Jadsada Pitirojchaichan who suggested and inspired me to do a research on Au Bon Pain Thailand, which has also been one of my interests for a long time, Mr. Finally, I would like to thank Au Bon Pain Thailand for being established in Thailand and allowing Thai people to enjoy and experience the western cafe and restaurant in Thailand. Au Bon Pain has given me many experiences and knowledge that I would not have had without this research.
Teamwork plays an important role in the business of cafes and restaurants like Au Bon Pain Thailand. This theme paper discusses the three main characteristics of effective teamwork in Au Bon Pain Thailand, which are coordination, communication and appropriate culture. Au Bon Pain will analyze the three main important characteristics of effective teamwork that benefit the organization in both the short and long term.
This thematic paper aims to find the key success factor and strategy that help Au Bon Pain overcome the obstacles that may occur in the near future. This thematic paper will use the observation method to find the factors that help build effective teamwork or the characteristics of effective teamwork in the Au Bon Pain Cafe. In addition, this research will observe Au Bon Pain Cafe through the team building process.
Finally, teamwork could be one of the key success factors of Au Bon Pain Thailand.
LITERATURE REVIEWS
To be an effective team, team members should know the members' personality types, abilities, expertise, experiences to assign them the appropriate role. If the roles suit them, the output will also be of high quality, in this case the quality of healthcare for their patients. The leaders in this case are doctors, they must have the ability to see the potential in each member and motivate them and develop the performance of the team, which is evaluated based on the satisfaction of patients or customers.
Sufficient resources, To achieve the team's goals, the resources such as financial resources, technical support, training programs or education must be enough for team members. Team processes are an interaction and pattern between the team members to transform input into output. In this stage, members of the team begin to know each other in interaction with each other to form a relationship between them, so in this stage, all members tend to avoid conflicts.
The leader's role in this phase is that in order to provide clear goals and direction, it is a basic phase that constructs the team structure, builds a relationship, gets to know each other, secures and clarifies a communication. In any case, a group with a simple task will get through this phase quickly, but a group with a complex task and without support from the leader will spend more time in this phase. It is obvious that there are few characteristics that have been constructed in this phase, only a relationship building, clarifying purpose and a few dealing with conflict resolution (Figure 2.1.
Storming stage, in this stage many questions will be asked among team members, team's norm is created. There will be conflicts that occur at this stage and this can lead to moral team, then the leader or managers must ensure that coherence and coordination takes place instead of conflict. From the research findings, there is a lot of compromising collaborative accommodation or even avoidance that happened at this stage.
All team members respect each other, harmony, cohesion and trust, which are strongly constructed. There are some skills that emerge from the research at this stage, such as time management, awareness of intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, clarifying and summarizing skills, conflict management skills, and active listening. The role of the leader or manager in this phase is not the same as the previous one, which requires less leadership.
Through performance, the final stage of the Tuckman stages of group development, team members will be highly effective, be able to make difficult decisions together, and build mutual trust among team members. In this phase, the team will accomplish the task effectively due to its many features.
DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY
The researcher will focus on the details of each activity and the role of each employee in relation to others or even the role and influence of management. Since most Au Bon Pain branches are in hospitals and office buildings, the following branches are selected for this research; Vichaiyuth Hospital, Phayathai2 Hospital and Sun Tower Building. During the observation, all participants were not observed to be observed by an outsider in order to obtain real and insightful data from real and different situations.
But in a ward, such as Phayathai2 Hospital, there were many people sitting near the counter, which meant that the researcher hardly had time to observe, hear or see what they were doing.
FINDINGS
All staff at Au Bon Pain are always talking to each other through teaching (between manager and junior staff), chatting or working. The staff also prints out the order for each section and uses the same abbreviation as on the customer bill, such as BV stands for Hot Drinks with a number indicating the drink size (8oz, 12oz, 16oz) and "I" stands for Iced Drink with numbers that they indicate the drink size (16oz, 20oz) instead of whole words to save time, which is also one of the norms at Au Bon Pain. The manager and supervisor will wear a plaid shirt, all other staff will wear a black polo shirt and apron, and the chef will wear a chef's coat and hat, marking them as the same team and representing Au Bon Pain employees.
According to Theory Kim, Pepper Toelle, “Uniform: Creating Group Identity – A CBA Curriculum.” Uniform: Creating Group Identity (2007), A uniform creates group identity and makes them feel that they are sending the same message to customers because it has been clearly shown that people who wear an apron are people who are ready to provide service and the color which is orange represents joy and creativity. The orange color can cause physical effects such as increased hunger, increased sense of activity, increased socialization, boost. All employees in each branch must wear gloves when cooking food, mixing coffee, packing the bakery in bags, in any activities they have to do to touch food, which is one of the standards. The other things seen in these 3 industries are that the supervisor and the manager will do everything like other staff including cleaning the floor to set an example for their staff.
In Vichaiyuth Hospital Ward and Phayathai2 Hospital Ward, there were few customers because most of the customers are patients of their relatives just passing by Au Bon Pain. Some may be interested in Au Bon Pain, but some may not want to buy food & bakery and drinks from Au Bon Pain, but from the hospital canteen instead. This factor causes Au Bon Pain branches located in some hospitals, such as Phayathai2 and Vichaiyuth hospital, have few customers than Sun Tower Buildings.
This observation shows that there is another important factor that influences effective teamwork, which is also supported by the Tuckman theory of teamwork (1965), namely the leadership of a manager or supervisor. The observation shows that the managers in all three branches use the tactic of management by walking around and lead their staff as an example. The customer seems to be satisfied with Au Bon Pain's family service and that encourages its staff to do the same as them.
It is natural that an effective teamwork is not only about the member's coordination, communication or an appropriate culture, but also a leadership of the manager or supervisor in every stage of team development. However, the method this report used to collect information limited the scope of the research. An observation is good to collect the information that is pure without the intention to answer like the interview, but there is another point of view, that is without asking the samples.
RECOMENDING
CONCLUSION
A leader must encourage his or her staff to work as a team and be able to work without his or her supervision. This research also shows that in an industry with few customers there is generally less experience with working in a team, while the industry with many customers has more experience with working in a team.
