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Developing Staffing Policies and Procedures Humanizing Cookware is a small 50-person firm that works to help small start- ups that make kitchen gadgets improve the design of their products. The name “Humanizing Cookware” is a reflection of the firm’s unique approach to product development. Specifically, the company’s designers, called kitchen lifestyle facilita tors (KLFs), use tools and techniques from anthropology to study how people use kitchen gadgets in their homes. This means carefully observing how people cook using ethnographic techniques to uncover what their cooking experience means to them, and then using these raw data in the creation of designs that appeal to the dreams and wishes of home cooks. Although the company has avoided using standardized job descriptions, you have been able to determine that most employees spend their time either talking directly with client organizations to find polet what their needs are or conducting the studies of soup and ask them how and why they are using a specific technique, why they like carrots as an ingredient in soup, and why they cook rather than order from a res taurant. As home cooks talk, the facilitator might learn that products should focus less on convenience and more on giving the appearance of something handcrafted and personal. Then this information would be presented to a client organization that will then modify its products to bring them in line with the advice of the KLF. As the description of Humanizing Cookware might suggest, this is a rather unusual company with an artistic and free-spirited orientation to its work. Com- pany nature retreats and mindfulness meditation sessions are the norm. Structure and planning are not emphasized. But despite this unconventional approach, the company is quite successful . Few other companies can match the insights its unique anthropological approach is able to glean from home cooks. The company has little in the way of hierarchy or formal rules. This is in keeping with the culture. However, the lax policies and procedures have resulted in some very poor hiring procedures and problems with meeting legal guidelines for docu- mentation. The company’s leadership team has asked you to help them develop a set of standardized policies and procedures that will make the process of hiring new KLFs more standardized. They would like you to develop a staffing flowchart, something like the one shown in Exhibit 13.5. The process will be different, however, because there is no separate staffing services group: all responsibility is shared by the supervisors and the leadership team. They would also like to use fewer steps in the process if pos- sible. You will also want to develop a set of policies and procedures that can help all members of the organization ensure that new hires are treated in a fair and consistent manner. Information for how to develop these policies can be found in Exhibit 13.2. Once you have created a staffing flowchart and some policies, consider the fol- lowing questions: 1. How does the small size and flat structure of the company impact the flow- chart and policies you developed? 2. How does the organization’s informal culture influence the types of policies and procedures you would implement? What are the advantages and challenges such a culture poses for designing and implementing policies and procedures? 3. How would you get buy-in for a more standardized set of policies and pro- cedures in this organization? What arguments could you make that would persuade employees to follow through with the new system?