Question

You work for the HR department of a manufacturing firm. The company has 500 employees, a significant portion of whom have long tenure in the company.

Eric Jenkins, a department manager who was hired 2 years ago, contacted you, saying that he is interested in dismissing Laura Harrison. Laura has been with the company for the past 25 years. He is concerned that Laura is not adapting well to the new technological changes that took place in the company over the past year. Plus she is always debating every point with Eric, trying to argue that “this is not how we do things around here.” Eric feels that Laura’s knowledge of the business is stale, and she is displaying strong resistance to change and innovation. He also feels that she is not respecting him because she is much older than he is. They have had performance conversations in the past, but Laura does not seem interested in improving. Eric gave Laura a 3 out of 5 (meets expectations) in her last performance review, which was about a year ago.

Your company is not unionized and does not have a formal discipline procedure.

Questions:

1. What would you advise Eric to do? Should Eric dismiss Laura? Explain your rationale. What would be the consequences of dismissing and not dismissing Laura?
2. What additional information would be helpful to you in making your recommendation about this case?
3. Let’s say you decided not to dismiss Laura in the short run. What would be your recommended action plan to solve this problem?
4. What type of procedures would be helpful to have in this company? Provide your recommendations for structural changes so that cases such as these are more easily resolved.

Answer 1

answer-

1- I would advise Eric to Meet with laura and discuss this concern with Her. Eric should not dismiss Laura yet because She has been working for the company for 25 years. She as older employee need a Chance which Eric should give. Eric should call her and tell her that Management is deciding to dismiss her so she needs to improve her performance. They are giving a chance to do that.

The consequences of dismissing her would be that she can create a negative image of company in the minds of other workers that she has been dismissed for no reason even after working so many years. Dismissing her can bring legal issues like age discrimination as she is old and she has been terminated.

Not dismissing Laura means she will be issue for Eric and his management. Laura will show poor performance which would affect whole department's result.

2-The additional information i requried to make recommendation for this case are- First i need her past performance record of altealt 5-10 years to see how she has been as a performer on average. Second, i need to see her current age in order to make sure she is eligible for age discrimination act claim. Third, i need information what is the cause that Laura is being reluctant and resist change. Fourth, I need information related to How Eric handle Lauran on daily basis and how Laura interact with Eric.

3-If i decide not to dismiss lauran, then my plan would be provide training to Her. She has been resisting change of new tech. It could be that she is old and not know how new tech runs. Providing training will help her to know how new and innovative things work. This would show laura that tech will make her work more easy and her performance higher.

Performance and her attitude to resist change is the issue so Eric can solve this by meeting discussion and provide training to her.

4- The counselling session is required as a separate department in the company. Counselling is a method of understanding and helping people who have technical, personal and emotional or adjustment problems that usually has emotional contents that an employee with the objective of reducing it so that performance is maintained at adequate level or even improved upon.

By providing counselling at work will help new as well as old employees to deal with issues at work and solve such problems fast.