Outback Steakhouse business operations and brand strategy

¶ … Steakhouse

When one thinks of popular chain restaurants, Outback Steakhouse often comes to mind. It is a company which has seen much success within its industry, most often because of its staffing selections and how they add value to the overall organization. The organization has been in business since 1988, and yet continues to see positive growth. It is now a $3.25 billion dollar company with over 65,000 employees working in an impressive 1,100 locations around the globe.

Employee selection has played a large part in this overall success throughout the organization's lifetime, and continues to be a competitive advantage even today. Such tremendous growth worldwide is an incredible opportunity. However, this growth eventually put the values of the company at risk in terms of potentially not being able to deliver on service promises. This unfortunately happens to many companies as they continue to stretch their chains over greater special regions. Outback Steakhouse took this possible disadvantage, and eventually turned it into an advantage which it could use to succeed over its competitors. Essentially, the company realized that "employees are key to meeting the company's commitments to all its stakeholders," (DeCoitis et al. 2004 p 23). Therefore, the selection process helps add into the overall strategy for the desire to make Outback Steakhouse a pleasurable place for employees to work. Therefore, the company focuses on pleasing employees as a way to increase the strength of the company as a whole. This results in employees having more loyalty and engagement in the health of the organization because of their enjoyment of its organizational culture. There is an incredibly strong and prevalent culture within the organization itself, and the selection process used to get the best employees helps add to its strength (DeCoitis et al. 2004). This creates a competitive advantage in that Outback Steakhouse is really particular about who they hire and why. As a result, the organization allows itself to focus primarily on the best possible potential employee choices who would add value to the company overall (Gilley 2011). High turnover rates can severely cost companies across several industries (Calvin 2010). By avoiding unnecessary turn over costs, Outback is gaining a competitive advantage. Outback's selection process helps ensure a lower turnover rate, therefore saving costs over their competitors. Here, the research states that "Outback enjoys the lowest turnover rate in its industry, approximately 2% a year," (Calvin 2010 p 153). Such elements are how employee selection practices boost the organization's competitive advantage.

Moreover, there is a high weight placed on the importance of fit within Outback Steakhouse. Making sure an applicant adheres to the already established culture helps ensure that all Outback Steakhouse employees will be active in pursuing embodying the organizations mission and values (Gilley 2011). This ensures that despite the organization working across such vast distances, the company can rely on employees to present the same message of values to customers all over the world. According to the research, "The focus on fit between the applicant and the culture of the organization results in similar employee attitude and customer service across the Outback restaurants," (Calvin 2010 p 153). Additionally, the importance to fit helps keep overall employee turnover rates low (Gilley 2011). This is then an important component to keeping the company with a heightened competitive advantage.

Outback's selection process includes an application, test, and interview. Through these methods, the company screens out the best employees that will fit its culture seamlessly. Outback Steakhouse "has implemented a precise selection process assisting in hiring employees to effectively impact Outback Steakhouse," (Gilley 2011 p 2). First are the applications, which weed out potential red flags that clearly show a potential employee would not fit into the larger organizational culture. Testing is next and is used "to validate how potential applicants measure up to existing Outbackers," (Gilley 2011 p 2). Finally, there is interviewing, where applicants are interviewed face-to-face by managers. This allows management teams to better assess each individual on a one to one bases, where certain characteristics can be played out in order to further ensure a goodness of fit.