employees

employees CAST STUDY  solution

Please read the cases and answer the questions given at the end :

CASE I

Raman who manages the personnel department of an industrial plant of about 500 employees, recently distributed to all employees a detailed questionnaire that required the employees to fill in information pertaining to their job title, number of years with the organisation, salary drawn and description of their job responsibilities. The form stated that the purpose of the questionnaire would be to provide the management with an updated material concerning job classifications. It was also indicated that all employees should return the forms on or before the coming Friday, which gave the employees five days to fill the needed information. Raman announced to each department that he would visit the plant on Friday morning and collect the forms that had not yet been returned to the personnel department. The updating of the job classifications was requested by the plant manager. The reason was to review all the job duties with the possibility of reclassifying some of the positions, and to provide in some cases a more equitable pay structure. At the end of the week, before Raman's visit of the plant, less than 20 per cent of the questionnaires had been returned to the personnel department. After visiting the plant, Raman had collected only an additional 15 forms. As the response was poor, Raman contacted the plant manager and other management officials and sought their co-operation. There appears to be a problem between line and staff, more specifically the passing of information from one to the other.

Questions :

(a) What consequences will the line personnel face as a result of not filling out the questionnaire ?

(b) How could Raman have made his communication more effective ?

CASE II

Ramnath is the supervisor of 35 persons in the business office of Electronic Corporation. The company is a fast-growing corporation and employs a total of 700 people from the local community. Due to the rapid and continual growth rate that the corporation is experiencing, Ramnath has been informed by higher management that the accounting and payroll functions of the office will be computerised. Ramnath has been told by the vice-president of the Corporation that it is his responsibility to inform the corporate office about his plans to computerise accounting and payroll and that he will also be incharge of working with the employees who will be directly affected by the change. Of the 35 employees in the office, 15 will be required to adjust to their job responsibilities and 10 will require training in the use of computers. Many office employees voiced concern for the proposed change. They felt that the use of computers would eventually place all of them out of work.

 Questions :

 (a) If you were Ramnath, how would you go about informing the office employees of the change-over to the use of computers ?

 (b) What action plan Ramnath should adopt for encouraging his employees to accept the change ?