Question

Comfort Zone is a 60-bed, for-profit intermediate care facility in northern California. The reha-bilitative department manager, Jamie Richards, has been working at Comfort Zone for only 6months. She holds monthly staff meetings, as well as additional individual meetings with staff toaddress specific patient-related issues. On most days, she eats lunch in a quiet corner of the cafe-teria so that she can catch up on her paperwork at the same time.Catherine Williams, one of her staff members who has been working at the facility for morethan 25 years, spotted her in the cafeteria one day and sat down uninvited. Catherine has neverattended any of the monthly meetings and always has an excuse for not attending. Catherinesaid, “I’ve been waiting to tell you this ever since you began working here, but I wanted you to getadjusted first. Now we can finally talk. I have been here for a long time and have seen all kinds ofcomings and goings.”Catherine proceeded to tell Jamie about her staff who were constantly tardy or absent. She also told Jamie about the things the staff had been doing behind her back, such as using the Inter-net for personal matters, going shopping during lunch hour and coming back late, and going homeearly without permission. Catherine concluded with, “At your monthly meetings, the staff show up to tell you that everything’s just fine, when I know differently. I’m too busy working to attendthese meetings. If you want my opinion, I would fire them all since they are incompetent.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING-----

1.How should Jamie deal with the information that Catherine provided?

2.What do you think of Jamie’s methods of communicating with her staff?

3.Do you think that she should use a different form of communication with Catherine?

Answer 1

1. Jamie should take the information provided by Catherine seriously and in order to confirm what Catherine said she should actually make it a point to asses and evaluate the situation to understand that what Catherine says is actually valid or not because as a manager she just cannot collect information and take actions which is not at all justified, she needs to serious and check it herself and then plan to take actions against them if any.

2. I think Jamie as a manager possess effective communication skill because she not only conduct monthly staff meetings but she also is ready for individual meetings as well and there are instances when she has conducted individual meeting to address any concern regarding the business to make the process better. As a manager in an organization, communication skill is quite effective and is a must or else employees may tend to interpret such massages in a wrong manner.

3. I think the form of communication should be the same that Jamie follows and in this case it is individual conversation involving just two individuals, It is true that Catherine is quite senior than Jamie in the organization but she is also a staff member of Jamie so she should be treated equally in the organization. Jamie can may be take her seriously but she has to fair and just to her without any bias because she approached Jamie.