Managing Business Unit Assessment
Havana Tanning and Aesthetics is owned by Carlos Santana in Halifax. He has been open since November 2013. The business started off well earning enough revenue to pay all of its bills and allow Carlos to live on his own in a small apartment. For the past 8 months the business has been losing money. He started off as, and has remained the manger. However, he is often not at the store as he spends a lot of time attending trade shows selling a specialty sun tan lotion called "Havana Sky" he uses to promote his business.
Originally there were 3 employees hired. Jason ran the store during the weekdays. Jennifer oversaw evening hours during the week. And, Xavier covered Saturdays and Sundays. Additionally, to augment the sun tanning side of the business, Bertha, Carlos' sister, worked as the aesthetician at the shop. Jason moved out west to Calgary and Jennifer has since become pregnant has decided to concentrate on raising her child form home. Xavier is a full time university student and has consistently asked for more hours. As a result Carlos has given Xavier the week night shifts. Unfortunately, almost twice a week Xavier has to miss a shift to complete school work leaving Carlos to cover the store. Bertha has not worked in the store for over a year now. She was only at the store for 3 months when she moved out to Edmonton - she was the reason Jason decided to move out West. To complicate matters she also handled Havana Tanning's bookkeeping as she had taken some business management courses as a part of her aesthetician training at the Nova Scotia Community College.
Carlo's has noticed that there are far less customer's coming to the store and this is greatly affecting the amount of revenue being generated. Moreover, he has hired several former customers to help out around the store but many of them had little experience or had other issues making them less than ideal employees: such often being late, calling in sick, or just not providing quality customer service. Carlos is also not getting to the trade shows as much as he would like because he spending a great deal of his time covering missing shifts.
Answer the following questions in full detail:
1. How would you recommend Carlos deal with the serious employee issues taking place at the shop?
2. What recommendations do you have for increasing revenue at the store?
3. Do you feel there are some management concepts Carlos is not fully exploring or using?
4. Are there other thoughts about this case study you have that could be of help either specifically or generally for Havana Tanning and Aesthetics?