Scenario:
You are the Organisational Development Manager for a large telecommunications company. Your company provides the infrastructure for all communications in the country. All broadband networks and mobile phone infrastructure. You also retail internet and mobile services to the community.
Key organizational facts
- It is a large company with approximately 4,000 employees and a further 4,000 contractors
- The company runs a call centre, 24hrs a day, for retail sales and a separate call centre 24hrs a day for technical support.
- The company has technicians on the road in vans, doing connections and technical support.
- Most office employees work Monday to Friday 8am-5pm, but call centres operate 8hr shifts (7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm and 11pm-7am) and technicians mostly work 2 days, 2 nights and have 4 days off.
- Twelve months ago, the organisation announced a restructure and 1,000 people lost their jobs (they were made redundant). At the same time, organizational performance targets have been held steady.
- The change has resulted in 1,000 employees leaving, there has been a redistribution of their tasks to those left behind. This means their workloads have increased.
- Some of the staff leaving were managers and this has resulted in those left behind having more staff reporting to them. So their ‘span of control’ is wider.
- The Managing Director who made the changes left the organization three months after they were implemented. The new MD has made sweeping changes to the senior leadership team. These new managers in turn have mostly implemented new ideas for how their sections and departments should be run and set new performance targets.
Your Task:
Pick one of the topics below and write your report on this topic addressing the questions as part of your report.
Use the scenario as a start point. If you need to make up more organizational facts to support your discussion, you should make clear reference to these in your paper. In preparation consult the prescribed course literature as well as conducting your own search for additional appropriate research and theoretical material.
Topic 1: Work Stress
Consider the scenario above. This company has clearly been going through significant organisational change. A survey has revealed that the staff feel a great deal of added work pressure. They say they are picking up the extra work from the loss of the 1,000 colleagues who were made redundant. They report feeling overwhelmed and 11% report they intend quitting in the next 12 months.
- Describe and analyse the probable sources of stress resulting from the organizational change.
- Discuss the probable impacts of elevated stress on employee engagement, satisfaction and retention as well as performance?
- Describe strategies that operational managers might adopt to best manage the stress of their teams? Outline recommended strategies as well as practices to avoid.
Topic 2: Mental Health at Work
Consider the scenario above. The number of employees making use of the sponsored Employee Assistance Program (EAP) has doubled in the last 12 months, from 9% to 18% usage. The provider reports a large increase in depression and anxiety issues. You have been asked to conduct a risk assessment to identify the psychosocial risks in the workplace and make recommendations for developing a mentally healthy workplace.
- What is a mentally healthy workplace?
- How would you go about doing the risk assessment to identify the psychosocial risks and what would the intended outcomes be?
- What recommendations would you put forward to the organisation for developing a mentally healthy workplace? Provide careful supported justification for your recommendations.
Topic 3: Workplace Safety
Consider the scenario above. This company has reported that in the last 12 months, their safety performance has deteriorated. They have gone from having had almost no Lost Time Injuries (LTIs) to an average of 2.3 LTIs per month. In addition, there is now an average of 4 medical treatment cases a week. The company has also seen an increase in traffic accidents involving Corporate vehicles with the average moving from 1 to 4 per month.
- How might the organizational change be impacting on safety behavior and safety culture?
- What do we know about the connection between safety culture and safety behaviour and performance?
- What recommendations do you have for Corporate management regarding addressing the growing safety problems in the organisation. Explain and carefully justify your recommendations.
Topic 4: Fatigue and Shift Work
Consider the scenario above. This company operates a number of different shift systems and has a number of workers doing night shifts. There is some evidence that these different rosters may not be helping with performance and productivity and it appears that some employees are concerned with the fairness of the different shift systems in place.
- Provide a critical overview of what is known about shift work, its impacts, and what makes the best rosters.
- What recommendations do you have for the Corporate leadership regarding the shift rosters in place in the organisation? Carefully justify any strategies you recommend relating to changing or retaining the existing system.
Topic 5: Work-Life Conflict
Consider the scenario above. This company operates a number of different shift systems and has a number of workers doing night shifts. They also have recently laid employees off resulting in a redistribution and increase in workloads for remaining employees. Some are reporting doing overtime at least every second shift.
- Provide a critical overview of what is known about work-life conflict and work-life balance.
- What recommendations do you have for the leaders regarding how they can better support worklife balance and reduce work-life conflict. Carefully support your discussion with reference to the literature. Discuss things you would recommend and why, as well as things you would not recommend and why.
Topic 6: Work Transitions
Consider the scenario above. This company has been going through a large amount of organisational change and has laid off a significant number of staff members. Some of the staff took voluntary redundancy packages while others faced forced redundancy. The changes have also resulted in significant rearrangement of work roles and leadership arrangements within the organisation.
- Critically discuss the possible work transition impacts of a downsizing process, such as occurred in this organization. Consider the situation for both those who lose their jobs and the survivors.
- What strategies do you recommend the organization adopts to best manage work transition issues should further staff losses become necessary? Carefully describe and justify your recommendations for strategies that should and should not be followed.
