Question

Can you solve it for me plz?

‘Lakeside Manufacturing’ is a boating company that specializes in sailboats for sailing schools and Jules Paulson is the owner of the company. His lead foreman and second in command is Kevin Hill. There are a small core group of 15 employees who are fulltime and experienced in their trade and sailing. Unfortunately, over the summertime, the permanent employees like to take their vacation so they can go sailing. ‘Lakeside Manufacturing’ makes sure that at any given time over the summertime period, only 25% of the permanent staff are away at any given time so that 75% are still doing their usual jobs. This has worked to some extent; however, there are times the company feels short staffed.

Last year, Kevin had an idea that over the summer, they could hire some seasonal workers to do the work of those who are away. Kevin spoke to Jules and said that maybe they could hire students from the local university during the summer to do some of the tasks. Part of the requirement was that they either should have some boating experience or be able to know some of the woodworking or electrical work. Summer last year, it did not work so well because the students started and were randomly placed to fill gaps among the teams where the full-time employees were away on vacation. There were some challenges and tensions that would arise because the students were not as skilled at the work that the experienced employees were. Added to that, the students would have headphones on while working, taking texting moments or take breaks when they felt like and had a different perspective and attitude about the work. This annoyed some of the older experienced workers.

This year, Kevin thought that he would hire 10 students over the summer but instead of having them integrate into the work that was being done by the older more senior workers, he thought that it might be better to have all the 10 students in one team and separate from the experienced workers who were there and somewhat annoyed by the behaviour of the students. Kevin trained the students and was their liaison so that any questions or problems would be answered by him. A number of the students came back from last year so that the training was not too difficult. He also outlined what they needed to do and was less rigid on breaks and how the work was done, except that things had to be completed with care, quality and on time.

As the summer went on, the students got very good at their tasks because they were good with technology and also knew that if they would finish early, they could have free time. A healthy rivalry and competition started to emerge between the experienced workers and the students. It was productive and things were working out…for a while. Eventually, the student employees would say how fast they could work, and the older employees were slower. It was also not uncommon for the students to head over to where the older employees were working and make comments, which started to make the more experienced employees annoyed. The organization started to see two camps of employees instead of everyone working together.

Now, instead of everyone working together and feeling like they were part of ‘Lakeside Manufacturing’, both sides were either making fun of the other side or hiding tools and supplies from the other side so it would slow the other side down. It was starting to get out of hand and the owner, Jules Paulson, called Kevin Hill in to his office and said that he thinks that it might be better to not have the two sides and it might be better to just break both sides up and reassign the teams so they were all working together. Kevin thought that this might not be a good idea because he was pretty sure most, if not all, of the students would quit. Kevin has called you for your advice and thoughts on how to resolve this situation.

a) Apply some concepts from the course to explain what is going on at ‘Lakeside Manufacturing

b) Take a position on if the teams should be broken up or not and explain why

c) Based on your answer in (b) what do you recommend helping improve the situation

Answer 1

a)

The team is experiencing a conflict situation at the workplace. The gap between generations has become the root cause of the conflict in the summer. The attitude and the approach to work by the millennials is much different than that of the baby boomers of generation x. This is where the conflict arises.

The newer generation, i.e. millennials, are more abrasive and takes work comparatively lightly than the older generations, i.e. generation X and Baby Boomers. This leads to the conflicting views on work culture. This is the reason why the millennials (student employees) think that it is alright for them to taunt the older employees. On the other hand the older employees view this as the student employees not taking their job seriously.

b)

The teams should not be broken up. They should keep the student employees as it is and the older employees’ team separate. If they are kept in the same team then there will be closer interaction and thus there is possibility of more conflict.

Keeping the team separate means that there will be rivalry between them and at times situations as shown in the case will arise. In such case, Kevin or Jules should speak to both the teams one by one and ask them to behave correctly at workplace.

c)

I think the teams are too small to provide a cross-cultural training. However, Jules and Kevin could conduct counselling and guidance session for each teams. They can assure the older employees that the student employees are only temporary. On the other hand, they should teach the student employees to be respectful and subtle in their work.