C.A.R.E.S. is an acronym for a model on motivation and productivity. These are the "hot buttons" that a supervisor must push to get an employee to serve the customer and produce a profit for the employer. This model was built by me in 1972 and has been tested with many companies since that date and still proves to be successful. The model appears as a static page on my blog.
As I said the model was built in 1972 by me and it came about because I was the Vice President of Human Resources for the Burger King Corporation at the time, and as such, was responsible for the training and development programs in the company. Our marketing department was ready to roll out a new commercial called "Have It Your Way" and we needed something to motivate the employees to perform at a high level.
At that time, I was familiar with most of the theories on motivation and productivity and the one that appealed to me the most was Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. At the same time, Disney had opened Disney World and I was impressed with the job they had done with developing their employee's attitudes at that theme park.
I visited Disney's training facility and discovered that they went beyond the traditional recruiting and training methods. They actual pre-conditioned their employees to not just apply for a job, but to try out for a part in a play. Their recruiting office was called a "Casting Office". The employees were taught to treat customers as they would treat "Guests" visiting in their homes. After being hired or cast in the play the employee went through a special orientation which included a room where all of the history of Disney was displayed in collages on the wall. The employee entrance which was a separate tunnel into the park had pictures of the various Disney characters and helped the employees get into character and feel good about themselves as they drove to work. Everything was engineered towards getting the employees to feel special in greeting the guests to the park.
Inspired by what I saw at Disney and having Maslow Hierarchy of Needs in hand I started to brainstorm with my staff on what we had and what we could do to meet the challenge of maximizing our human resources.
We knew Maslow Hierarchy had 5 levels of needs. The question was how to apply the Maslow theory to what the customer wants and the company expects from its employees. We first looked at the commercial itself for a clue and we found that the promise talked about affordable fast food delivered as you like it. We broke it down into 5 parts so as to link with the Maslow theory and we came up with: product, quality, personalized service, timely delivery, and a real value. We knew what the company wanted from its employees and that was a "no brainer" to break into 5 parts: work, efficiency, loyalty, production, and profit. After, we put all this "good stuff" on the white board, we discovered that we were still missing the links to connect the company wants to the customer wants. Not really, we recognized that the link was the employee, and thanks to Maslow we knew the employee had needs. The trick was how to push the employee "hot buttons" to activate the links.
We found the answer by going beyond Maslow and pulling in the theories of some other behavioral scientists like Herzberg, Gellerman, Kay, McClennan, and Vince Lombardi. And that gave us the following: Spend time to get to know and recognize the employee basic needs; Educate the employee so as to build confidence; show Respect for the work that is being done; show and give Appreciation for a job well done; and Communicate goals and objectives.
Well great, now we had the model. However, before we could roll it out we had to tweak the present organization structure in the restaurant. This meant adding two positions, one for a Crew Specialist who would be responsible for implementing and monitoring the new program orientation and training. The second position was that of Lead Hostess to coordinate and oversee the customer relations function in the resaurants. We decided to test the concept in one of our Districts in Detroit. We took 12 restaurants and divided them into two groups of 6. One acted as a control group where all of C.A.R.E.S. model was applied, the other group operated as usual.
The employee meeting room became the C.A.R.E.S. environment room and now had pictures of how the restaurant facade had evolved over time plus a history of the company. A tall mirror was placed on the back of the door so employees could check themselves out on the way to the kitchen, we had a make up professional teach the kids, and some of the grandmother types who worked in the restaurant, how to apply make up. (When word of this activity got out, we started to have a rush of applications for positions in the restaurants. A benefit we were not counting on). Special courses on customer service and hospitality were put in place. We sponsored a dance party for employees in the control group only. We ran cameras in the restaurant to capture some lunch periods and then replayed them so that the manager and crew could critique their own performance and improve on it during crew meetings. Story boards were set up at the various positions in the restaurant so that a new hire could easily refer to the operating steps of the position. It was Halloween and the kids came to work in costumes which sparked a lot of enthusiasm and excitement with the guests. These are just a few of the things that were applied in accordance with the model.
When we compared the operating statements of the two groups after 6 weeks, the C.A.R.E.S. group exceeded the other group performance in all areas. Our controllable costs of labor and food were down, and our customer counts and sales were up. An unbelievable difference in motivation and productivity, not to mention profit.
Since that time, I have moved on and started my own consulting firm and took the C.A.R.E.S. model with me and taught it to various business clients in a variety of industries. And I am proud to report that after 30 years the application is still successful. It is a powerful model once you understand it and should be applied in any business that wants to recognize and maximize its human resources.
Please note that recognition of the employee is key and at the top of charts when creating an environment of motivation and productivity.
So that is the story, now you have the model on my webpage. Check it out and see if it can help you to maximize your human resources.
