USING TASK CLARIFICATION, GRAPHIC FEEDBACK, ANDVERBAL FEEDBACK TO INCREASE CLOSING-TASK

COMPLETION IN A PRIVATELY OWNED RESTAURANT

JOHN AUSTIN, NIC L. WEATHERLY, AND NICOLE E. GRAVINA

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

An informant functional assessment was used to evaluate closing-task completion by servers anddishwashers at a restaurant. Based on the functional assessment results, an intervention consistingof task clarification, posted graphic feedback, and verbal feedback was implemented andevaluated with a multiple baseline design across two groups of employees. Results showed anincrease of 15% and 38% in task completion for the two groups.

DESCRIPTORS: task clarification, graphic feedback, verbal feedback, organizationalbehavior management, informant assessment

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Inadequately kept work areas have longplagued employers as one of the primary causesof employee-related injury. In 2002, a nation-wide survey reported that food and drink serviceestablishments experience 4.6 nonfatal on-the-job injuries every year per 100 full-timeemployees (U.S. Department of Labor, 2002).The failure to complete necessary cleaning taskscorrectly was reported by the U.S. Departmentof Labor survey to cause 28% of restaurantinjuries in 1994. In 1995, roughly 15% of lost-time injuries nationwide resulted from fallingobjects hitting workers (U.S. Department ofLabor). Properly stacking dishes is a crucialsafety procedure that was seldom completedcorrectly at the restaurant involved in thisstudy, spurring the present organizationalbehavior management (OBM) study.

The food service industry has benefited fromthe use of OBM techniques. For example,LaFleur and Hyten (1995) used performancemanagement techniques to improve the perfor-mance of a banquet set-up staff at a hotel.Anderson, Crowell, Hantula, and Siroky (1988)used task clarification and graphic feedback todramatically improve cleanliness at a university

tavern. Many OBM studies share similar inter-vention components, target behaviors, andsettings. However, each organizational contextis unique, and relevant contextual featuresshould be assessed and evaluated when develop-ing an organizational intervention. An assess-ment procedure can help to identify the causesof performance problems and aid in developingmore practical and effective interventions.The purpose of the present study was to usethe Performance Diagnostic Checklist (PDC;Austin, 2000) to assess an organizational perfor-mance concern and develop an effective inter-vention to improve completion of closing tasks.

METHOD

Participants and Setting

The study was conducted at a fine diningrestaurant in Michigan that has been operatingfor over 30 years. The participants consisted of7 dishwashers and 11 servers. All of the dish-washers were men whose average age was 20.The service staff consisted of 6 men and 5women, whose average age was 23. The lengthof time that each employee had worked at therestaurant varied from 1 week to over 4 years.

During each shift, 1 employee was designatedas being in charge of closing. It was thatemployee’s job to delegate closing tasks and

Address correspondence to John Austin, Department ofPsychology, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo,Michigan 49008 (e-mail: john.austin@wmich.edu).

doi: 10.1901/jaba.2005.159-03

JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2005, 38, 117–120 NUMBER 1 (SPRING 2005)

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ensure that the group completed the tasks for theevening. For consistency, data were excludedfrom shifts in which the designated closer wasan employee who was not part of the normalwork staff and therefore was not exposed to theinterventions and who worked only a singleshift during the course of the study. Data werealso excluded when employees who were hiredafter the start of the study were designated asthe closer. Including these data in the analysiswould represent a threat to internal validity,because performances of employees who wereeffective but very infrequent closers could bedifferentially represented across the phases ofthe experiment.

Data Collection

Checklists detailing each cleaning task werecreated for both the server area (25 items) anddishwasher area (26 items). The dependentvariable was the percentage of checklist taskscompleted for each shift by the group. Thesechecklists were used by trained data collectorswho recorded completed and uncompletedtasks by looking at the finished productsproduced by each task. Data were collected onvarying mornings 3 days per week duringbaseline and approximately 5 days per weekduring the intervention. Data collectionoccurred while the restaurant was closed andnone of the employees in the study werepresent. Mean total agreement of task comple-tion, assessed for 70% of sessions, was 98%(range, 95% to 100%).

Functional Assessment

The PDC (Austin, 2000) was used to identifyvariables in four areas—antecedents, knowledgeand skills, equipment and processes, andconsequences—that could hinder, help toincrease, or maintain task completion. One ofthe researchers conducted the assessment withthe restaurant owner serving as the informant orthrough visual inspection of the work areas forspecific items on the PDC. The assessmentresults indicated that workers were unaware of

the exact closing duties. To increase theemployees’ awareness of closing duties, check-lists were developed and placed in the imme-diate work environment. Also, the assessmentrevealed that there were few, if any, conse-quences delivered for completing closingtasks. Therefore, a verbal and graphic feedbackprocedure was implemented by management.

Procedure and Design

A multiple baseline design with a limitedcomponent analysis across groups of employeeswas used to evaluate the effects of the interven-tion. Baseline data were collected for 7 weeksfor servers and 8 weeks for dishwashers.

Intervention. The independent variable wasan intervention package consisting of a postedchecklist (i.e., task clarification), verbal feedbackfrom management, and posted graphic feed-back. The checklists were posted in the backroom by the clean dish rack and over the serverpreparation table. Verbal feedback was given bymanagers to each employee group at a shortmeeting before the work shift on Fridays andSaturdays, as well as sporadically throughout theweek. Verbal feedback consisted of managersinforming employees about the checklist itemsthat had been performed particularly well anditems that needed improvement. Graphs depict-ing group performance were presented weeklyon a sheet of paper next to the checklists.

The intervention phase lasted 2.5 weeks forthe dishwashers and 3.5 weeks for the servers.The servers’ checklist and verbal feedbackintervention components were implemented1 week before those of the dishwashers, andgraphic feedback was implemented simulta-neously for servers and dishwashers at the startof the dishwashers’ intervention.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The upper panel of Figure 1 displays thepercentage of server tasks completed for eachcondition. Task completion averaged 75%during baseline (SD 5 5.7%; range, 60% to

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81%). Average task completion immediatelyincreased to 87% during intervention andthen rose to 90% with the addition of graphicfeedback (SD 5 3.7%; range, 85% to 96%).The lower panel of Figure 1 displays the per-centage of dishwasher tasks completed in eachcondition. Task completion averaged 49%during baseline (SD 5 4.8%; range, 45% to62%) and rose to 87% (SD 5 5.2%; range,76% to 94%) during intervention.

The results of the study suggest that the PDC(Austin, 2000) led to the development of aneffective intervention package that substantiallyincreased task completion for both groups of

employees. This study used a limited compo-nent analysis (i.e., for the servers only). Taskclarification and verbal feedback were imple-mented first, and graphic feedback was lateradded. Server performance showed a slightincrease when the graphic feedback was added.The small increase may have been a result of aceiling effect. The servers were already perform-ing at a fairly high level when the graphicfeedback was implemented. This analysis wouldhave been stronger if it had been conductedwith both groups.

One limitation of the study is that the data-collection procedures made it impossible to

Figure 1. Percentage of closing tasks completed in full per shift for both the servers (top panel) and the dishwashers(bottom panel).

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ascertain which employees represented the exactsource of performance improvement. Anecdotalreports, however, suggest that the behavior ofthe closer was most influenced by the interven-tion. Future research may more closely examineissues related to changing the behavior of workgroups in organizations.

In conclusion, management expressed satis-faction with the ease and the effectiveness of theintervention. Nine months after data collectionended, the task checklists had been revised andreposted. One of the three managers wasreportedly still regularly delivering verbal feed-back regarding closing-task completion, butgraphic feedback had not been delivered sincethe study’s conclusion.

REFERENCES

Anderson, D. C., Crowell, C. R., Hantula, D. A., &Siroky, L. M. (1988). Task clarification and indivi-dual performance posting for improving cleaning in astudent-managed university bar. Journal of Organiza-tional Behavior Management, 9, 523–548.

Austin, J. (2000). Performance analysis and performancediagnostics. In J. Austin & J. E. Carr (Eds.), Hand-book of applied behavior analysis (pp. 321–349).Reno, NV: Context Press.

LaFleur, T., & Hyten, C. (1995). Improving the qualityof hotel banquet staff performance. Journal ofOrganizational Behavior Management, 15, 69–93.

United States Department of Labor (2002). Survey ofoccupational injuries and illnesses. Retrieved January14, 2004, from http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshsum.htm

Received October 28, 2003Final acceptance October 19, 2004Action Editor, Iser DeLeon

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