Performance Management

Dr.Reham Adel
Case Study Report 1

The Best Laid Incentives

Plans
1/8/2015

Nada Samir Abbass Omar

MBA 2nd year 1st semester
2014 2016

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Performance Management Case

Business Details:
Diversified Consumers- durable Products

Individuals involved:
- Hiram the CFO
- sally and Frank external consultants
- Randall CEO
- Employees
- Meeting board members

Issues with business before hiring CFO:

- Company had just come out off a couple of awful quarters and there was a sudden slowdown in consumer spending
had taken place in the industry by surprise.
- Hiram CFO was hired 1 year ago when the company was suffering
- CEO is inspiring leader who focus on innovation and allowed his organization to become a little lax.
- No budget Integrity, no one fights hard at budget time because after a while no body looks at the budget
- Employees lacked discipline and structured training regimen
- There was a good potential
- Shipments were not monitored and no reliable metric was placed on customer service emphasizing although it was in
values and mission statement
- Policy that allowed current and retired employees to buy products at discount.
- Salesmen earned commissions based on the retail value not actual price paid, there were targets, prospecting new
clients, and updating account information
- checking is whether employee responded to email within 24hours of opening it

Issues happened after Hiram CFO Discussions:

- He focused on the numbers '' I would lead off with the best numbers'' didnt dig deep for the further reasons behind
numbers.
- He decided to reduce the labor cost, through identifying the low performers throughout the company and offered
then generous buyout packages, but when didnt attract enough takers, he forced a across the board headcount
reduction of 10% on all the units and affected people were given no financial assistance, which had lead to extra work
efforts and tasks on the remaining staff, and spread of frustration and negative energy and prospecting new clients, and
updating account information feeling unsecure, which would make talent employee seek other companies and a spread
of a bad employer branding through the recruitment market among people, and the layoff of best employees in
departments affected the talent pool of the company by losing valuable assets.
- Certain segments of workforce currently referred to him as '' fire 'em'' which trigger the alarm of the start of
formation of lobbies in the workforce which would be considered a threat, a negative culture of opposing someone and
start of blaming the others and the boggy-man show.

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- False flash that there was high productivity and better customer service, the call center whom used to take orders,
handled questions, and complains their performance was measured according the number of calls taken and
duration of the call, not upon if the order was efficiently taken, or whether questions and complains were handled
in satisfactory way for the customers, while in the customer surveys set by the R&D showed negative responses
and many complains were issued opposing the increase in figures.
- Improvements with no capital investments through letting everyone know that they are monitoring them and
putting his/her name of worst offenders on big wall of shame outside of the cafeteria '' the power of peer''. used a
very rough autocratic leadership which lacked engaging employees in the performance monitor system and also
humiliation them through putting names of bad performers on the wall without paying attention to the reasons for
this performance or the obstacles that might have faced them, in addition to encouraging the gossip and behind the
scene back talks which would lead to a negative culture and pull the energy of motivation even from self
motivated employees, as he spread the culture of '' fear to rule''.
- Set a misleading measures for assessing the shipment by redefining the word '' shipped products'' as any products
leave the company property but be actually reaching the clients door which had lead to misleading figures about
shipment improvements which proven to be through board meetings were invited to attend customers complained
of dissatisfactory from the shipment departments were goods would be reported as shipped while they are still on
the on the street beside the company's door.
- created a new policy in which commission for salesmen is reflected from the actual purchase price, which had
lead to complains from the previous employees about being badly treated by salesperson where they are only paid
for selling and reaching monetary figures but no actual value for prospecting new clients, updating account
information, knowledge sharing , and started to arose moral issues, which could be opposing to the actual job tasks
and start of selfishness among employees and losing the value of information sharing and client data updating
which could be useful for other reports or departments work, and would affect employees psychologically as they
will be stressful and under the pressure of getting the figures accomplished
- the problem of actual checking of emails was not solved as the measurement criteria is based upon the opening
of the email not by solving the email issues which had lead employees to figure out a back-door unethical solution
to overcome being questioned upon such an act adding more negative energy, spread of no morals or work ethics
criteria and quick growth of work lobbies.
- the problem of pervious budget setting per project or department was not solved as the project X innovation was
brought to a meeting as incomplete as there was no budget for it to be introduced in the market. as he was busy
cutting false cost figures and totally forgot about the budget setting issues.
- In general he was showing a defensive, high self esteem posing character all through his acts from not consulting
other departments while setting policies, to answering clients in rude way during meetings, to not looking for the
feedback on any newly made polices being introduced in the work place, not putting actual performance
management system with ratings upon competencies to measure employee, not monitoring the culture change
occurring and the values injection through employees, not caring about talent pool retining plans nor employer
branding through labor market.

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The Other Approach for Handelling Problems:

- Communicate to people what is doing on through the company using a good business politics way and engaging
employees into every action not by forcing their opnion but be being part of what will be implemented.
- Meeting with the different department heads and gathering all the information that has to do with the obstacles faced by
employees, targets reached by employees, assessment criteria, marking the best performers and the talented candidates and
their ideas of how to cut off the costs. Then can move to the employees side and set a Idea board and suggestion box in
each department and spreading questionnaires to asses the employee's point of view in assessing the department
performance, supervisors performance, and their point of view of how to cut costs.
- After gathering the information we move to the analyzing phase were information are seen as a SWOT analysis and
things that can be controlled is but in side while things are out of hand or affected by more than one factor is on a side. and
start to set plans for handling the problems and re-meeting again with department managers to discuss these plans and
chose the key factor employees who will help in implementing such plans, and also setting the accomplishment
measurements for such plan and reviewing and feedback methodology.
- communicate to employees what is happening and the new strategies that should be implemented and what will be
different and how it will affect them and how they will contribute in it which will help lower the level of employee
resistance and help having them as key driving individuals.
- Implementing the strategy with direct monitoring for the resistance level, the acceptance level, and the actual
performance of the strategy to help improve it while measuring it through the criteria set, and gathering employee
feedback on each step of the plan implementation either through questionnaires or suggestion box.
- each department need to set a competencies framework for assessing their employees performance and good rating for
objectives meet and tasks accomplished in order to able to point out best performers from poor performers, were best
performers could be rewarded while poor performers should investigate reasons behind this and communicate to them that
they need to improve it and how to improve it and incase they do not what will be the end results.
- benefits for old employee if adding extra cots to the company their could be a new policies regarding the distribution of
discounts among them by setting a scale were classifying employees according to years spent or performers wise get
specific discount rate.
- for salesmen re-disturbing the rating of their performance among sales target, knowledge sharing, client information
updates, and introducing moral value keeping were each factor will be weighted and the one with the highest weighs could
be assigned as best employee board or given a star that would let him next month to be nominated for a specific reward or
exempted from meeting full or half sales target.
- shipping should be handled on a better timely tracking sheet from the day it leaves the warehouse until it reaches the
client door and the status of its arrival, which by setting someone in charge of reporting in stage and giving him the
ownership of this task and regular reviewing to make sure of reaching customers satisfaction.
Call centers needs to recorded or monitored upon the performance through ratting employee after call by the clients or
someone to monitor the call records and assess performance and encouraging best performers to do better and to
encourage others to excel through Monterey or non Monterey methods. .

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- There sohuld be a different cirtira for meausrig email handlled problem not by theo pening of the email but by an
email confirmation that the problem or the copmlain or taken good care of it and that the client is satisifed and that
can be done through a good tracking email systemiser which can be bought and linked to the emailing domain of
the copmany added to it many features of revweing and data gathering which would help track any problems
- training front like managers to be actual leaders and adpoting the Achievement oriented and supportive
leadership style of by setting goals to the employees and shoe confidence in their ability to perform the task yet
without losing the challenges sprint from the job by still being supportive and friendly and caring about their
psychological status which will help laze any resistance and help induce a better moral culture among the
employees whom are lacking it at this stage
- adopting a mix of cultures as '' Normative culture'' to maintain the predefined rules and regulations so employees
can behave in ideal way and fix morals and values standard, with '' Tough guy culture'' employee would know that
his performance is being monitored and will be questioned and feedbacked accordingly, trying to engage top
performances and loyal employees in spreading the positive culture and also reward policies for employees who
maintain this culture as employee of month or star employee board, or leader for a day, and pensions from verbal
warnings to written warnings for employees who break these morals and values standards.
- Try to have cheap team building actives and events, and find what actually motivates these employees to perform
better, or to spread positive culture, or to maintain the morality level among them, and getting employees to know
each other and get closer to understand the mentality of each other.
- indorse innovation through ideas board and setting competitions among employees for best ideas either for
inventions or best ideas for a best work place or best idea to perform test better and use Monterey and non
Monterey reward programs.
- Budgeting for projects or departments were not solved, it needs to be reviewed by measuring the actual cost of
each department and the return of investment of each department and trying to classify spending.
- Retention plan for best performers and talent pool structuring needs to be put into consideration, Employer
branding brandings needs to reviewed and improved.
- In my point of view figures are not enough to reflect the actualizum of the situations and looking at things from
one point and dealing with discussion solitary while lacking information from actual paly ground would lead to
mis-view of the situation and upon it may lead to misleading decision.

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