Going Beyond A Pat On The Back –

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Term Paper Title	Going Beyond A Pat On The Back –
# of Words	2187
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	8.75

Going beyond a Pat on the Back –
Motivation Theory at Work in the Food Service Industry

     America’s love affair with restaurants has never been greater.  According to Roy Alonso of the National Restaurant Association, there were over 750,000 locations offering food services of some sort in the United States as of 1997.  It is estimated that half of all adults are foodservice patrons on a typical day, and over 43 cents of the consumers food dollar is spent at these establishments.  In 1997, sales of restaurants of all types topped $286 billion dollars, and experienced a growth rate of twenty percent.  However, all is no t well in the industry.  With the national unemployment rate hovering around five percent – the lowest level since 1973 – the business of keeping and motivating workers poses a threat to an industry already in the midst of an 150 percent annual turnover rate.  In addition, luring quality employees from other markets (such as the health care and retail industries) to fill the nearly four million new jobs that the industry is anticipated to create is a difficult proposition.  According to Laura Parsons, director of staffing in North America for Burger King, “The perception [among possible employees] is that fast food, and the service industry in general, is at the bottom of the barrel.  We’re losing employees every day because of this.  We have to take steps to become the first employer of choice.”
     Thus employee retention through motivation has become one of the focal points of the industry.  In fact at the Multi-Unit Food Service Operators Conference held in Los Angeles last year, it was the main topic of discussion, with countless seminars devoted to the subject.  Even a cottage industry of “incentive specialist” firms has sprung up.  Numerous methods, techniques, and ideas have been tried, with varying levels of success.  However, despite the superficial differences between the techniques, they are all based on the theories of motivation prompted by Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg that have been modified for the industry.
     According to the Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, behavior is defined as being purposeful and directed towards some end.  That is, it is motivated by someone or something.  According to the need theory of motivation, the driving force is the need, and the direction is towards a perceived reward and away from a perceived punishment.  Building on this is the Hierarchy of Needs developed by Abraham Maslow in 1954.  I...

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