Question

You are the Human Resource Manager of a busy branch and have stopped to talk to one of the clerks in the office to see what progress he is making. He complains bitterly that he is not learning anything. He gets only routine work to do and it is the same routine. He has not even been given the chance to swap jobs with someone else. You have picked up the same message from others in the office. You discuss the situation with Jean Howe the recently appointed supervisor. She appears to be very busy and harassed. When confronted with your observations she says that she is fed up with the job. She is worked off her feet, comes early, goes late, takes work home and gets criticized behind her back by incompetent clerks.

You are required to write an essay

a). to state what is going wrong

b). give recommendations as to what you will do.

Answer 1

Solution:

From the observations gained from the employees it is clear that none of them seem to be happy with their jobs. There are reasons like low work life balance, fewer opportunities to learn, and lower opportunities for growth within the organization. These are the common issues that are recorded from the employees. Also, one of the supervisor who had joined recently is also fed up with her job because of low work life balance. This demonstrates that there is significantly wrong work culture that has been adopted by the workforce which is draining them mentally, emotionally as well as physically and the fact this is the experience of newly joined employees is again worrisome because new employees generally tend to have a lower work load than the others but is not the case in this scenario. Hence, it can be seen that there is a strong and urgent need for some organizational changes to mitigate the impact of these negative reviews on the organization.

Now that we know what the issues are we can work on these issues by carefully analysing the situation of each department and measure the aspects that will help us in designing a new set of practices that will bring about a change favourable for a good and enriching working conditions. This can be done by taking internal employee satisfaction survey and try to understand the areas that are lacking in providing satisfaction to the employees. We know that satisfied employees are more productive than unsatisfied ones and hence we must develop the strategies and action plans to deal with the lower satisfaction levels of the employees.

Once we find out the reasons that are restricting the employees from working with their maximum potential and the reasons leading to their unsatisfied behaviour we can come up with plans that will help the employees to mitigate these issues as well as ensuring that these strategies are favourable to the organization and its business. Hence, we need to come up with a win win situation plan for both the organization and the employees. Hence, we can develop a mechanism to help employees take up the job positions they want for a certain period of time which will help them in rotating their jobs and give them a chance to grow within the organization. Also, we can have a strict work hour policy meaning that employees are not allowed to take the work home and have to complete it within the given office hours. We can open a grievance and suggestions portal where the employees can post their suggestions about improvement in the business operations. We can also ensure we have enough perks for the employees to keep them motivated to work hard for the organization.

Hence, these are some of the initiatives that can be implemented at the initial stage and we can change or alter them as we move further with these initiatives and come up with alternatives to ensure we are constantly evolving and helping our employees develop a satisfactory levels with their work and job.