goal is to average sales in a certain range for the next few
years.
 The goal of Service Department is to provide a better and faster service for the customer.

STRATEGIES:

Strategies are designed to achieve the desired goals.

 Marketing Department uses social media to engage potential customers in conversations
about food, join the neighborhood summer activities planning committee and send a
direct mail inviting people from the neighborhood to try a free appetizer.
 Finance Department focus on low food waste, finding affordable food vendors and
maximizing resources and maximize sales of desserts on weekdays by including a special
two-course menu.
 Services are given to the customers as soon as possible. That means customers are
greeted within two minutes of entry and seated within 10 minutes.

Job Description:

Job description is a written narrative that describes the general tasks or other related duties and
responsibilities of a position. Job description also need to be aligned with the organization and
unit vision, mission, goals and strategies.

TASKS:

A KFC team member may take on a wide variety of responsibilities during a shift. Key crew
member job duties include:
 Serving customers and preparing food.
 Customer service responsibilities include greeting customers, taking orders, and
completing customer transactions on the cash register.
 Food preparation duties include preparing menu items and assembling orders.
 KFC team members must also maintain a clean and organized work area and a
presentable store environment.
 Prepare restaurant tables with special attention to sanitation and order.
 Attend to customers upon entrance.
 Present restaurant menus and help customers select food/beverages.
 Answer questions or make recommendations for complementary products.
 Collaborate with other restaurant servers and kitchen/bar staff.
 Deal with complaints or problems with a positive attitude.
  Issue bills and accept payment.

KNOWLEGDE:

Knowledge is facts or information acquired through experience or education. Employees don't

usually need a degree to work in a restaurant even as a restaurant manager unless they are joining
a formal graduate management program. These schemes are run by major fast food companies
and usually accept graduates from any discipline, or people with experience of working in a
customer-facing environment or managing teams.
Many managers begin their careers as counter-service staff and work their way up to
management level by acquiring experience, rather than formal qualifications. There are,
however, a range of relevant qualifications available at various levels, including degree and
postgraduate level, in areas such as:
 Business Studies/Management
 Catering
 Hospitality and Hospitality Management
 Leisure management
KFC has its own degree-level programs, which provide opportunities to combine on-the-job
experience with study.

SKILLS:

Skills are something that has been learned. Employees at KFC need to have the following skills:
 Excellent customer service skills
 Strong communication skills, tact and diplomacy
 The ability to lead and motivate teams and influence people
 Self-motivation and ambition
 Commercial awareness
 Enthusiasm and the ability to learn quickly
 Good organizational skills
 Energy and stamina, as well as resilience
 A results-driven approach to work
 Decision-making and problem-solving skills

ABILITIES:

Abilities are the qualities of being able to do something. Employees at KFC should possess the
following abilities:
 Physical speed and strength
 Safety consciousness
 Active listener
  Ability to communicate
 Customer service
 Flexibility
 Problem-solving ability

Individual and Team Performance:

RESULTS, BEHAVIORS AND DEVELOPMENTAL PLAN:

One of the steps in developing an effective performance evaluation system is to determine the
organization’s objectives. These are then translated into departmental and then individual
position objectives i.e. working with employees to agree their personal performance targets. This
allows the employee to know “up front” the standards by which his/her performance will be
evaluated. The performance management system needs to motivate employees to display the
behaviors and produced results required to support the organization’s and unit’s vision, mission
and goals. Developmental plans need to be aligned with unit and organizational priorities as well.
Development plan is the training and development of employees that enable them to achieve the
unit as well as organizational goals.
After gathering all the information about organization’s and unit’s vision, mission, goals and
strategies, job descriptions and individual or team performance, we are able to understand the
design of Performance Management System of KFC. The PMS at KFC has the following
characteristics:
 It has the result criteria.
 It involves low employee participation.
 Its temporal dimension is short term.
 It emphasize on individual criteria.
 Administrative orientation is prominent.
 Rewards are given on merit that means pay for performance.

How goals and objectives are linked with performance management system?

Before going to the discussion of measurement approach chosen by KFC, it is necessary to

understand the link between goals and objectives and performance management system.
Both the two terms goals and objectives are often used interchangeably, confusion sometimes
arises. Although both goals and objectives use the language of outcomes, the characteristic that
distinguishes goals from objectives is the level of specificity. Goals express intended outcomes in
general terms and objectives express them in specific terms. Goals are written in broad, global,
and sometimes vague, language. Objectives are statements that describe the intended results of
instruction in terms of specific student behaviors.
KFC links its goals and objectives with performance management. The HR manager of KFC
explains this with an example. He said, assume we have three employees and we assign them a
target of 6 million sales. Two workers achieved above the target means 10 million that is very
good but third one achieved only 6 million that is exact target. Then we will give reward which
may be in any form to first two employees although the third one also achieved the target but his
performance is not at the same level.

CHOOSING A MEASUREMENT APPROACH:

Currently, performance management system of KFC has no proper method to evaluate the
performance because when asked the HR manager about their evaluation method several times,
he told that “performance speaks for itself”, so on the basis of this conception they reward and
penalize their employees, no certain ranking criteria they are using so their employees are
unaware of the criteria on which their performance is evaluated.
According to our research on the performance management system, it is revealed that they use
the Behavioral Approach in which they emphasize what employees do on the job. In this
approach, they use the Comparative System that means performance is measured on comparing
employees with one another. As described in the above example, the employee who achieve
exact target is rewarded less than the employees who achieve sales greater than the target. This
indicates that employees are rewarded by comparing their performances with each other. Mostly,
Simple Rank Order System is used in which employees are simply ranked from best performer
to worst performer.

MEASURING BEHAVIORS:
In order to measure the behavior, there should be some competencies and the indicators that tell
how the performance of one employee is superior to the other. Competencies include the skills,
knowledge and abilities that are essential to do the job successfully. Indicators describe how the
competency is to be measured. For the employees of the KFC Company, competency may
include:
 Customer service
 Physical speed and strength
 Communication skills
And the indicators are:
 How efficiently the employees take orders and complete customer transactions on the
cash register?
 How quickly and efficiently the employees greet the customers and serve them with
food?
 How the employees communicate with the customers to listen and solve the queries or
make recommendations for complementary products?