Question

Scenario: You are an employee of Cabot Nutrition, a company that manufactures various vitamins, minerals, and other supplements including infant formula. An employee was found to have tampered with infant formula during production, and has since been terminated. On his termination day, the employee became violent and struck his supervisor. Several infants have become ill as a result of the tampering, but all injuries have been reported as non-life-threatening. Two of your employees used this infant formula with their infants, and both infants are ill. You have been tasked with creating a response to this product-tampering crisis.

Include the following in your memo:

Describe the crisis in detail, including additional facts that you find and the results of your investigation.

Crisis Management Taskforce, and list the job titles and responsibilities of each member.

Develop a Crisis Management Plan to address this incident and help mitigate/prevent this type of crisis and workplace violence in the future.

Summarize key components of a Workplace Violence Prevention Policy.

Explain how you will communicate your response to this crisis both internally (to the company) and externally (to the public), and include any support or recompensing plans.

Answer 1

Date: 25.04.2018

Recipients: Production Manager, Safety and Quality Manager, HR manager, and Marketing Vice President

Subject: Crisis Management Issues

Dear Colleagues,

            Hope you are all fine and cheerful. Greetings!

            As you are all aware that the recent mishap faced by the company due to tampering of the formulations during production, important policy decisions need to be implemented. The production run was for making fresh batch of infant supplements for the upcoming quarter. Due to the negligent behavior of one our employees, the company has incurred substantial financial loss and reputation in the market. Also, some of our employs too are victims of the quality negligence. Though we may be able to overcome the crisis using our cash reserves, it is almost impossible to reverse to our reputation. Even our own employees have lost trust in our products. It is important for us now to contain and manage the crisis, and take steps to prevent such occurring in future.     

            A cross functioning team need to be set up to respond to the crisis situation and manage the queries from the market. Representatives from the relevant department shall be the members of the team. The company has to recall the entire batch of the faulty formulation from the market and compensate the customers who were victims of the same. A campaign to reestablish faith in the company must be carried out soon. The proposed cross functioning team is required to implement these activities.

            Another unfortunate incident associated with this issue was the workplace violence. As all of you know that the employee who tampered with the formulation was terminated for negligence of duty. In response to the immediate termination, one of the supervisors who were managing the employee was assaulted by the coworkers of the terminated employee. We must all do our best to prevent work place violence and use civilized negotiation processes to resolve our issues. The mistake and negligence of the terminated employee is intolerable as the consequence of the failure of duty has serious negative outcomes. In this occasion we must educate our employees to use employee grievance procedures to resolve their issues.

            Another important task of the proposed cross functional team is to develop policies and awareness programs to prevent occurrence of crisis of this type. The cost of managing crisis is more than the preventive costs.

            With an appeal to take this matter seriously and contribute your creative suggestions to resolve this issue, I am closing this memo. I am looking forward to your response on this matter and soon meet you during a meeting to be convened for creating the proposed team. Meanwhile, if you have any queries, feel free to contact me.

Wishing you a good day!

Warm regards,

Frank Stewart

Vice President Safety and Quality

Cabot Nutrition Inc.