Discuss the below:
Case Study 1 - The State University - Turnover Trouble
The local state university has been troubled lately with a string of resignations mainly from its administrative and support staff. After implementing a series of exit interviews and surveys as well as an internal assessment of employee satisfaction, senior management determined that the main problem was related to lack of employee development opportunities. The local campus that is experiencing the high turnover does offer free tuition for campus employees but the classes offered are either taught at inconvenient times or the subject matter is of low interest to campus employees.
The surveys and interview data also indicate other possible problems:
- Employees see no career building opportunities. There is no systematic program to train and promote employees in the campus administrative/infrastructure team
- The private university a few miles down offers lots of night classes for its employees and pays a few more dollars an hour on average than the State university campus. Most of the departing employees are going there.
- Because of strict State budget policies, salary raises are out of the question
If this trend continues, the cost of retraining the new folks that will have to be rehired will be very high. Therefore campus management is extremely concerned about this and wants this turnover problem solved immediately. An independent consulting company was hired to provide an assessment of the situation and also provide recommendations to solve the problem. Their recommendation was to immediately put in place an employee development system that would provide these folks the possibility of developing their skills. These folks actually discovered that employee dissatisfaction was rooted not so much because of salary issues but more along the lines of satisfaction with the work environment.
Not only did they find dissatisfaction with the lack of development opportunities but also with their management. Many of these managers are relatively new to their jobs and don't fully understand or grasp what good management is all about. Many of them "micro-manage" their direct reports. This creates an unpleasant, low-trust environment that hampers productivity and creates a difficult, stressful work situation.
Management has received approval to hire a training and development specialist to solve this problem. After a long and arduous search process, you have been selected as the new campus staff Training and Employee Development Manager, reporting directly to senior management. Your marching orders are:
1. Stem the tide of support employees leaving
2. Improve the work environment by putting a T&D strategy to provide development opportunities to the support staff as well as some kind of management development program to provide campus managers better tools and skills to improve their management practices.
Time is of the essence for this project. Two more employees just announced their intentions to leave and management is starting to panic. You have been assigned a small staff consisting of one web designer, an instructional designer and a training administration specialist to support you. You also have a small budget of $150K to get started.
Management would like to see your strategy presented in three to four weeks and have you begin putting your program in place immediately after that.
The College of Business on campus has quite a few courses you could use for this program but these will require "re-purposing" of the material for internal use.
You have good contacts with several training vendors that carry excellent (but expensive) training products that you could purchase.
Ideas to consider:
• What will be the first steps you take to get this project moving (fast)?
• What will you spend your budget on?
• What strategy will you use to roll out the training in such a short time period?
• What does your project timeline look like?
• How will you know you've been successful?
You will need to present your strategy proposal to a Management Review Committee (MRC) who will have the ultimate approval authority for your project.
Case Study 2 - The WS Upgrade Challenge
Warehousing Solutions or WS as they are known in the warehousing industry, have been in business for more than 50 years.
Their work philosophy and environment are renowned in the industry. WS treats its workers well, generously sharing profits and providing good benefits for its employees and their dependents. A few years ago, WS gained nationwide attention by announcing a college tuition program for employees whose children achieved a certain GPA in their school work. Because of this, WS's employee turnover numbers are some of the lowest in the industry. WS's employees are fiercely loyal to their company and the average employee length of service is 15 years. The average employee age is 42.
WS's warehousing operations are mainly based on materials of fairly large dimensions, usually stored on pallets. These pallets are moved around by fork lifts and placed directly on trucks moving the merchandise out. Typical items warehoused by WS are office furniture, heavy equipment for air conditioning and heating, some building supplied and other similar products.
The typical work process for a WS warehouse employee involves receiving a sales order from the customer support folks. This sales order is usually a printout indicating the product sold and the shipping destination. The employee will then go to the "map" - a large book that shows the location of different products within the warehouse. After consulting the map, the employee will then drive the forklift over to the general area where the goods are located and visually looks for the exact item. Once the item is located, he/she will bring the pallets over to the shipping area and the shipping specialists will inspect the goods, wrap and ship them accordingly. A single shipment, because of the large size of the items, could take several hours to prepare. Once the shipment is completed, the operator stamps the sales order with a "completed" stamp, signs his name to it, and places it in the "complete" bin in the office area.
WS has just signed a very lucrative contract with one of the country's largest retailers to warehouse their entire jewelry line including watches. These items are kept in much smaller boxes than typically used in a WS warehouse. Also, a typical sales order for this kind of merchandise is for much smaller volume (two or three watches, for example).
Because of this, WS has decided to take the plunge in building a brand-new warehouse a few miles south of its main site. This new, state-of-the-art warehousing facility will feature the company's first ever ASRS (Automatic Storage and Retrieval System). The ASRS in a robotic device that pulls the merchandise from a huge set of bins that store the merchandise. Operators using this new system will sit in front of a computer terminal where they will download a sales order coming from the sales department. They will then issue the appropriate commands to the ASRS to bring down the matching merchandise. Once the merchandise is brought down and checked, they will send a notification to the shipping department via the computer program messaging interface and place the merchandise on a conveyor belt together with the printout of the sales order.
There will be 400 WS employees transferring to the new warehousing facility together with another 200 or so new employee that will be hired later once the volume ramps to full capacity.
After a long and thorough job search, you have been hired by WS as the senior Logistics Systems Manager. You will be in charge of creating, overseeing and managing the training program for the 400 workers that will be transferring from the old warehousing facility to the new one.
Most of these employees have never used a computer for work. Some have computers at home but only use them casually for Internet surfing or e-mail. Most are eager to move to the new facility but also a bit nervous because they will need to not only relearn their job; they will need to learn how to use a pretty complex computer program that involves multiple screens, data entry and some barcode scanning.
The new facility is almost built and WS management has informed you that they expect to move the employees in about 5 weeks and they'd like to see their training start as soon as they're in the new facility or even before then. The software team who has been working on the new software is offering two of their best programmers to help you as SMEs and you also have a team of 4 training specialists with skills in programming, ID and web design. You have a budget of $150K to get the project started and management wants to see your strategy and plan in one more week.
Ideas to consider:
• What will be the first steps you take to get this project moving?
• What will you spend your budget on?
• What kind of training will you provide (blended, web-based, hands-on etc.)
• How will you make use of the SMEs assigned to you?
• What does your project timeline look like?
• How will you know you've been successful?
You will need to present your strategy proposal to a Management Review Committee (MRC) who will have the ultimate approval authority for your project.
Case Study 3 - Misbehavior on the Floor - Bad Bunnies
Green Bunny (GB) is a local ice cream manufacturer that has built a reputation as a producer of great-tasting ice cream. Its flavor combinations are very popular and its reputation has been growing beyond Arizona. Because of this success, GB has been building new factories and hiring employees at a very rapid pace without a lot of screening or thorough interviewing.
The personnel in these factories is about 65% male and 35% female and the GB's executive staff is extremely concerned about sexual harassment allegations they're starting to hear from some of these newer factories. GB's legal advisor recently gave the executive staff an extensive presentation on this topic and highlighted a recent multi-million dollar harassment lawsuit won by female employees at a similar company. This presentation also highlighted the fact that managers of people accused of harassment can also be sued as individuals making everyone even more nervous.
Although there have been no formal harassment complaints made yet, the factory HR managers are reporting lots of "informal" reports from female employee on inappropriate behavior and other problems with some of the male employees in the factories. Many managers of the employees, when interviewed, say that that they are indeed aware of this problem but dismiss it with comments like "boys will be boys" or "they were only joking".
GB's executive staff is very worried about this issue and wants an immediate rollout of a Harassment Avoidance training program. After an extensive search for the right person, you have been chosen as the new Corporate Training and People Development Manager for the corporation, reporting into the VP of Human Resources. Your first assignment is to put in place a Harassment Avoidance training program in place within the next two months. You will need to present your plan to the executive staff in two weeks. The staff is expecting to see the following in your plan:
- Cost
- Method of training delivery
- Staff needed
- Critical Success Indicators (CSIs)
- Roadmap for rolling out the program
Additional Information:
GB has three factories in AZ. All of them are in the metro Phoenix area. Each factory has about 450 employees. They work in two shifts; Shift 1 from 6AM to 3:00PM and Shift 2 from 4:00PM to 12¬:00AM
Employees on the factory floor do not have access to PCs but most of them have reported that they have PCs at home.
You will need to present your strategy proposal to a Management Review Committee (MRC) who will have the ultimate approval authority for your project.