Quiz 10: Managing Employees Performance

Office Workers Appreciate Help Balancing Roles and Learning New Skills Office workers who were asked which aspect of their job contributes most to their satisfaction were almost equally split in picking work-life balance or learning opportunities. This study by OfficeTeam did not offer "meaningful work" as one of the choices. In a separate, international study by Mercer, company representatives said the top three factors that keep their employees engaged are respectful treatment, work-life balance, and the type of work they do. Aspect of Job Most Tied to Satisfaction (%) How would you predict the OfficeTeam responses would change if the available responses included meaningful work? Why?

Embarrassed by an Executive Exodus Usually, when executives leave an organization, they make polite statements about new opportunities and a desire to spend time with family. In that context, the statements made by some former executives of Pabst Brewing Company are startling. Within about the first year after the company was purchased by C. Dean Metropoulos and his two sons in 2010, more than two dozen of its executives quit. Former chief executive officer Kevin Kotecki told a reporter, "Just about everything that I'd been working on or trying to accomplish ended up not being part of the plan going forward." And Bryan Clarke, former vice president of marketing said this about the new owners' strategy: "I want it to fail." What was behind this public embarrassment? The Metropouloses haven't commented publicly on the leadership situation, but some information offers clues. Former Pabst executives including Kotecki, Clarke, and former marketing director Kyle Wortham had for several years enjoyed a sense of mission as they resurrected tired beer brands by talking to former customers and researching old brewing methods. They restored beloved formulas for brands such as Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, and Old Style. As beer drinkers reacquainted themselves with the brands, sales and profits soared along with the brands' reputations. Pabst Brewing became an enticing target for the Metropouloses. However, after the acquisition, as the new owners expressed their goals to the company's executives, they didn't talk about learning the tastes of the regions served by each brand. They instead laid out ideas for promoting the brands more vigorously through advertising and celebrity endorsements. In what some saw as a sign of lack of commitment to local communities, the new owners moved the corporate headquarters from Woodridge, Illinois, near Chicago, to Los Angeles. As they pushed forward, sales growth slowed, and executives say their past contributions were devalued. One by one, they began leaving the company, with the departures including the chief executive officer, chief operating officer, and a series of two chief marketing officers. Some were so frustrated they publicly aired their difficulties in dealing with their new bosses. Based on the information available, could the new owners of Pabst Brewing have prevented this high level of turnover at the top? Should they have prevented this employee turnover? Why or why not?

A Termination Controversy at Jet Propulsion Laboratory Occasionally, disputes in the workplace arise over matters that are controversial yet close to employees' hearts. In those situations, managers rely on human resource professionals to help them resolve the disputes constructively, with respect for the feelings of everyone involved. When efforts fail, the result can be extremely problematic, as a recent situation involving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory illustrates. JPL hires some of the top technical talent in the United States to create innovative designs for carrying out complex missions. One of those talented employees was David Coppedge, a systems administrator who for 15 years worked on NASA's Cassini mission to explore the solar system. He maintained computer networks and solved technical problems related to those networks. During part of that time, Coppedge served as team leader, a linking role between the managers and technicians involved with the mission. However, JPL demoted Coppedge in 2009, and two years later, the organization laid off Coppedge along with 200 other employees. After his demotion, Coppedge claimed he had been discriminated against on religious grounds. After the layoff, Coppedge added wrongful termination to his lawsuit against JPL on the grounds it had terminated him in retaliation for the discrimination complaint. What went wrong? While the trial is still under way as this case is being written, enough facts are on record to identify issues relevant to human resource management. Coppedge, his managers, and co-workers agree that besides being a computer expert, he was known at JPL for his commitment to evangelical Christianity. In particular, he advocated his views favoring Intelligent Design, a religious understanding of the origins of the universe. In Coppedge's complaint, he charges that JPL harassed, demoted, and terminated him for expressing those views, yet the company did not punish other workers who disagreed with him. JPL's response to these charges was that Coppedge did not merely express a religious view. Rather, according to JPL, Coppedge engaged in disruptive behavior. More than a dozen people had complained to Coppedge's supervisor that he was stubborn and unpleasant to interact with. However, Coppedge noted that co-worker complaints were that he was lending them DVDs on Intelligent Design and objecting to the name of the "holiday" pot-luck in December, complaints that Coppedge perceived as harassment of him based on religion. JPL has insisted in court testimony that it focused on Coppedge's job-related behaviors, not on his beliefs. JPL's lawyer argued that Coppedge was told, "We have no problem with people discussing religion or politics in the office, as long as it's not unwelcome or disruptive." JPL also pointed out that when Coppedge was laid off, so were many others, following cuts in funding and as the Cassini project was nearing its end. Coppedge maintains that supervisors criticized him for "pushing religion" and told him not to discuss religion at all, or else he could be fired. He said JPL did not inform him that co-workers did not want to engage in religious discussions, but did tell him it was his duty to interpret their body language. Coppedge also said JPL told him he had violated the organization's policy against harassment as well as its policy related to ethics and business conduct. Personnel records show positive evaluations of Coppedge's work. Imagine you were a human resource manager at JPL and were asked to address employee complaints about David Coppedge. How would you distinguish the relevant work-related behaviors from differences in religious views? What advice about behavior would you give to Coppedge? His co-workers? His supervisor?

Give an example of voluntary turnover and an example of involuntary turnover. Why should organizations try to reduce both kinds of turnover?

HOW CAN ETHICS PROMOTE JOB SATISFACTION? Not only do most organizations want their people to behave ethically, there is some evidence that employees want their managers and employers to behave ethically as well. Thus, promoting ethical conduct is not only the moral thing for an organization to do, it also may support employee engagement. In their research on leadership, for example, James Kouzes and Barry Posner have found that individuals around the world want their leaders to be honest. Evidently, if employees are going to follow someone's lead, they want to believe the person when he or she says where they all are going. Employees want to believe they can trust the people who are in charge. One way managers provide this kind of leadership is to embrace the qualities of a "servant leader." Servant leadership involves leading with honesty, humility, integrity, and a focus on results. These qualities can be learned and developed. John Heer introduced the practice of servant leadership to North Mississippi Health Services, where he is chief executive. As managers at all levels learned to be servant leaders, employee satisfaction scores rose dramatically. So did patient and physician satisfaction-and financial performance as well. Interestingly, there also seems to be some research showing satisfaction and ethics working in the opposite direction. That is, when employees are satisfied with their jobs and want to stay with the organization, they tend to make ethical decisions to a greater degree than employees who are not satisfied. The satisfied employees also tend to be more cooperative and more inclined to help out their co-workers. Suppose you work in the HR department of an organization that wants to improve the job satisfaction of its employees. How might promoting ethical leadership contribute to this goal? How would you make the case for that effort?

Stryker's Striking Commitment to Employee Engagement Stryker's 20,000 employees design, make, and sell medical and surgical equipment as varied as hospital beds, spinal implants, and power tools for use in surgery. The company runs 30 manufacturing and R D locations in the United States, Europe, and China, and it sells products in 89 countries around the world. To run such complex operations and deliver products that must meet exacting standards to protect the patients who benefit from them, Stryker needs an extremely talented and dedicated workforce. In one sign that the company has risen to the challenge, it recently landed a spot on Fortune's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Employees seeking help with work-life balance can take advantage of telecommuting, job sharing, and a compressed workweek. Career development is aided by 100 hours per year of training for hourly employees and 120 hours per year for salaried employees. The company's voluntary turnover rate is 8%. But where Stryker stands out as an employer is its dedication to promoting employee engagement. Take the case of Stryker's product development and production facility in Freiburg, Germany, which specializes in navigation systems used in computer-assisted surgery. Stryker Navigation was preparing to tackle shortcomings in the production process and realized that teams in the facility were not cooperating. Stryker hired Gallup Management to conduct a survey of employee engagement and teamwork and compare the results for each team and the facility as a whole against standards developed by Gallup in its work with other organizations. Gallup found that although Stryker Navigation had above-average employee engagement for Germany at that time, only 32% of its employees were engaged. Scores were low in the areas of employees knowing what was expected of them and having the resources they needed to do their jobs. Guided by the Gallup consultants, Stryker addressed those problems for each team. A year later, employees retook the engagement survey. This time, 64% of employees were engaged. To ensure that engagement remains important, Stryker Navigation holds monthly reviews of its action plans and shares the results with employees. It continues measuring engagement annually; so far, the improvement continues. At the same time, teams in Freiberg are collaborating more effectively, and the facility's output and quality have risen. Not long afterward, Stryker realized it needed to bring the lessons from Germany to the United States. At its orthopedics facility in Mahwah, New Jersey, employees were above average for a U.S. company: 48% of employees were engaged (versus 28% for the United States overall), 37% not engaged (versus 53%), and 15% actively disengaged (versus 19%). But above average is not good enough for Stryker; the company wanted a highly engaged workforce that can deliver exceptional results. Stryker sent the Mahwah facility one of its experts: Sabine Krummel-Mihajlovic, senior human resources director for continental Europe. She learned that the managers in New Jersey administered the engagement surveys, but had not been acting on the results. Consequently, employees lacked trust in the process. Krummel-Mihajlovic trained the facility's leadership in the importance of employee engagement. Then, to demonstrate her deep commitment to the process, she announced that she would attend every team's meeting to review feedback from the survey and create an action plan. Her commitment would represent 55 planning meetings. Krummel-Mihajlovic saw that some managers skillfully led the planning meetings. These managers tended to lead teams with high engagement scores. She targeted the managers with low scores and worked with them individually to help them interpret the scores and figure out what they needed so they could help their team improve. Often, these managers needed training in how to lead more effectively. Then, to keep the process moving forward without her direct involvement, Krummel-Mihajlovic gathered the names of informal leaders in each team and assembled them into a group that would meet monthly to discuss a driver of engagement and figure out how to improve in that area. Finally, she crafted ways to communicate how management was responding to all the ideas and action plans generated, and she arranged a dinner party to recognize those who had contributed to improving engagement. Less than a year later, the employees retook the engagement survey. In that short time, scores improved to 57% engaged, 32% not engaged, and 11% actively disengaged. At that point, Krummel-Mihajlovic was offered a promotion in Europe, so the Mahwah plant's commitment to engagement would have to endure without her. What impact would you expect Stryker's efforts to have on voluntary turnover? Why?

Embarrassed by an Executive Exodus Usually, when executives leave an organization, they make polite statements about new opportunities and a desire to spend time with family. In that context, the statements made by some former executives of Pabst Brewing Company are startling. Within about the first year after the company was purchased by C. Dean Metropoulos and his two sons in 2010, more than two dozen of its executives quit. Former chief executive officer Kevin Kotecki told a reporter, "Just about everything that I'd been working on or trying to accomplish ended up not being part of the plan going forward." And Bryan Clarke, former vice president of marketing said this about the new owners' strategy: "I want it to fail." What was behind this public embarrassment? The Metropouloses haven't commented publicly on the leadership situation, but some information offers clues. Former Pabst executives including Kotecki, Clarke, and former marketing director Kyle Wortham had for several years enjoyed a sense of mission as they resurrected tired beer brands by talking to former customers and researching old brewing methods. They restored beloved formulas for brands such as Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, and Old Style. As beer drinkers reacquainted themselves with the brands, sales and profits soared along with the brands' reputations. Pabst Brewing became an enticing target for the Metropouloses. However, after the acquisition, as the new owners expressed their goals to the company's executives, they didn't talk about learning the tastes of the regions served by each brand. They instead laid out ideas for promoting the brands more vigorously through advertising and celebrity endorsements. In what some saw as a sign of lack of commitment to local communities, the new owners moved the corporate headquarters from Woodridge, Illinois, near Chicago, to Los Angeles. As they pushed forward, sales growth slowed, and executives say their past contributions were devalued. One by one, they began leaving the company, with the departures including the chief executive officer, chief operating officer, and a series of two chief marketing officers. Some were so frustrated they publicly aired their difficulties in dealing with their new bosses. What problems resulted from the way the company's leaders handled the turnover? How could they have prevented these problems?

A Termination Controversy at Jet Propulsion Laboratory Occasionally, disputes in the workplace arise over matters that are controversial yet close to employees' hearts. In those situations, managers rely on human resource professionals to help them resolve the disputes constructively, with respect for the feelings of everyone involved. When efforts fail, the result can be extremely problematic, as a recent situation involving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory illustrates. JPL hires some of the top technical talent in the United States to create innovative designs for carrying out complex missions. One of those talented employees was David Coppedge, a systems administrator who for 15 years worked on NASA's Cassini mission to explore the solar system. He maintained computer networks and solved technical problems related to those networks. During part of that time, Coppedge served as team leader, a linking role between the managers and technicians involved with the mission. However, JPL demoted Coppedge in 2009, and two years later, the organization laid off Coppedge along with 200 other employees. After his demotion, Coppedge claimed he had been discriminated against on religious grounds. After the layoff, Coppedge added wrongful termination to his lawsuit against JPL on the grounds it had terminated him in retaliation for the discrimination complaint. What went wrong? While the trial is still under way as this case is being written, enough facts are on record to identify issues relevant to human resource management. Coppedge, his managers, and co-workers agree that besides being a computer expert, he was known at JPL for his commitment to evangelical Christianity. In particular, he advocated his views favoring Intelligent Design, a religious understanding of the origins of the universe. In Coppedge's complaint, he charges that JPL harassed, demoted, and terminated him for expressing those views, yet the company did not punish other workers who disagreed with him. JPL's response to these charges was that Coppedge did not merely express a religious view. Rather, according to JPL, Coppedge engaged in disruptive behavior. More than a dozen people had complained to Coppedge's supervisor that he was stubborn and unpleasant to interact with. However, Coppedge noted that co-worker complaints were that he was lending them DVDs on Intelligent Design and objecting to the name of the "holiday" pot-luck in December, complaints that Coppedge perceived as harassment of him based on religion. JPL has insisted in court testimony that it focused on Coppedge's job-related behaviors, not on his beliefs. JPL's lawyer argued that Coppedge was told, "We have no problem with people discussing religion or politics in the office, as long as it's not unwelcome or disruptive." JPL also pointed out that when Coppedge was laid off, so were many others, following cuts in funding and as the Cassini project was nearing its end. Coppedge maintains that supervisors criticized him for "pushing religion" and told him not to discuss religion at all, or else he could be fired. He said JPL did not inform him that co-workers did not want to engage in religious discussions, but did tell him it was his duty to interpret their body language. Coppedge also said JPL told him he had violated the organization's policy against harassment as well as its policy related to ethics and business conduct. Personnel records show positive evaluations of Coppedge's work. How might alternative dispute resolution techniques have helped JPL resolve this dispute between Coppedge and his co-workers?

A member of a restaurant's serving staff is chronically late for work. From the organization's point of view, what fairness issues are involved in deciding how to handle this situation? In what ways might the employees' and other servers' ideas of fairness be different?

HOW CAN ETHICS PROMOTE JOB SATISFACTION? Not only do most organizations want their people to behave ethically, there is some evidence that employees want their managers and employers to behave ethically as well. Thus, promoting ethical conduct is not only the moral thing for an organization to do, it also may support employee engagement. In their research on leadership, for example, James Kouzes and Barry Posner have found that individuals around the world want their leaders to be honest. Evidently, if employees are going to follow someone's lead, they want to believe the person when he or she says where they all are going. Employees want to believe they can trust the people who are in charge. One way managers provide this kind of leadership is to embrace the qualities of a "servant leader." Servant leadership involves leading with honesty, humility, integrity, and a focus on results. These qualities can be learned and developed. John Heer introduced the practice of servant leadership to North Mississippi Health Services, where he is chief executive. As managers at all levels learned to be servant leaders, employee satisfaction scores rose dramatically. So did patient and physician satisfaction-and financial performance as well. Interestingly, there also seems to be some research showing satisfaction and ethics working in the opposite direction. That is, when employees are satisfied with their jobs and want to stay with the organization, they tend to make ethical decisions to a greater degree than employees who are not satisfied. The satisfied employees also tend to be more cooperative and more inclined to help out their co-workers. At this same organization, what impact would you expect the promotion of ethical leadership to have on employee turnover? Why?

Stryker's Striking Commitment to Employee Engagement Stryker's 20,000 employees design, make, and sell medical and surgical equipment as varied as hospital beds, spinal implants, and power tools for use in surgery. The company runs 30 manufacturing and R D locations in the United States, Europe, and China, and it sells products in 89 countries around the world. To run such complex operations and deliver products that must meet exacting standards to protect the patients who benefit from them, Stryker needs an extremely talented and dedicated workforce. In one sign that the company has risen to the challenge, it recently landed a spot on Fortune's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Employees seeking help with work-life balance can take advantage of telecommuting, job sharing, and a compressed workweek. Career development is aided by 100 hours per year of training for hourly employees and 120 hours per year for salaried employees. The company's voluntary turnover rate is 8%. But where Stryker stands out as an employer is its dedication to promoting employee engagement. Take the case of Stryker's product development and production facility in Freiburg, Germany, which specializes in navigation systems used in computer-assisted surgery. Stryker Navigation was preparing to tackle shortcomings in the production process and realized that teams in the facility were not cooperating. Stryker hired Gallup Management to conduct a survey of employee engagement and teamwork and compare the results for each team and the facility as a whole against standards developed by Gallup in its work with other organizations. Gallup found that although Stryker Navigation had above-average employee engagement for Germany at that time, only 32% of its employees were engaged. Scores were low in the areas of employees knowing what was expected of them and having the resources they needed to do their jobs. Guided by the Gallup consultants, Stryker addressed those problems for each team. A year later, employees retook the engagement survey. This time, 64% of employees were engaged. To ensure that engagement remains important, Stryker Navigation holds monthly reviews of its action plans and shares the results with employees. It continues measuring engagement annually; so far, the improvement continues. At the same time, teams in Freiberg are collaborating more effectively, and the facility's output and quality have risen. Not long afterward, Stryker realized it needed to bring the lessons from Germany to the United States. At its orthopedics facility in Mahwah, New Jersey, employees were above average for a U.S. company: 48% of employees were engaged (versus 28% for the United States overall), 37% not engaged (versus 53%), and 15% actively disengaged (versus 19%). But above average is not good enough for Stryker; the company wanted a highly engaged workforce that can deliver exceptional results. Stryker sent the Mahwah facility one of its experts: Sabine Krummel-Mihajlovic, senior human resources director for continental Europe. She learned that the managers in New Jersey administered the engagement surveys, but had not been acting on the results. Consequently, employees lacked trust in the process. Krummel-Mihajlovic trained the facility's leadership in the importance of employee engagement. Then, to demonstrate her deep commitment to the process, she announced that she would attend every team's meeting to review feedback from the survey and create an action plan. Her commitment would represent 55 planning meetings. Krummel-Mihajlovic saw that some managers skillfully led the planning meetings. These managers tended to lead teams with high engagement scores. She targeted the managers with low scores and worked with them individually to help them interpret the scores and figure out what they needed so they could help their team improve. Often, these managers needed training in how to lead more effectively. Then, to keep the process moving forward without her direct involvement, Krummel-Mihajlovic gathered the names of informal leaders in each team and assembled them into a group that would meet monthly to discuss a driver of engagement and figure out how to improve in that area. Finally, she crafted ways to communicate how management was responding to all the ideas and action plans generated, and she arranged a dinner party to recognize those who had contributed to improving engagement. Less than a year later, the employees retook the engagement survey. In that short time, scores improved to 57% engaged, 32% not engaged, and 11% actively disengaged. At that point, Krummel-Mihajlovic was offered a promotion in Europe, so the Mahwah plant's commitment to engagement would have to endure without her. What should Stryker do about the workers who remain "actively disengaged"?

A Termination Controversy at Jet Propulsion Laboratory Occasionally, disputes in the workplace arise over matters that are controversial yet close to employees' hearts. In those situations, managers rely on human resource professionals to help them resolve the disputes constructively, with respect for the feelings of everyone involved. When efforts fail, the result can be extremely problematic, as a recent situation involving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory illustrates. JPL hires some of the top technical talent in the United States to create innovative designs for carrying out complex missions. One of those talented employees was David Coppedge, a systems administrator who for 15 years worked on NASA's Cassini mission to explore the solar system. He maintained computer networks and solved technical problems related to those networks. During part of that time, Coppedge served as team leader, a linking role between the managers and technicians involved with the mission. However, JPL demoted Coppedge in 2009, and two years later, the organization laid off Coppedge along with 200 other employees. After his demotion, Coppedge claimed he had been discriminated against on religious grounds. After the layoff, Coppedge added wrongful termination to his lawsuit against JPL on the grounds it had terminated him in retaliation for the discrimination complaint. What went wrong? While the trial is still under way as this case is being written, enough facts are on record to identify issues relevant to human resource management. Coppedge, his managers, and co-workers agree that besides being a computer expert, he was known at JPL for his commitment to evangelical Christianity. In particular, he advocated his views favoring Intelligent Design, a religious understanding of the origins of the universe. In Coppedge's complaint, he charges that JPL harassed, demoted, and terminated him for expressing those views, yet the company did not punish other workers who disagreed with him. JPL's response to these charges was that Coppedge did not merely express a religious view. Rather, according to JPL, Coppedge engaged in disruptive behavior. More than a dozen people had complained to Coppedge's supervisor that he was stubborn and unpleasant to interact with. However, Coppedge noted that co-worker complaints were that he was lending them DVDs on Intelligent Design and objecting to the name of the "holiday" pot-luck in December, complaints that Coppedge perceived as harassment of him based on religion. JPL has insisted in court testimony that it focused on Coppedge's job-related behaviors, not on his beliefs. JPL's lawyer argued that Coppedge was told, "We have no problem with people discussing religion or politics in the office, as long as it's not unwelcome or disruptive." JPL also pointed out that when Coppedge was laid off, so were many others, following cuts in funding and as the Cassini project was nearing its end. Coppedge maintains that supervisors criticized him for "pushing religion" and told him not to discuss religion at all, or else he could be fired. He said JPL did not inform him that co-workers did not want to engage in religious discussions, but did tell him it was his duty to interpret their body language. Coppedge also said JPL told him he had violated the organization's policy against harassment as well as its policy related to ethics and business conduct. Personnel records show positive evaluations of Coppedge's work. What else could JPL have done to maintain a productive work environment and prevent a discrimination lawsuit? (Consider, for example, the principles of justice and the factors associated with job satisfaction.)

For the situation in Question 2, how would a formal discipline policy help the organization address issues of fairness?

Stryker's Striking Commitment to Employee Engagement Stryker's 20,000 employees design, make, and sell medical and surgical equipment as varied as hospital beds, spinal implants, and power tools for use in surgery. The company runs 30 manufacturing and R D locations in the United States, Europe, and China, and it sells products in 89 countries around the world. To run such complex operations and deliver products that must meet exacting standards to protect the patients who benefit from them, Stryker needs an extremely talented and dedicated workforce. In one sign that the company has risen to the challenge, it recently landed a spot on Fortune's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Employees seeking help with work-life balance can take advantage of telecommuting, job sharing, and a compressed workweek. Career development is aided by 100 hours per year of training for hourly employees and 120 hours per year for salaried employees. The company's voluntary turnover rate is 8%. But where Stryker stands out as an employer is its dedication to promoting employee engagement. Take the case of Stryker's product development and production facility in Freiburg, Germany, which specializes in navigation systems used in computer-assisted surgery. Stryker Navigation was preparing to tackle shortcomings in the production process and realized that teams in the facility were not cooperating. Stryker hired Gallup Management to conduct a survey of employee engagement and teamwork and compare the results for each team and the facility as a whole against standards developed by Gallup in its work with other organizations. Gallup found that although Stryker Navigation had above-average employee engagement for Germany at that time, only 32% of its employees were engaged. Scores were low in the areas of employees knowing what was expected of them and having the resources they needed to do their jobs. Guided by the Gallup consultants, Stryker addressed those problems for each team. A year later, employees retook the engagement survey. This time, 64% of employees were engaged. To ensure that engagement remains important, Stryker Navigation holds monthly reviews of its action plans and shares the results with employees. It continues measuring engagement annually; so far, the improvement continues. At the same time, teams in Freiberg are collaborating more effectively, and the facility's output and quality have risen. Not long afterward, Stryker realized it needed to bring the lessons from Germany to the United States. At its orthopedics facility in Mahwah, New Jersey, employees were above average for a U.S. company: 48% of employees were engaged (versus 28% for the United States overall), 37% not engaged (versus 53%), and 15% actively disengaged (versus 19%). But above average is not good enough for Stryker; the company wanted a highly engaged workforce that can deliver exceptional results. Stryker sent the Mahwah facility one of its experts: Sabine Krummel-Mihajlovic, senior human resources director for continental Europe. She learned that the managers in New Jersey administered the engagement surveys, but had not been acting on the results. Consequently, employees lacked trust in the process. Krummel-Mihajlovic trained the facility's leadership in the importance of employee engagement. Then, to demonstrate her deep commitment to the process, she announced that she would attend every team's meeting to review feedback from the survey and create an action plan. Her commitment would represent 55 planning meetings. Krummel-Mihajlovic saw that some managers skillfully led the planning meetings. These managers tended to lead teams with high engagement scores. She targeted the managers with low scores and worked with them individually to help them interpret the scores and figure out what they needed so they could help their team improve. Often, these managers needed training in how to lead more effectively. Then, to keep the process moving forward without her direct involvement, Krummel-Mihajlovic gathered the names of informal leaders in each team and assembled them into a group that would meet monthly to discuss a driver of engagement and figure out how to improve in that area. Finally, she crafted ways to communicate how management was responding to all the ideas and action plans generated, and she arranged a dinner party to recognize those who had contributed to improving engagement. Less than a year later, the employees retook the engagement survey. In that short time, scores improved to 57% engaged, 32% not engaged, and 11% actively disengaged. At that point, Krummel-Mihajlovic was offered a promotion in Europe, so the Mahwah plant's commitment to engagement would have to endure without her. How can Stryker ensure that its progress on engagement continues in Mahwah?

The progressive discipline process described in this chapter is meant to be fair and understandable, but it tends to be slow. Try to think of two or three offenses that should result in immediate discharge, rather than follow all the steps of progressive discipline. Explain why you selected these offenses. If the dismissed employee sued, do you think the organization would be able to defend the action in court?

A risk of disciplining employees is that some employees retaliate. To avoid this risk, what organizational policies might encourage low-performing employees to leave while encouraging high-performers to stay? (Consider the sources of employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction discussed in the chapter.)

List forms of behavior that can signal job withdrawal. Choose one of the behaviors you listed and describe how you would respond if an otherwise valuable employee whom you supervised engaged in this kind of behavior.

What are the four factors that influence an employee's job dissatisfaction (or satisfaction)? Which of these do you think an employer can most easily change? Which would be the most expensive to change?

The section on principles of justice used noncompete agreements as an example. How would you expect the use of noncompete agreements to affect voluntary turnover? How might the use of these agreements affect job withdrawal and job satisfaction? Besides requiring noncompete agreements, how could an organization reduce the likelihood of employees leaving to work for competitors? Would these other methods have a better effect on employee satisfaction?

Consider your current job or a job you recently held. Overall, were you satisfied or dissatisfied with that job? How did your level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction affect your behavior on the job? Is your own experience consistent with this chapter's models of job withdrawal and job satisfaction?

Suppose you are an HR professional who convinced your company's management to conduct a survey of employee satisfaction. Your budget was limited and you could not afford a test that went into great detail. Rather, you investigated overall job satisfaction and learned that it is low, especially among employees in three departments. You know that management is concerned about spending a lot for HR programs because sales are in a slump, but you want to address the issue of low job satisfaction. Suggest some ways you might begin to make a difference, even with a small budget. How will you convince management to try your ideas?

Why are exit interviews important? Should an organization care about the opinion of people who are leaving? How are those opinions relevant to employee separation and retention?