Food-Service-Manual-for-Health-Care-Institutions

Food Service Manual for Health Care Institutions
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• Although managers should allow employees to assume responsibility for the whole task,
they should monitor the employees’ progress (especially if an employee is new to the assignment)
to ensure success.
• Managers should anticipate some mistakes and be prepared to guide employees in correcting
them.
• Managers should be certain that the lines of communication with employees are always
open and that employees can rely on the managers’ advice and support when needed and on
praise when it is deserved.
Delegation becomes increasingly important as a manager rises to higher levels of management
in the organization. How well the manager can accomplish the work of the organization
is reflected by how well the manager leads the work of employees who report to him or her.
Some management duties do not lend themselves to delegation and are better shared or left to
the manager. They include
• Establishing missions, goals, and objectives for the entire unit under the manager’s
responsibility
• Making policy decisions
• Defining standards of performance for the entire unit
• Monitoring the unit’s achievement of these standards
• Taking corrective action when the standards are not met
Line and Staff Responsibilities
When managers delegate authority, they must consider the difference between employees in line
positions and employees in staff positions. A line employee is part of the direct chain of command
that has been established to accomplish the primary work of the organization. Staff support the
line positions with their advice and special knowledge. In health care institutions, staff positions
are found in departments of finance, human resources, marketing, legal affairs, planning, infection
control, safety, management engineering, and data processing, among others. Staff positions
usually do not have authority over line positions except when application of staff advice is crucial
to the effective performance of line responsibilities. For example, the human resources director
usually has no direct authority over tray line workers. However, because he or she has special
knowledge about Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) safety standards, the
human resources director knows that a worker without proper hair covering poses a risk and so
apprises the food service director, who has authority in this case.
Staffing the Food Service Department
Organizing the work of a department presumes that a competent staff is in place to accomplish the
tasks that have been assigned. Building an effective staff involves making decisions about the tasks
that need to be performed, the skills required to perform those tasks, the time needed to complete
performance, and the number of employees needed to perform the work of the department.
Determination of Employee Staffing Needs
In a health care institution, several variables affect the type and number of job tasks to be performed
by the food service department. In determining department workload, managers should
ask the following questions: