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Comprehensive Case Notes Page
Case 2
Repairing Jobs That Fail to Satisfy
Learning Goals
Companies often divide up work as a way to improve e ciency, but
these jobs.
Major Topic Areas
Job design
Job satisfaction
Personality
Emotional labor
The Scenario
and more customers from DrainFlow. Although her job at DrainFlow pays more,
Reynaldo isn’t happy with the way things are going. She’s noticed the work
environment just isn’t as vital or energetic as the environment she saw at
Lightning.
Reynaldo thinks the problem is that employees aren’t motivated to provide the type
plumbing problem.
Reynaldo is wondering whether DrainFlow’s job design might be contributing to its
problems in retaining customers. DrainFlow has about 2,000 employees in four basic
job categories: plumbers, plumber’s assistants, order processors, and billing
representatives. This structure is designed to keep costs as low as possible. Plumbers
make very high wages, whereas plumber’s assistants make about one-quarter of
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cost-effective strategy that has enabled DrainFlow to easily undercut the competition
when it comes to price. Order processors make even less than assistants but about
the same as billing processors. All work is very specialized, but employees are often
plumber’s assistant should make the service call. The job is then assigned
accordingly, and a service provider goes to the location. When the job has been
completed, via cell phone a billing representative relays the fee to the service rep,
who presents a bill to the customer for payment. Billing representatives can take
customers’ credit card payments by phone or e-mail an invoice for online payment.
The Problem
they aren’t customers at all! The remaining 75 percent of calls that did end in a
customer service encounter resulted in other problems.
The most frequent complaints Reynaldo found in the customer surveys were about
response time and cost, especially when the wrong person was sent to a job.
A plumber’s assistant cannot complete a more technically complicated job. The
Plumber.
“When I arrive at a job I can’t take care of,” says plumber’s assistant Jim Larson, “the
customer gets ticked o'. They thought they were getting a licensed plumber, since
they were calling for a plumber. Telling them they have to have someone else come
out doesn’t go over well.”
On the other hand, when a plumber responds to a job easily handled by a plumber’s
Susie McCarty is one of DrainFlow’s order processors. She’s frustrated too when the
wrong person is sent to a job but feels she and the other order processors are doing
the best they can. “We have a survey we’re supposed to follow with the calls to )nd
out what the problem is and who needs to take the job,” she explains.
“The customers don’t know that we have a standard form, so they think we can
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Comprehensive Case Notes Page
talking about. A plumber would, but we’re not plumbers; we just take the calls.”
Customer service issues also involve the billing representatives. They are the ones
who have to keep contacting customers about payment. “It’s not my fault the wrong
satistied, and it’s the billing representatives who take the brunt of their negative
reactions on the phone.
As you can probably tell, all employees have to engage in emotional labor, as
described in your textbook, and many lack the skills or personality traits to
complete the customer interaction component of their jobs. They aren’t trained to
and coworkers taxing.
A couple of years ago a management consulting company was hired to survey
DrainFlow worker attitudes. The results showed they were less satistied than workers
in other comparable jobs. The following table provides a breakdown of respondent
satisfaction levels across a number of categories:
DrainFlow
Plumbers
DrainFlow
Plumber
Assistants
DrainFlow
O ce
Workers
Average
Plumber
Average
O ce
Worker
I am satistied with the
work I am asked to do.
3.7 2.5 2.5 4.3 3.5
I am satistied with my
working conditions.
3.8 2.4 3.7 4.1 4.2
I am satistied with my
interactions with
coworkers.
3.5 3.2 2.7 3.8 3.9
I am satistied with my
interactions with my
supervisor
2.5 2.3 2.2 3.5 3.4
major issue.
The Proposed Solution
The company is in trouble, and as revenues shrink and the cost savings that were
supposed to be achieved by dividing up work fail to materialize, a change seems
to be in order.
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harder to satisfy customers. Because it’s not easy to measure how satistied people
are with the initial call-in, Reynaldo would like to give the order processors a small
reward for every 20 calls successfully completed. For the hands-on work, she’d like to
provided.
Reynaldo also wants to )nd people who are a better )t with the company’s new
goals. Current hiring procedure relies on unstructured interviews with each location’s
general manager, and little consistency is found in the way these managers choose
employees. Most lack training in customer service and organizational behavior.
Reynaldo thinks it would be better if hiring methods were standardized across all
the job.
Your Assignment
Your task is to prepare a report for Reynaldo on the potential effectiveness of her
cash reward and structured interview programs. Make certain it is in the form of
a professional business document that you’d actually give to an experienced
manager at this level of a fairly large corporation. Reynaldo is very smart when it
company.
When you write, make sure you touch on the following points:
CC-11. Although it’s clear employees are not especially satistied with their work, do
you think this is a reason for concern? Does research suggest satistied
workers are actually better at their jobs? Are any other behavioral outcomes
associated with job satisfaction?
their jobs.
CC-13. Reynaldo has a somewhat vague idea about how to implement the cash
rewards system. Describe some of the specific ways you would make the
reward system work better, based on the case.
CC-14. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of using financial incentives in a
program of this nature. What, if any, potential problems might arise if
types of incentives might be considered?
CC-15.Create a specific plan to assess whether the reward system is working. What
are the dependent variables that should change if the system works? How
will you go about measuring success?
CC-16. What types of hiring recommendations would you make to )nd people better
suited for these jobs? Which Big Five personality traits would be useful for the
customer service responsibilities and emotional labor?
Case Discussion
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The case’s discussion points are:
associated with job satisfaction?
Suggested discussion: In general research reported in the text suggests
that job satisfaction and productivity are strongly related. In addition, job
satisfaction does have strong relationships with other organizational
behavioral concerns such as turnover, absenteeism, organizational citizenship
behavior, customer satisfaction, and workplace deviance.
their jobs.
Suggested discussion:
Current hiring practices do not meet the suggestions of the Job Characteristics
Model. Instead of focusing consistently on the Core job Dimensions, managers
are allowed to pursue individual interview techniques and topics. The result is
divergence in capabilities of employees. The current organizational policies
components of the model.
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CC-13. Reynaldo has a somewhat vague idea about how to implement the cash
rewards system. Describe some of the specific ways you would make the
subject to perceptions of favoritism among employees. As suggested in the
textbook, other measures could be used that provide more directed reward.
Merit-based pay or skill-based pay could focus on the skills of employees as
measured by training or education to acquire skills. Gainsharing based on
teams of plumbers and order processors could also provide more effective
incentive for group performance.
types of incentives might be considered?
Suggested discussion: Some people may try to manipulate a system that is
based on money as the incentive. Objectives may change from attempting to
fully satisfy customers to doing enough to complete the job and quickly move
to the next job. To appeal to other motivational concepts, the rewards could
be such things as profit sharing, stock ownership, Nexible benefits, or extrinsic
reward programs.
will you go about measuring success?
Suggested discussion: The response to this issue will vary as students
identify the productivity measures that can serve as the base for evaluation.
Measures could include: customer satisfaction, employee appraisals, job
reports, or callbacks. Measures such as number of jobs should be avoided.
Measures to evaluate success of the firm could be profitability, turnover and
customer service responsibilities and emotional labor?
Suggested discussion: Recommendations will vary by student. Most
responses will focus on job design identification of skills, emotions, attitudes,
and opinions signiticant to job performance. Recruiting and selection should
focus on matching potential employees’ traits to the job’s needs. Such
matching has been shown to lead to higher job satisfaction and productivity.
The Big Five traits are:
agreeableness are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
c. Conscientiousness. The conscientiousness dimension is a measure of
reliability. A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized,
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easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
d. Emotional stability. The emotional stability dimension—often labeled
by its converse, neuroticism—taps a person’s ability to withstand
stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm,
self-con)dent, and secure. Those with high negative scores tend to be
nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
comfort in the familiar.
All )ve of these traits would seem to be signiticant to customer service job
performance.
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