Question

Judy Anderson was assigned as a recruiter for South Illinois Electric Company (SIE), a small supplier of natural gas and electricity for Cairo, Illinois, and the surrounding area. The company had expanded rapidly during the last half of 1990s, and the growth was expected to continue. In January 2003 SIE purchased the utility system serving neighbouring Mitchell Country. This expansion concerned Judy. The company workforce had increased by 30 percent the previous year, and Judy had found it a struggle to recruit enough qualified job applicants. She knew that the expansion would intensify the problem.

Judy is particularly concerned about meter readers. The task required in meter reading are relatively simple, a person drives to homes served by the company, finds the gas or electric meter, and records its current reading. If the meter has been tempered with, it is reported. Otherwise, no decision-making of any consequence is associated with the job. The readers perform no calculations. The pay was $8.00 per hour, high for unskilled work in the area. Even so, Judy had been having considerable difficulty keeping the 37 meter readers’ positions filled.

Judy was thinking about how to attract more job applicants when she received a call from a human resource director, Sam McCord. “Judy”, Sam said, “I’m unhappy with the job specification calling for only high school education for meter readers. In the planning for the future, we need better educated people in the company. I’ve decided to change the education requirement for the meter reader job from a high school diploma to a college degree.”

“but, Mr. McCord”, protested Judy, “the company is growing rapidly. If we are to have enough people to fill those jobs, we just can’t insist on finding college applicants to perform such a basic task. I don’t see how we can meet our future needs for this job with such an unrealistic job qualification.”

Sam terminated the conversation abruptly by saying, “No, I don’t agree. We need to upgrade all the people in our organization. This is just part of a general effort to do that. Anyway, I cleared this with the president before I decided to do it.”

To share 3 points, 3 paragraphs on your opinion about Sam's effort to upgrade the people in the organisation.

Answer 1

Upgrading people in the organization helps in improving the organization standards and performances of employees individually as well as the organization's overall performance. But upgrading people hired in the company can have adverse effects too and hence requires analytical thinking and decision making considering all pros and cons. Highly qualified people can be an asset to the company but if a basic job is given to people who are capable of doing more than it then the consequences can be negative.

Hiring overqualified people for the job can build up a talent pool with everyone having good qualifications and hence fast learning and grasping work and changes is easier. Better qualified people can be immediately available for critical jobs or positions if someone on such positions leaves the company. Such people will not need training and management to monitor and control their activities. Better productivity can be expected from the employees performing well at their jobs understanding it better.

Yet the cons of hiring overqualified employees can make a greater impact thus making the decision a failure. The turnover rate in such a situation will increase as people qualified for and capable of doing better jobs will be given tasks lesser than their capability which will increase dissatisfaction in jobs. They may get bored with working at petty jobs which can affect productivity levels. A very major disadvantage can be that people with higher qualification will demand better pay which will increase the payroll budget and hence add to the expenses of the company.