Ethical Dilemmas of Work Redesign in HR Management You are an HR manager for a l

Question

Ethical Dilemmas of Work Redesign in HR Management You are an HR manager for a large pharmaceutical plant that manufactures several over-the-counter and prescription medicines. The Plant’s highly specialized jobs increase efficiency but leave workers in the plant feeling bored. Employee Satisfaction Survey results clearly indicate that employees feel their jobs are not very satisfying. The employee turnover rate in the Plant is also higher than you would like to see it. Employee retention is a big issue. The costs to recruit, orient, and train new employees has been on the rise. Last week you and the Operations Manager from your Plant took a tour of another pharmaceutical plant in a different company. You were paying special attention to how this company designed the jobs of the manufacturing employees. You discovered that jobs within your Plant could be changed to make them more challenging and stimulating, with a relatively small loss of efficiency. You realize, however, that increasing the complexity of the jobs could result in increased wages and salaries. And, higher labor costs might result in the company closing your plant and moving the work to Mexico or China. You are wondering whether your Plant should keep the standardized but boring jobs or should the jobs be re-designed and improved?

Case Questions 1. What are the ethical issues in this situation? 2. What are the basic arguments for and against each course of action? (Leaving the jobs as they are or redesigning them) 3. What do you think most managers would do? 4. What would you do?

Explanation / Answer

1. What are the ethical issues in this situation?

Increasing the job complexity increases the wages and salaries of employees. The company may shut down the plant if the cost increases. The workers may be left jobless.

But if we continue the same work processes, the jobs get boring and mundane for the workers. The worker's potentials are not realized completely. Workers have a duty to put their fullest effort, but without proper motivating factors, this can be difficult. Employees’ satisfaction comes down and turnover rate increases. The cp0mpany keep moving at this pace and progression is not possible. The company has a duty to keep employees motivated

2. What are the basic arguments for and against each course of action? (Leaving the jobs as they are or redesigning them)

Redesign them – redesign will change the dynamics and improve employee satisfaction and motivation. It will also improve productivity and decreased turnover. The company is ethically obliged to keep employees motivated. There may be cost savings due to decreased new recruitment and training. We can also have spillover of the improvements into metric like quality, service level etc.,

Leave the jobs as they are- Increasing the cost may lead to plant shutdown which is a huge financial loss for employees. Having a job is better than having nothing.

3. What do you think most managers would do?

Most managers would leave it as such since they do not want to risk by increasing costs. They may resort to other alternatives.

4. What would you do?

I will try for other methods that may increase motivation by increasing the variety of jobs.

·Job enlargement – combine new tasks into an employee’s job duties. This results in increased challenge and increased productivity

·Job rotation where employees are moved from one to another job, without increasing task complexity. This may require less training and less cost increase

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse E
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.