Macville Coffee Case Study: A Brief Analysis Of The Risk

Case study

Seamus MacVille, the Business Manager of MacVille Enterprises has reviewed some of MacVille’s operations and has observed that resource use in the head office is not aligned with sustainable work practices being promoted by the Sustainability Team. He realises that this is at least partly due to existing MacVille policy and procedure documents not reflecting current business sector requirements. Some of the initiatives Seamus wants to see implemented include:

• re-programming of all air-conditioning services in the head office to be only active in normal business hours:
  • currently air-conditioners are manually switched on and off
  • It is the responsibility of the last staff member leaving each day to turn them all off - this is rarely done, and most commonly all air-conditioners are left running 24 hours per day.
• lights being switched off at night
• better sorting of recyclable paper from general rubbish
• encouraging staff use of dual-flush capability of toilets.

MacVille press release (#2010-37)

New environment approach for MacVille

January 18, 2014

Mary Belucci – Business Manager

The Steering Committee at MacVille Enterprises have today released information about a new direction the company is taking. MacVille is instituting a new work team within their head office with the objective of assisting MacVille to become a leading practitioner in triple bottom line sustainable practices within the coffee industry.

The team will be tasked to review work practices within all of MacVille’s activities, especially the coffee buying, roasting and coffee shops. They will be required to develop best practice models to increase sustainability practices across the organisation. This will involve training and educating all staff through use of internal professional development opportunities, newsletters and other similar approaches.

The work team is also required to develop materials to inform and educate clients and the general community about MacVille’s sustainable activities and encourage participation in activities and practices that lead to better environmental outcomes.

MacVille will be recruiting internal and external (yet to be advertised) staff to fill places in the new work team, and will require individuals capable of working within a team to investigate and solve problems. Vital to this team will be the inclusion of a highly skilled individual capable of reviewing highly technical documents and consequently developing plain language internal memos and external publicity materials.

{end of press release}

Task 1

MacVille enterprise is Melbourne CBD café that was established in July 2009 by and managed by Seamus MacVille. Their mission is to provide a unique and compelling café experience that includes high quality, fair trade coffee, hot and cold gourmet food and beverages and consistent high level of fast, confident and friendly service. The business plan is developed to lead the organization to be one of the leaders in sustainability coffee and café within five-year time.

However, Seamus MacVille, the business manager of MacVille enterprises has reviewed MacVille’s operations and has observed that resource use in the head office and the shops is not aligned with the sustainable work practices being promoted by the Sustainability team. Eventually, this report aims to analyse the company’s sustainability practices and implement strategies. It focuses on the triple bottom line of the sustainability spectrums that are environmental, economic and socio-political.

(Refer to chart in Appendix A for the MacVille’s sustainability practices)

MacVille’s existing policy and procedure documents do not reflect the current business sector requirements. The expenses are reported (Appendix B) and shows that water and electricity are low cost expenses. They may not need any attention but the business manager wants to implement some initiatives to sustain the environment by reducing the use of air-conditioning and use dual flush toilets. The expenses report also states the high cost areas that need to be reduced for sustainability. There are steps to take determine the shortfalls between required sustainable practices and documented approaches to the same.

The objectives of this document are:

• Analyze the current policies and procedures

• Compare the shortfalls

• Propose new policies and procedure

• Develop an implementation plan

Procedure

Task 1 – Case study question

Q1 Answer

A list of MacVille’s policies and procedures can be found in Appendix C.

There are policies and procedures that are relevant to sustainable practices. These policies and procedures are:

• Anti-discrimination, Anti-bullying, Anti-harassment

• Workplace Health Management

• Risk Management.

All these policies relate to the sustainable practices in term of environmental, economic and socio-political. Anti-discrimination and Workplace Health Management are some of the socio-political initiatives that have laws and legislation to be complied with by the organization. Risk management indicates areas where the economic could be impacted by injury or ineffective performance. These risks must be resolved to prevent any loss or damage to the business. However, the manager also notices there is not enough environment control for conserving resources. Therefore, some recommendations have been provided to the team to implement these inanities. These are comprised of:

• Reprogramming of all air-conditioning services

• Switching off light at night

• Better sorting of recycle paper from general rubbish

• Encouraging staff use of dual flush capability toilets

Other documents that can be used to implement these process can be based on:

13. The business plan

14. The marketing plan

15. Strategic and operational plan

16. Risk management strategy

17. Financial document

Q2 Answer

In this report, the most concern issue is to conserving the energy. The best practice of energy saving is provided by Bolton (Practical Sustainability, 2015):

• Examine the equipment: For the purpose of energy saving, the firm must determine which equipment can be disconnected at certain times. Furthermore, MacVille can also install humidity control systems in refrigerators to reduce the temperatures by 2 to 4 degrees.
• Lights setting: Replacing existing current light with more energy efficient ballasts to reduced energy use by 40 percent.
• Turn up the thermostat: implement a dress code for warm weather that encourages employees to dress comfortably for warmer temperatures and set the thermostat in workspace
• degrees Fahrenheit during work hours. Raise it to 82 degrees Fahrenheit when occupied. The energy savings are significant. Raising the thermostat, a single degree can save 2 percent of the air conditioning costs.

• Regular maintenance: perform regular maintenance to keep heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems running more efficiently. Maintenance activities can save up to 30% of fan energy and up to 10% of space conditioning energy use.

• These practices must be based on different programs such as fundamentals of sustainability and approaches to sustainability, business ready energy efficiency programs, or sustainable coffee programs.
• Relevant legislation and by laws that must be met are Sustainable Planning Act 2009, Waste Reduction and Recycling Act 2011, and Work health and Safety Act 2011.

Q3 Answer

A review based on the current usage of resources is conducted to gain an insight of potential of changes to organizational performances. MacVille previously reviewed the operations and the results were the resource usage was not aligned with the sustainability practices. The expenses report shows the water and electricity usage are within the acceptable range. However, it is considerably high according to Seamus MacVille. It could cost the business in the long term. Therefore, new implementation is needed to minimize the cost at minimum allowance. This includes the air-conditioners and lighting system reconfiguration.

Furthermore, the rate of water, sewerage and electricity is low when compared to the Photocopier and Printer and wastage. The high wastage is the result of ineffective recycle system. More recyclable paper is used, less waste could be expected. MacVille is considered to be disadvantage on the waste removal service in both recycle and general rubbish. Therefore, enhance the photocopier or limit the use of normal toner and paper may be the solutions. Meanwhile, better waste system could be implemented within the firm to reuse the paper sources and maintain the expense economically and environmentally.

Reviewing the MacVille press release, the new policy to form the new work team is a great idea. However, there is missing of affirmative action. Eventually, the executive of problem solving and identify is difficult to proceed. Moreover, the training sections carried out by the team is insufficient. It leads to the unsuccessful achievement of energy saving. For

example, one of the new team policies is to encouraging the last staff member leaving each day to turn the air-conditioning off. However, it is barely done since how the staffs know whenever he or she will be the last one exit the building. It must be a procedure for the staff to follow to prevent all conditioners is left running 24 hours per day. On the other hand, for the affirmative action policy, there is no section for the energy saving. It means the energy saving is the organizational responsibility not the employee’s.

Q4 Answer

• Air-conditioning is switched off automatically by digital devices after closing

• The air conditioners must be switched off manually by the store manager if continue running after hours
• Turning off unnecessary light is responsible for staff and store manager

• Store manager must check the light system and turn them off after hours

• Photocopier and printers only for organizational use