Problems Facing Zenith Design Inc - Case Study Example

Name Tutor Course Date Problems facing Zenith Design Inc. Zenith Design Inc. is an architecture and engineering firm that had been performing so well in attracting young talent and giving them the opportunity to venture into interesting projects that would be beneficial to the firm. The firm’s performance has been fine and the firm was leading other firms in the design of LEED-certified buildings. The success of the firm has been faced challenges in its retention strategy. Lately, the firm has been losing key staff; worse still, to its main competitors. This has raised concern among senior management as they seek to solve the problem. This paper shall analyze the curious case of Zenith Design Inc. so as to investigate some of the reasons its employees are leaving the company to other companies. The departure of Tom Forsythe was a wakeup call to the management of the firm. The reasons for Tom’s departure could not be understood by the head of human resources. As stated by Senyucel (2009, 23), creating and maintaining a highly motivated and committed personnel is a challenge that the human resource faces. This is because the commitment of employees reflects on their work performance and this further improves the economic performance of the organization. Motivation was stated by Senyucel (2009, 23) as a term that is used to explain why people behave in certain ways. According to Bartol and Martin (1998), motivation is a force that is used to ignite people, direct them and maintain their behavior towards attainment of a certain goal. As seen in the case, the commitment of Tom has been okay. He is stated to have been at the top of his game. However, his departure from a company that he has been at for so many years demonstrates that the force behind his good job has slowed down. In essence, his motivation level has gone under. The implication from Tom’s departure is that some expectations from his job and the projects he was in charge have not been met. The case states that he had been in charge of many projects, many of which were challenging but manageable. While he found the challenges interesting and worthy of his efforts, he declares that he looks forward to new and fresh challenges; better than what he receives at Zenith. This indicates a declined motivation. From the theories of motivation, it is clear that intrinsic motivation of Tom has been affected; hence the need to find another job that is more satisfying. This is because Tom cannot talk about the reasons for his departure to those he is leaving behind. The needs that Tom has, leading to his departure, can be analyzed using Marslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. According to this theory, individuals get satisfied and motivated by in-built basic motivators arranged in a hierarchical order (Zalenski and Raspa, 2006). The needs include physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualization in order of ascendancy. While the Zenith Design Inc. might have fulfilled most needs from physiological to social, the gap exists at the esteem and self-actualization level. For the case of Tom, his departure could be a result of self-actualization needs. This is because he is asked to take the second chance of a better position in the company and he declines. Fulfillment of needs at esteem level is demonstrated in the way Adrianne changes her mind when she was about to resign. For her case, it appears she only wanted some bigger post based on the way she estimated her worth. Herzberg’s two factor theory adds more emphasis on the role of intrinsic motivation on employee retention and satisfaction. Under this theory, the two factors include hygiene and motivator factors (Ventegodt et al, 2003). Hygiene factors are extrinsic and determine the environment in which one works. Factors such as status, money work conditions, and management quality as well as job security play a role in the motivation levels of employees. As seen in the case of Adrianne, her de-motivating factor was status. This is the reason she reconsiders her decision to quit the job after receiving a new and bigger post in the company. Upon overhearing a conversation between some engineering colleagues, Adrianne asserts that the reason behind Tom’s departure is lack of inspiration. She adds that he is not the only one facing the problem. This adds to the lack of extrinsic motivation, one that will inspire staff to work on with the company. Zenith Design Inc. also faces a problem of lack of teams that can create a bond between employees. The team organization in the company is not supportive of an effective performance from the team. According to Laegard and Bindslev (2006, p. 34), a close connection is beginning to ensue between the service delivered to customers, development of competence, financial results and job satisfaction. This implies that organizations face the challenge of creating learning within employees and enhancing a sense of ownership relative to work. Organization of the team refers to a structure and method of working that will comply with the needs and challenges of the groups within the organization and the whole team at large. As stated in the case, there seems to be a lack of connection between some groups in the organization. For instance, the sales team is disconnected from the rest of the team; as noted by Pope and Dorsey during their discussion on why they feel Tom left the company. From their argument, the sales team does not do enough to take the company to the next level. This is evidenced in the way a good design, under Tom’s project, is not able to be sold because the sales team did not sell the product out as it should have done. While Tom felt he was a first class architect, he did not feel the sales team was up to the task. The success of a group is dependent on its individuals. A highly performing group should have loyal, obedient, trustworthy, and committed individuals, in addition to an effective leader (Rahman, 2005, p. 46). The sales team leader is perceived by the engineering team as less effective. Groups that fail have two behaviors that are related with them. Senyucel (2009) stated that group think and social loafing greatly affect the performance of a group. Group think refers to a behavior where individuals engage when deeply absorbed in an interrelated group and where the main drive in the group is to strive for unanimity rather than be motivated to pursue alternatives. In this case, members develop behaviors such as feeling they are the better group compared to the other groups. For instance, the team of engineers perceives the sales team as one with non-performing individuals. Ideally, the engineering team should sit down and discuss with the sales team about how their performance influences their performance as well as the overall performance of the company. This would be a better approach to solving the problem they are facing. On the contrary, the team isolates itself and declares the sales team less effective. This has the effect of suppressing the sales team. The other factor that affects groups is social loafing. This refers to the tendency to input less effort during group works than during individual works. In this case, individuals get less motivated when working in groups as compared to when they are on their own. When the engineering team at Zenith Design Inc. gets content with the feeling that their counterparts are not doing enough for the company, social loafing is bound to occur. This has been seen in the way the two engineers discuss and state that they feel Tom left because he was disappointed by the failure of one of his projects, attributed to the sales team. The effect of social loafing is seen in the instance where Tom decides to leave and not continue pursuing success as an individual. Creating cohesion with the whole team of Zenith Design Inc. employees is critical to the overall performance of the team. In addition, when Adrianne is promoted to a bigger post, there is bound to be some unrest among some senior workers who feel they would have filled that post better than Adriane would fill it. Culture of the organization plays a role in the behavior of employees. This refers to the norms and values that guide the behavior of individuals. The culture of an organization refers to experiences and expectations that individuals have acquired from learning and socializing with each other within the organization. According to Zahra et al (2004), the culture of a firm is a system with values, artifacts and assumptions. The behavior of employees is therefore related strongly to this culture which is influenced by both external and internal factors. The influence of internal factors to the emerging culture of dissatisfaction is seen in Zenith Design Inc. when individuals are quitting the company for other companies and the conclusion drawn by fellow workers is that everyone else is dissatisfied. Adrianne states that Tom is not the only employee who is uninspired. With this developing culture at Zenith, the human resource department has a task of enforcing human resource practices that shall improve the situation of the company. This is because losing employees is equivalent to losing the competitive advantage of the company. Human capital has for long been considered a critical resource to the performance of all organizations (Madu, 2006, p. 2). The role of HRM is to ensure the well being of employees. Stella, the head of human resource gets concerned about the emerging trend of employees quitting the organization for rival companies. She decides to conduct a survey so as to investigate some of the reasons for this trend. Human resource practices should be enhanced so as to maintain a clear link between non-management employees and management. For instance, clear communication channels should be created so as to ensure employees feel involved in the on-goings within the company. Zenith does not seem to have a clear communication channel. This is because the reasons for recent high rate of turn over cannot be understood by management. Through clear communication channels, some of the frustrations that employees are going through can be communicated across to management. This will enable the leaders in the company to act on the issues ad help reduce them. As it stands, Zenith is operating on a reactive strategy where a rumor over an impending departure is heard then management reacts by calling the individual and inquiring from them what the problem could be. In addition, the leadership at Zenith Design Inc. is a concern. One lacking quality of leaders at the company is the ability to diagnose problems and inquire. Edgar Schein noted that “the successful leader must be a good diagnostician and has to be inquisitive.” This implies that managers should be able to diagnose a situation. At Zenith, the high rate of turnover has been cropping, with no real diagnosis being made by the top management. In addition, the inquiry done by the head of human resource is not sufficient enough to help the company find a solution to this challenge. There is need to improve on the leadership at Zenith Design Inc. Some of the strengths that leaders have include motivation and inspiration. As has been noted in the case, there is lack of inspiration among the workers. Adrianne notes that Tom’s departure was a result of lack of inspiration. This implies that there was not inspiring figure, a mentor, who would help Tom push on when he was experiencing turbulence in his career at Zenith. In addition, Tom’s departure snatches a mentor from Adrianne, the result of which is the imminent departure of Adrianne. This indicates the importance of an inspiring figure among employees. Employees should be filled with energy so that they can make their vision a reality, despite the resistance and obstacles they face. The leadership at Zenith also lacks in its vision. This is because the managers cannot visualize where the company and their employees will be in the coming days. Such a vision enables the leaders of the company to foresee some of the challenges they might face in future and find out ways of handling the challenges. As competition in the design industry gets stiffer, Zenith management should have found out ways of making their employees more competitive. This could be done through trainings and use of incentives so as to motivate the employees. In addition, improving communication would improve the situation at Zenith. As noted by Darr (2006), good communication is a key component of effective leadership. Better communication would enable the company’s leaders to inform the workers of the directions of their careers at Zenith. Most workers would like to know where the next level of their career will be. As for the case of Tom, it is speculated that looking up; he thought there was nowhere else he would rise to. For this reason, he sought for greener pastures. Task 2: Ten possible questions from the case Why dint the managers realize there was a problem when more employees began quitting the company? When the second and third employee quit the company, this was an alarm to the management. However, they must have assumed they did not need those individuals so much; and even decided it was an opportunity to have new minds. It was not until very key employees began quitting that they realized there was a growing problem. What was causing the increased number of turnover at Zenith Design Inc.? Employee motivation was a main cause of high turnover. Most employees who were quitting felt some of their needs were not being fulfilled. These were needs that developed with time; such as the self-actualization needs. Zenith Design was doing so well against its competitors, even building LEED-certified buildings before its competitors could do it; why dint it retain its position as the leading design and engineering firm in the region? Zenith placed itself into a position of complacency, where everything seemed to be working out so well and they did not foresee the need to improve continuously as a way to remain competitive (Ghosh et al, 2007). What was the reaction of the human resource manager when more employees started quitting? The human resource manager reacted by inquiring from the departing employees to understand why they were leaving. However, she only stopped at the inquiry level and in some instances, she did not find complete answers on the reasons for leaving. Does the remuneration of Zenith employees play a part in the increased rate of turnover? The remuneration at Zenith is good enough for some employees, but for the young employees who felt the perks were not good. Zenith had invested so much in young talent, what was their strategy for retention? Zenith did not develop a strategy for retention of young employees who had developed their talents through the company. Such a strategy would involve a clear career path and continuous training so as to improve on skills. Christina and Stella have agreed that there is some shortage of competence in the company’s management; what is their way forward to this issue? Christina and Stella should come up with ways of bridging the gap in competence level of their management. This will enable the company have managers who have the capability to handle the ever changing business environment and take the company to the next level. How was Zenith management going to react to the unrest after promoting Adrianne? It is highly expected that some senior employees will feel uneasy after seeing Adrianne get the promotion. Zenith management should train all the managers as a way of showing commitment to improving their skills and a demonstration that they are all valued. Was promoting Adrianne the best and long term solution to the emerging problem and was it done in the right way? Promoting Adrianne was done as a reaction to rumors that she would quit. The rumors might have been some way of blackmailing management Zenith management into the new post. However, she is a key asset and the company benefits by having her. The company should develop clear methods of promoting individuals so as to value sincerity and openness. What would happen if Adrianne demands to receive another promotion or else she calls it quits? The company should investigate all the reasons as to why Adriane wanted to quit. This will ensure the loop holes are sealed ad should she want to quit again, then it must be an issue that cannot be handled at the level of the company. Works cited Bartol, K. and Martin, D., Management, New York: McGraw Hill, 1998. Darr, Kutt, Introduction to Management and Leadership Concepts, Principles and Practices, USA: Johns and Bartlett Learning, 2006. 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Zalenski, R. and Raspa, R., “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A Framework for Achieving Human Potential in Hospice,” Journal of Palliative Medicine, Volume 9, Number 5, 2006. Read More