Question

Assume that you are the founding head of a 5-year-old information technology solutions based
company. Currently, there are 55 fulltime employees working at 3 different levels namely project
managers (2 employees), team leaders (8 employees) and team members /software developers (42employees). There are also other support staff like a HR manager (1), a finance manager (1) and a helper(1 number). As the Head, you are playing multiple roles related to business development, marketing and sales of the product, customer relations, product design etc. The organization is growing at a good pace and there is a potential to grow twice the size in terms of business and number of employees in the next two years. With this background please answer the following questions:

1) Keeping the fast paced growth of the company, what is your plan for developing the second
level of leaders in the organization? How will you identify, nurture and motivate leadership
potential among your employees to take up future responsibilities?
2) The organization has predominantly people from similar background in terms of region, religion
and gender (men). As a firm believer of inclusivity, how will you ensure diversity in your
organization? Mention some specific action plans.
3) As a leader, you want to make your organization a best place to work for your employees. You
want your organization to be a psychologically safe place to work for everyone. What will be
your action plan to create and sustain such a culture within your organization?
4) There is also a high rate of employee attrition at the team leader level due to lack of growth
opportunities within the organization, how will you ensure employees at that level are retained?

Answer 1

While the answering the question following assumption has been made.

1- 42 employees are equally divided among the 8 Team leaders which means under each team leader there are 4 employees and in the future year it will be doubled.

2- There are no or very less Female employee in the organization

Ans 1) - As informed in the question that there is potential to grow twice the size of the business and number of employees in the coming two years, the first and the most important point is have a well design path and plan to achieve the target growth. Project managers and team leader should be involved while identifying this path and plan this help them to feel important in the organization. This will help me to know the which employee has business mind applications. Also once they feel important in the organization they will try to work much harder and efficiently. Also since the company is going to grow in size the benefits has to be passed on to the employees in terms of monetary benefits and increment.

Ans 2) - Having the diversified employee population helps the organization to grow faster because employee can reach to the different parts of the country due to their inherent connection with the place. As mentioned that the organization is excepted to increase its manpower size as well in the future years, in order to bring the diversity in the organization following plan can be implemented:-

a - Campus interviews can arrange in the various parts of the country, this will help the organization to enrolled people from different region of the country.  

b - In order to bring equality in terms of the gender, certain position can be reserved for the female employees only. There can also be a rule to have atleast 2 to 4 female employee in the team. Also females are proved to be great leader, so Project manager or team leader position can also be reserved for certain number of females.

Ans 3) - Organization are often grown only when the employees of that organization are satisfied with their job. Thus employees are the key assets of an organization. In order to make the organization a best place to work, Leader must understand the need of their employees. There can be 2 way of providing the best culture to the employees i.e.. Monetary benefits and Non monetary benefits.

a - Proper monetary benefits are the basic and the most important requirement of an employee. Employee must be compensated for their hard work in organization. This can be done by introducing the good performance based incentive scheme. This will the ensure that the employee doing the hard work get paid for the same and thus motivating the employees to work much harder and efficiently.

b - Not just the monetary benefits but non monetary benefits also place a major role developing a psychologically safe place to work for everyone. This can be achieved by introducing various activities in the organization. Activities like games on the last day of the week, celebration culture for every festival, compulsory leaves for relaxation etc. Having a cafeteria or relaxation zone with few games is always a good idea in the organization.

Ans 4) If there is a high rate of employee attrition at the team leader level due to lack of growth opportunity then the problem could be the plans of the organization has not been properly communicated to the Team leaders. As it is mentioned that there is potential to grow twice the business, there will be great opportunity for the team leader to grow. Organization must ensure that the same is communicated to the employees as well. There must be a transparency between the organization and the team leader related to future plan of the organization as this will help the team leader to identify their personal growth in the organization. Employees thus can be retained if there is proper plan to pass on the benefit to the employees and the same is properly communicated to employees.