You are a supervisor in Elegant Garments Manufacturing . Employees have fallen i
ID: 418681 • Letter: Y
Question
You are a supervisor in Elegant Garments Manufacturing. Employees have fallen into the habit of
coming to work, signing in and then going to breakfast, at least ½ to ¾ of an hour is lost per
employee. Most of the employees get to work by public transportation and do not have time to
get breakfast before leaving home. As supervisors you are all under a good deal of pressure
from the business owners to do something about it. Privately you all acknowledged the
organization has a real problem, but in fact nothing has been done about it.
Rather, you all schedule yourselves in your offices during the first hour of the day, under the
guise of using that hour for planning the next day’s work. Each supervisor intuitively sensed
that to take action would be unpopular, and would bring criticism from both supervisory
colleagues and from employees for trying to win points with management.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that some employees have work-related
justification for being away from their primary work area and in contact with employees
in different sections.
Fifteen supervisors report to three managers. A group of you get together and decided to
look at the problem, as morale seems to be affected and production figures are beginning to
dip and that might affect the annual bonus payment plan.
1. Please analyze this case study.
Explanation / Answer
I believe that this is a very common issue in an organization and almost all organizations experience a similar kind of issue on a regular basis. I believe that instead of restricting employees to take this break, the organization can actually allocate a particular window for employees which they can use for their breakfast and other activities as well. The time for planning can be allocated after this break is taken although production figures look a bit on the lower side because of this loss of man hours, hence the organization can actually not include this break as part of the working hours initially, so that the production numbers look fine again and it can help the organizations boost the morale.
I believe that micro management needs to be avoided in such cases and focus should be on the performance and efficiency instead of the whereabouts of the employees because such attitude actually ruin the environment of work and the performance is affected for obvious reasons.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.