Fran Hayden Case Study Essay Example

justify">Although Fran understood what the MIS sector was responsible for, she was never assigned to a specific role in the department, and she was continuously finding herself with no work to do and she began to question why they needed four people in the department. Task Identity is a problem at Dairy Engineering and without assigning roles to employees it is almost impossible to expect them to work efficiently. Stress: Stress is the response of challenging or threatening situations to a person’s wellbeing in the workplace.

There are two different kinds of stress, which are eustress (positive) and distress (negative). In this case, Fran felt distress in the company because she thought she put a lot of effort into her work, but was not positively re-enforced for the work she had been doing. The lack of communication from her manager caused her to feel stressed when he took out his frustration on her. An example of this is when she was told by one manager to go an upcoming management workshop only to get in trouble from her manager for attending the workshop.

When Rob (Chief Accountant) told her that he would deal with the situation since he was the one that sent her to the workshop he never followed through. This negative influence also spread into Fran’s life, resulting in her fighting with her boyfriend. Therefore, the stress affected her in physiological, behavioral and psychological way. Peter (Fran’s boss) called her into his office and was attacking her in a verbal manor, causing exhaustion she had run out of ways to try and avoid the stress ultimately breaking her down. Job Satisfaction:

Job satisfaction is a vital part to obtaining efficient employees in the workplace.

Job satisfaction is measured by a number of things, the first thing being good leadership practices. The leadership roles are Dairy Engineering are quite sub-par, as Fran’s boss Peter was unable to explain to her what her role in the company was and also had no idea that she had gone off on a workshop. The second factor is a solid manager relationship, this is the most obvious lacking characteristic in this particular case, Fran and her manager have anything but a good relationship, and in my opinion it is all her managers fault.

He fails to acknowledge Fran’s strengths and is not able to help her deal with problems she is encountering in the workplace, nor does she feel she is able to talk to him about problems instead she feels the opposite she is afraid to approach him. The final factor towards job satisfaction is clear direction and objectives, the lack of direction was evident from day one for Fran as from the moment she walked into the MIS department she was unclear as to what she was supposed to be doing and until the end of her employment at the company she remained unclear as to what her objectives were.

What options exist to fix it? Build Organizational Commitment: The effective way to improve employees’ attitudes is to build organizational commitment. Management should express humanitarian values by being fair, and forgiving to employees. In order to build affective commitment employees must share the same values with the company, allowing employees to discuss their values and act

in a way that supports them can do this. Employee involvement will help improve their loyalty to the company, if they feel as if they are involved with decisions they will be more likely to work harder and more effectively.

Lastly employees must trust their managers, if an employee does not trust their supervisor; it makes it hard for them to feel comfortable in their work environment. Job design: In order to perform a job well, employees have to have accurate role perceptions. Job design is important when trying to fix inaccurate role perceptions and improve work efficiency. There are two main solutions that can fix this problem, job specialization and scientific management. Managers should recognize employees’ special skills or knowledge, and according to their specialties assign jobs that suit them accordingly.

The tasks that the managers assign to employees should be as specific as possible to make sure that their employees have accurate role perceptions allowing them to fully understand the required tasks. Furthermore, scientific management is also essential. The organization should combine the job specialization to develop a new way for employees to do things. Emotional Intelligence (EI): The emotional intelligence model is broken down into three parts, the awareness of your emotions, others emotions and the self-management of emotions.

Evidently Fran is able to manage her emotions quite well, but her boss Peter is not so good at managing his own. By not being able to manage his own emotions he is causing stress on Fran, and by failing to realize the emotions that she is displaying the weight is weighing down on her. Fran is aware of her

emotions and is able to express them in a way that affects as little people as possible, which is a positive trait to have in the work environment.

When Peter brings Fran into his office and rips into her for going to the management workshop without his permissions he is expressing his emotions in a non-productive way, and Fran is feeling overwhelmed by what he has to say. By becoming more aware of your emotions and others emotions you are better able to read people feelings and tailor what you have to say to them. Service Profit Chain Model: Although this case never discusses how the employees directly affect the customers, I think the service profit chain model would be a good fit to improve job satisfaction.

By beginning with improving the internal service quality, which consists of workplace design, job design, and employee rewards and recognition employees will feel more motivated in the office, positive reinforcement from employers will improve employee satisfaction in return stepping up employee productivity. By applying this model, Dairy Engineering will see a large change in their workplace environment and employee motivation allowing them to have efficient workers. Conclusion and So what? E. V. L. N Model: It is most likely that the E. V. L.

N model will be used by employees, the acronyms in this model stand for; Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect. This is best described as how employees respond to job dissatisfaction. As was stated in the case Fran requests for a transfer because of how her boss is mistreating her, this is the first step in the process. The second step is

by attempting to change, by Fran approaching the other manager she is attempting to solve the situation rather than run away from it. Fran exercised a bit of the third step by attempting to patiently wait out the situation hoping it would resolve itself.

The final step was not exercised by Fran, that step is characterized by showing forms of neglect towards your job, things like showing up late and being carefree when it comes to your work fall under this category. Building affective commitment: There are five main ways to build affective commitment. First the organization should to provide a fair working environment to its employees and to provide support to their employees, in order to cultivate a higher loyalty level. Shared values will also motivates employees to stay with the organization.

The organization can match the values of employees and the organization in order to build affective commitment. Trust is also an issue that employees face. In order to earn the trust from employees, management should give employees reason to trust them, the first step towards that would be to trust the employees themselves. In order to increase employee involvement, employees’ need to feel as if they are a part of important decisions, by giving them more power to make important decisions they will feel more involved in the company.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy Cycle: The self-fulfilling prophecy cycle is made up of the outcome that is produced from the expectations of one person. By forming an expectation of someone you are likely to adjust your behavior towards that person to relate to that expectation, in return your behavior towards them will

affect their ability and motivation, which finally will make it more likely that their behavior becomes consistent with your expectation. If Fran’s manager had applied this theory from the beginning he could have set an expectation of Fran that she would have been more likely to successfully meet.