Case Application :1
Family Friendly benefits arrive in corporate America
What do G T water (plumbing) products, Fel-pro, Mattel Toys. Nike, and Procter &
gamble have in common they each have recently been cited in working Motber
magazine as one of the best one hundred companies for women to work for 40 in
way? Each company provide special benefit to its employees that benefit working
moms. For example G T water offers all twenty four matters. Even though a federal
law mandates that for many fewer than fifty employees and Fel- pro the Skokie
Illinois gasket making company offers its employees $6500 in tuition assistance for
their children.
Companies today are reaching to new demands placed on them by their diversified
work force. Whereas three decades ago, when the work force was predominately
male and moms stayed home with their 2.5 kids, today’s workers are not that
homogeneous. Workers are more likely to be female that male, and whether men
are willing to admit it or not most women men are willing to admit it or not most
women still have the greater and burden and responsibility for child care. But that
doesn’t have to mean our companies cannot be responsive to the changing work
force.
Accompanying today’s diversity is the realization that the we way treated workers
with children in the past and the benefits we offered them may no longer meet and
the benefits we offered them may no longer meet their current needs. Family life is
important to our workers and in many cases will win out in the decision of career
versus family. Fortunately organizational decision makers today are not looking at
the situation as a win lose proposition. Rather, to attract and keep “good talent”
requires companies to strongly compete for those skills. One way to successfully
compete is to meet the workers individualized. In the 1990s this might come in the
form of time off work to bond with a newly arrived child or on site day care
facilities something that was virtually nonexistent in the 1960s.
Questions
1. Do companies have the responsibility to provide special benefits for working
moms? Explain your rationale.
2. Suppose you have a work force that is evenly divided 50 percent have
children and 50 percent do not is providing child care benefits for half of your work
force giving those employees something additional that the other half cannot use?
what do
CASE APPLICATION: 2
Gears, Inc
Billy Jo Williams is the new plant manager for Gears, Inc, a fifty year old, $100
million gear manufacturer. Stockholders and corporate leadership are unhappy
because while other divisions are earning a return of 15 percent, Gears, Inc has
averaged management has not seemed to improve the results Gears, Inc’s number
one customer, averaging over 80 percent of sales for Gears. Inc is so unhappy they
have placed Gears, Inc on probation and have threatened to take their business to a
foreign manufacturer due to poor quality and late shipments. In the past six months
two mergers of competitors have occurred, which are recognized leaders in quality
in the field and would like to expand market share.
Gears Inc knows it has problems and pressure to meet the shipments deadlines so
they have ordered more overtime in order to reach Although management
recognizes that $3 million in scrapped parts and paying over $15,500 late fines this
year indicates quality problems, the new plant manager does not wants to release
employees from working on their machines in order to attend quality improvement
classes available through their Employee Involvement department. Their president
who comments he “doesn’t read books” and he doesn’t think attending “some soft
course on continuous quality improvement” is anything but another reason to get
further behind in meeting their schedules. The manufacturing manager says that
meeting customers expectations is enough, don’t worry about exceeding
expectations or doing more than the minimum required.
1. How would you respond to the president, plan manager, manufacturing
manager, and employee involvement coordinator in an upcoming quality issues
meeting?
2.
What information would you share?
3.
What would you be willing to do or provide?
4.
What will happen to Gears, Inc if corrective action is not taken?