Why do employers hire poor quality caterers?

Moses Ssesanga

Do employers think of quality when hiring food services providers for their employees? Our work food is always of the worst quality, even when service providers are changed. Shouldn’t employers involve employees in choosing food service providers or do they only care about cutting costs? Who should complaints about food be addressed to? Ricky

Dear Ricky,
It would be foolhardy to ignore consulting and involving the targeted consumers of the food when employers are managing the procurement process for food providers for their employees. Examples are abound where grown up men and women have been reported to engage in physical fights during food protests.

Food riots have been recorded in schools, universities and recently the media was awash with scenes of hungry and angry MPs at the Parliament canteen! This therefore means food is a very emotive subject and has to be managed carefully. On the other hand, it is also difficult to fully satisfy all employees given their different palates and socioeconomic backgrounds.

It is hence advised to engage the 80:20 rule and contract canteen service providers who can achieve reasonable satisfaction for the majority 80 per cent while you continuously manage the dissenting 20 per cent minority.

Other organisations have made arrangements to contract more than one service provider and assign them specific days to prepare and serve food at the workplaces.

This practice encourages competition between the service providers and may eventually result in sustainable improvement in the quality of food and its delivery to the consumers. You should therefore raise your food issues and sell the above solutions to your Human Resource department.

Moses Ssesanga
Head Human Resource
NMG - Uganda
[email protected]