Case study 1-Unit 4

The Ties That Bind

If building employee loyalty is a challenge for managers and they see their workers leaving for
better opportunities, what can they do to change the situation? Some companies focus on team-
building activities, company picnics, rock-climbing walls, or zip lines, but do these actually
make workers decide to stay with their company for less salary? The answer is usually no. The
reality is that salary plays an important role in an employee’s decision to move to a new job.
Therefore, retention bonuses are a popular and perhaps more successful technique for instilling
loyalty. The company provides a payment to an employee contingent on his or her committing to
remain at the company for a specific period. According to a Glassdoor study,8 when changing
jobs, employees earn an average increase of more than 5 percent in salary alone, not including
benefits. Thus, the offer of a salary increases and/or a retention or performance bonus can help
turn many would-be former employees into newly loyal ones. The same study found that a 10
percent increase in pay upped the odds that an employee would stay at the company. According
to Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist of Glassdoor, “While it is important to provide
upward career paths for workers, a simple job title promotion may not be enough. Maintaining
competitive pay is an important part of reducing turnover.” Of course, a retention bonus may not
be enough to keep someone at a job he or she hates, but it might help someone who likes the job
to decide to stay. The Society for Human Resource Management believes retention plans should
be part of an overall pay strategy, not merely giveaways for tenure.

1- Imagine that your colleague is considering leaving your firm for another company: Your
manager has offered him a retention bonus to stay and your colleague is seeking your
advice about what to do. What would you advise?
2- What questions would you ask your colleague to better determine the advice you should
give him or her?
3- Consider your summer jobs, part-time employment, work-study hours on campus, and
internships. What meant more to you—the salary you made or the extent to which you
were treated as a real contributor and not just a line on a payroll ledger? Or a combination
of both?
4- What lessons do you now draw about reciprocal loyalty between companies and their
workers?

Case study 2-Unit 4

Redefining Customers
Sometimes engaged employees go above and beyond in the interest of customer service, even if
they have no “customers” to speak of. Kathy Fryman is one such employee. Fryman was a
custodian for three decades at a one-hundred-year-old school in the Augusta (KY) Independent
School District. She was not just taking care of the school building; she was also taking care of
the people inside. Fryman fixed doors that would not close, phones that would not ring, and
alarms that did not sound when they should. She kept track of keys and swept up dirty floors
before Parents’ Night. That was all part of the job of custodian, but she did much more. Fryman
would often ask the nurse how an ill student was doing. She would check with a teacher about a
kid who was going through tough times at home. If a teacher mentioned needing something, the
next day it would show up on his or her desk. A student who needed something for class would
suddenly find it in his or her backpack. Speaking of Fryman, district superintendent Lisa
McCrane said, “She just has a unique way of making others feel nurtured, comforted, and cared
for.” According to Fryman, “I need to be doing something for somebody. Fryman’s customers
were not there to buy a product on which she would make a commission. Her customers were
students and teachers, parents and taxpayers. Yet she provided the kind of service that all
employers would be proud of, the kind that makes a difference to people every day.
1- Is there a way for a manager to find, develop, and encourage the next Fryman, or is the
desire to “do something good for somebody” an inherent trait in some employees that is
missing in others?
2- What is the appropriate means to reward a worker with Fryman’s level of commitment?
Her salary was fixed by school district pay schedules. Should she have been given an
extra stipend for service above and beyond the expected? Additional time off with pay?
Some other reward?
3- Employees who display Fryman’s zeal often do so for their own internal rewards. Others
may simply want to be recognized and appreciated for their effort. If you were the
superintendent in her district, how would you recognize Fryman? Could she, for example,
be invited to speak to new hires about opportunities to render exceptional service?

Case study 3-Unit 4

More than forty thousand Verizon workers went on strike in 2016 (Figure 6.13). The strike was
eventually settled, with workers getting a raise, but bitter feelings and distrust remained on both
sides. Workers thought management salaries were too high; management thought workers were
seeking excessive raises. To continue basic phone services for its customers during the strike,
Verizon called on thousands of non-union employees to perform the strikers’ work. Non-union
staff had to cross picket lines formed by fellow employees to go to work each day during the
strike. Enmity toward these picket-line crossers was exceptionally high among some union
members.

Figure 6.13
Questions
1- How does management reintroduce civility to the workplace to keep peace between
different factions?
2- How could Verizon please union workers after the strike without firing the picket-line
crossers, some of whom were Verizon union employees who consciously chose to cross
the picket line?

Case study 4-Unit 4

Managers are usually sticklers about attendance, but Verizon recently learned an expensive
lesson about its mandatory attendance policies from a 2011 class action lawsuit by employees
and the EEOC. The suit asserted that Verizon denied reasonable accommodations to several
hundred employees, disciplining or firing them for missing too many days of work and refusing
to make exceptions for those whose absences were caused by their disabilities. According to the
EEOC, Verizon violated the ADA because its no-fault attendance policy was an inflexible and
“unreasonable” one-size-fits-all rule. The EEOC required Verizon to pay $20 million to settle the
suit, the largest single disability discrimination settlement in the agency’s history. The settlement
also forced Verizon to change its attendance policy to include reasonable accommodations for
persons with disabilities. A third requirement was that Verizon provide regular training on ADA
requirements to all mangers responsible for administering attendance policies.

Questions
1- What are some specific rules that would fit within a fair and reasonable attendance
policy?
2- How would you decide whether an employee was taking advantage of an absenteeism
policy?

Case study 5-Unit 4

Should a multinational company take advantage of another country’s lack of regulation or

A New York Times news correspondent reporting from Nigeria found a collection of steel drums
stacked behind a village’s family living compound. In this mid-1990s case, ten thousand barrels
of toxic waste had been dumped where children live, eat, and drink. As safety and environmental
hazard regulations in the United States and Europe have driven toxic waste disposal costs up to
$3,000 per ton, toxic waste brokers are looking for the poorest nations with the weakest laws,
often in West Africa, where the costs might be closer to $3 per ton. The companies in this
incident were looking for cheap waste-dumping sites, and Nigeria agreed to take the toxic
chemical waste without notifying local residents. Local people wearing shorts, t-shirts, and
sandals unloaded barrels of polychlorinated biphenyls, placing them next to a residential area.
Nigeria has often been near the top of the United Nations’ list of most corrupt nations, with
government leaders cutting deals to line their own pockets while exposing their citizens to
environmental hazards.
A more recent example occurred in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 2006, when residents
discovered that hundreds of tons of “slops” (chemicals) from a foreign-owned ship had been
dumped near Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital. The ship was owned by a multinational
energy company named Trafigura. According to a report from Amnesty International, more than
100,000 residents were sickened, leading to fifteen deaths. Trafigura had illegally dumped the
toxic waste in Cote d’Ivoire after searching for a disposal site in several other countries.

1- Should a U.S. or European company take advantage of a country’s weak approach to