Case Studies and Questions. Excalibur The Canadian University Tournament in Human Resources

Transcription

1 Case Studies and Questions Excalibur 2005 The Canadian University Tournament in Human Resources By Pascal Savard, Psychologist, CHRP Partner, Dolmen Psychologie Industrielle Inc.

2 Recruitment This company, which has been active in the garment industry for over 20 years, is a family business with a workforce of 60 people, most of whom are sewing machine operators. Since the company employs no human resources management professionals, its partners share the various HR-related tasks. Its head office and only factory are located in a city with a population of 10,000 that is a 45-minute drive from a large urban centre. The company has won a major Canadian defence contract to manufacture apparel for soldiers in the field. The nature of these garments is such that they cannot be mass-produced but have to be made on individual sewing machines. Thanks to this contract, the company is looking to double its workforce and hire 50 new sewing machine operators. The partners initially attempt to recruit the workers they need on their own. After a month, they realize that: Since there are no more skilled sewing machine operators available locally, they will have to recruit unskilled workers and train them; The wages offered, i.e. on average about $2 above the minimum wage, make it impossible for them to attract workers from other cities; offering a higher wage is not an option; Because of the working conditions and the repetitive nature of the work, a number of the new employees quit after only a week; The rate of selection errors is high; many new employees aren t able to acquire the skills they need to do this type of work. The company s management decides to ask a certified human resources professional to improve their recruitment process. They award you a one-month contract to structure their process and hire the resources they need. Questions (20 points) 1. Develop a work plan, including a schedule, to meet the deadline. 2. a) Indicate the selection tools that could be relevant in this situation. b) Determine which tool would be most appropriate. 3. How do you plan to attract new applicants? 4. How can the recruitment process be structured to improve the retention of new employees?

3 Training You are a human resources generalist with a financial institution. You have been assigned to a team that sells complex and specialized financial products. This team has only 10 members and serves a client base made up of major institutional funds. The firm s other employees see these team members as an elite group specializing in highly complicated issues. Their recommendations have a tremendous financial impact for their clients. A decline in sales with two major clients has been noted in the last year. The team manager met with these clients and learned that his sales professionals had made several errors in dealing with them. The team members were perceived as being arrogant and insensitive to their clients concerns. Although the clients didn t question the soundness of the advice they received, they preferred to entrust mandates requiring particular attention to the institution s competitors. The manager puts you in charge of preparing a training program to help these professionals develop their client service skills. He would prefer you to design the program yourself since you are recognized for your expertise in this area. Questions (20 points) 1. Prepare a work plan for this mandate. 2. Indicate four measures of success applicable to this type of training. 3. How can you design the training program to ensure that the participants make the most effective use of what they have learned?

4 Performance Management You are a human resources generalist working at a call centre. One of your clients, a supervisor, asks you for advice on how to deal with two problem employees. His team handles calls about billing from external customers. Although his team members don t have much formal education, they have considerable experience on the job. Thanks to attractive salaries and good working conditions, employee turnover is very low. You and the supervisor had been on the job for only six months when the company reorganized its management team as part of a restructuring operation. The supervisor is faced with a serious attendance problem. Two of his employees are often 10 to 15 minutes late getting to work in the morning. They also take about 15 extra minutes for lunch. The supervisor knows that this situation has been going on for years and was tolerated by his predecessor. These employees lack of punctuality has major consequences for the call centre s customers since a significant backlog of incoming calls is built up as soon as it opens in the morning. One of the supervisor s goals is actually to reduce call-processing time. The other team members have also complained to him about their co-workers lateness and casual attitude. However, apart from being systematically late, the two employees are good workers. The number of calls they process per hour is within the average and the supervisor s monitoring of their calls shows that they provide good customer service. They also receive fewer complaints and more complimentary letters from customers than most of their co-workers. After discussing the issue with his boss, the supervisor has decided to take the bull by the horns. He wants to suspend these two employees the next time they re late. He asks you for your opinion and to support him in this decision. Questions (20 points) 1. Answer the supervisor s question: Is it appropriate to suspend these employees at this stage and why? 2. Propose a plan the supervisor can use for his meeting with each employee. 3. What action should the supervisor take with regard to the other team members?

5 Organizational Climate You are asked to establish a diagnosis for a serious conflict that has arisen among a team of operators working in a plant with a workforce of 1,500 employees. You first meet one-on-one with each team member, their superiors and the union president. The operators have little formal education and often use pretty harsh language with each other, which is unacceptable in any workplace. You have obtained the following information. Peter, one of the operators, says that he suffers from back pain and can only do light work. Other plant workers say they have seen him do some pretty heavy work at home. However, the plant s doctors confirm the diagnosis and maintain that he has a medical condition preventing him from doing heavy work. Peter claims he is being harassed by his co-workers. For the past three months, he has carried around a tape recorder at work to build up evidence for possible legal proceedings. Most of the operators get along well with their foreman, himself a former operator. They often go hunting and fishing with him but don t talk about work on these trips. In their view, he is able to forget about the job on these occasions and become just one of the boys. All the work in the plant is performed by two-men teams. John, another operator, has been rejected by his co-workers because of a personal hygiene problem. He has become Peter s best friend. They are frequently seen wasting time in the men s locker room, which angers their co-workers. On several occasions, John has also brought a tape recorder to work to record his co-workers comments. The operators all had something negative to say about Caroline, a second-level manager who makes senseless decisions and is very tough on the production workers. They tell you that even their foreman agrees with them. As well, there are rumours that Caroline threatened two workers if they refused to cooperate. The operators also accuse her of favouritism, saying she doesn t abide by the collective agreement and arranges training for employees she likes rather than based on seniority. The union president says that he thinks the problem is the managers fault because they re not doing their job. He also mentions that the union filed a grievance about training that should have been made available to the most senior employees. In his view, the plant s management doesn t respect the collective agreement. The foreman is a former worker who has had no management training. He complains about his boss Caroline, with whom he has a very tense working relationship. He says she is incompetent but is protected by her brother-in-law, the plant CEO. He also complains about his workers not being able to get along with each other, particularly Peter and John, the two operators who bring tape recorders to work. Even he feels intimidated by them. Caroline denies the accusations that she has made threats. She admits that she has problems with dealing with people at work and that some of them think she is too tough. She explains that she selects younger workers for training to optimize investment return because the most senior workers are only a few years away from retirement. She thinks it would be a waste of the company s money to act otherwise.

6 Questions (20 points) 1. What is your diagnosis and what recommendations would you make about the conflict between Peter and John and the rest of the group? 2. What is your diagnosis and what recommendations would you make about the conflict between the group and Caroline? 3. Who plays the greatest role in making these problems worse?