After years of understaffed meals, miscommunication, and general discontinuity, Dining Services is dishing up a new bureaucratic program. Next fall, Tufts' private food service will reorganize its managerial structure to enable workers in each facility to function as cohesive teams, and create new leadership positions for students.
Each dining hall will operate with greater autonomy, which should eliminate the cumbersome managerial structure. The new plan features a more defined chain of command, with workers focusing their efforts at one dining hall and student managers answering to unit managers, who will report to higher Dining Services administrators.
The change was spurred by the diminishing supply of workers that Dining Services has experienced over the past few years.
"With the way the economy boomed, service jobs in general have been more difficult to fill, and we certainly have felt that pressure," Dining Services Director Patti Lee Klos said. "Tufts students are less inclined to work for us, so part of this program is to invest more in the work force and create more opportunities for leadership and advancement, so that [students] are able to make a decent wage, develop leadership skills, and become more invested in the program."
The decentralized management structure was tested in the Campus Center Commons, Brown and Brew this year.
Presently, student managers and a professional unit manager run the dining hall program, operating "parallel" to each other. Student workers report to student managers, and both student and unit managers report to Dining Services administrators.
While this program has been in place for over a decade, it has often led to miscommunication and the frequent transfer of workers. When problem arose, students were forced to navigate a complicated managerial structure, in which managers reported to different bosses.
The two student manager positions in each dining hall will be eliminated, and replaced by four student coordinators. The coordinators will be responsible for hiring, scheduling, evaluating, and reporting workers' hours for their unit.
Dining Services hopes that increasing the leadership opportunities will entice students to work in the dining halls.
"In recent years, [Dining Services] has had a lot of trouble hiring Tufts students as employees, and they have had to resort more to high school students," said Melinda Coolidge, a member of the Tufts Community Union Senate Services Committee. "This new program is trying to attract more student employees by offering them more of a leadership role. It gives them a leadership position to put on their resume."
The remodeled structure is similar to many other university dining programs, according to Lee Klos, which is why Dining Services is confident it will be successful. Lee Klos said she has been considering a change to Tufts' atypical structure since she was hired in 1989.
The new plan is "the most common structure you'll find in food service today. We want all the workers in the dining hall to be part of one team," she said.
While Dining Services seems confident in the changes, some students and workers are concerned that the transition will be difficult. While the new managerial structure will be streamlined, it will also eliminate the unity of the Dining Services team, and some students say they will miss the large, overarching Dining Services community.
"A lot of my friends are in Dining Services. They work for Carmichael; I work for Dewick. But because we have joint meetings together I get to see them, and it is better in terms of students working with each other and meeting other people," said Dewick Student Manager Melissa Passino, a senior.
The restructuring plan is still in its developmental stages, and there has been little communication between the Dining Services administration -which is initiating the program - and the workers and managers. Some student managers fear that the new program will eliminate jobs, though the plan is to expand employment opportunities.
Dining hall workers are concerned that adjusting to the new program will disrupt their short-term efficiency. "After you work with people for a long time you get to know their names. It's hard to change when you're used to doing things one way," said Maria Salvo, a Dewick worker and Medford resident.
But Lee Klos says the transition period will not be drastically different from training new workers at the beginning of each year. "Change requires adjustment, especially when a program has been in a place for a long time," she said. "I'm anticipating that [workers and managers] will put the same level of energy and care into the new program. We're looking out for the overall good of the program, as well as the individuals who work in the program."
Despite difficulties associated with the restructuring, such as changing job descriptions, new responsibilities, and altered working relationships, managers seem optimistic that the plan will achieve its goals.
"It's harder to manage a larger organization," Passino said. "As a manager, I work on a small scale, similar to the new program. I've had a chance to interact more closely with all the other employees at the dining hall, to get to know Medford residents, and get another perspective."
