FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT AND RESPONSIVENESS OF QUICK SERVICE RESTAURANTS

The aim of this study was to determine the nexus between frontline employee competence development and responsiveness of QSRs, using training, coaching and mentoring as dimensions of competence development. Responsiveness was treated unidimensionally. The study adopted an explanatory research design and used a structured questionnaire to collect primary data; while the Spearman’s rank order correlation served as the test statistic, relying on SPSS version 20.0. The study observed that frontline employee competence development associates strongly with responsiveness of QSRs as all the dimensions of competence development posted strong, positive and statistically significant relationship with responsiveness. The study concludes that frontline employee competence development informs responsiveness of QSRs, or that responsiveness of QSRs depends on mentoring, training and coaching of frontline employees. The study recommends that QSRs that seek to be responsive to changes in their operating environments must continually update the competences of their frontline employees through mentoring, training and coaching