Gobias Case - Case Study PDF

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Team Case Analysis Your team case analysis should be written as if you are a consultant that has been hired to address the issues facing Sudden Valley Works, a division of Gobias Industries. The focal objective of this assignment is to display that you, as a team, understand HR principles/practices and can apply them effectively to resolve a real-world scenario. Gobias has multiple problems. Through answering the questions below, you will identify these problems, explain how current HR practices have allowed these problems to develop, and then propose and justify recommendations to alleviate those problems. 1. Identify three (3) major problems facing Gobias (there are more than three). Explain in detail why you think these are the most important issues to address. 2. Analyze the problems that you just identified. What is the current state of affairs regarding Gobias’ HR practices and policies? Why do the problems you identified above exist? Basically, how were these conditions created in the first place? 3. Prescribe solutions to these problems. Using what you have learned this year, develop a set of HR-focused recommendations (at least two specific recommendations for each problem) that could help fix these issues. 4. Justify. For each recommendation, you will also need to explain in detail a) how the solution will be implemented, and b) why this recommendation is likely to fix the problem. This is particularly important if any of your recommendations will cost money. Each of your solutions must be practical. Any solutions that are infeasible will be ignored. If there might be any dissent or “pushback” for your solutions (i.e., constituencies who may not like it), this will need to be discussed and addressed as well. In terms of writing this assignment, the best format may or may not be fully answering question #1, then fully answering question #2, etc. What is important is that you fully answer each of the questions above. The way in which you present that information, however, is up to you. Be sure that all justifications explicitly draw from what you have learned this year, and that you are very clear about this. Do not repeat word-for-word what the book or lectures have said on a topic. You will need to explain how that information is relevant to the problem you are addressing. Please let me reiterate: you MUST apply concepts we have discussed this semester in your responses. Keep in mind also what we have discussed regarding professional communication. Your score on this assignment will be based not only on how well you identify and provide solutions to Gobias’ problems, but also by the professionalism of your writing and submission. In total, this assignment should be no longer than 3 single-spaced pages in length. Only one member of your team needs to submit this assignment. They will do so via Turnitin, by 11:59pm, Sunday, April 21. You will then have some time in class on Tuesday, April 23 to talk about the presentation that your team will deliver on Thursday, April 25.

Gobias Case Tracy Johnson opened the doors of the storeroom supply cabinet and grimaced at the disarray. She pulled out a few old brochures and dusted them off. Shaking her head, she noted that at least half of the people pictured in the brochure were no longer with Gobias. As she emerged from the storeroom into the aluminum smelting plant, she stuffed her long brown hair under her hard hat and donned her safety glasses. Although the weather was cool, the plant was sweltering. Her safety boots clattered against the brick walkway. Here and there someone was tending carbon-lined pots where alumina is dissolved into molten chemical bath. Ahead of Tracy, a crew was siphoning molten metal into a large container called a crucible. The flames and smoke from the pot seemed crude, but the computer-generated voice from the loudspeaker chiming, “Pot 8. Anode Effect.” reminded Tracy of how high-tech the facility is. “Hey, sweet thing, how come you don’t visit me more often?” shouted Cyrus “Hound Dog” Palmer. Although comments like these from the crews bothered her, she knew she could accomplish more if she played along. “Hound Dog, I couldn’t stand the excitement,” she retorted as she walked away. She heard the rest of the crew laughing at Cyrus and shook her head. Tracy walked to her office and began to prepare an agenda for her upcoming meeting. She had been tasked by upper management to put together a small team to assess the challenges facing her plant, Gobias’ Sudden Valley Works, a smelter in rural western North Carolina. Tracy glanced out the dirty window as a crucible hauler roared by and shook her desk. She recalled her first exposure to Gobias at her college career fair. The booth proudly displayed pictures of young engineers at work in various parts of the company. The recruiter was animated as he spoke about Sudden Valley Works and Gobias. “The salary and benefits are top notch. You can advance in the company and transfer to other divisions. Are you a mechanical engineer?” Tracy nodded. “We’re installing an advanced fume control system in the plant now. You’ll love it.” And she did. Gobias recently modernized Sudden Valley Works, and Tracy loved the high tech equipment. She accepted an entry-level position at Sudden Valley with intention of climbing the ladder and ultimately transferring to a different Gobias facility closer to a big city. While she loved the people in her community, Sudden Valley is pretty rural and she found it hard to meet other young professionals. Despite rising in the ranks, her dreams of a transfer died when the CEO made each division a separate business. She didn’t even hear about position openings anymore at other facilities anymore. To make matters worse, the company was having trouble retaining their younger, energetic employees. In recent years, the installation of new, highly efficient technology, meant that there was less for entry-level employees to do beyond simply monitoring equipment. Exit interviews with these employees revealed that many simply felt bored at the job. Tracy sighed. The fact that wages for those employees have been stagnant due to, as the company put it, the “simplistic” nature of these jobs, can’t be helping matters. She walked to the conference room at the end of the trailer. Carbon dust from the plant blanketed the steel table and mismatched chairs. She had just finished writing the agenda on the flip chart when the other members of her team walked in. Maria Gomez and Jim Brownwell found seats around the table. Maria pulled off her hard hat to reveal dark hair plastered to her forehead. “I’ve been taking pot temperature readings all day. I swear I drank two gallons of water from the fountain in the hall, and it’s not summer yet.” Jim responded, “Switch to the graveyard shift. Even though you won’t have a life, at least

it will be cooler.” Jim turned to Tracy, “So what’s the plan, Tracy? Are we going to keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing? Hire people, watch them leave, repeat? Are the bosses crazy?” Tracy paused before she spoke. “This is a challenge. As the managers look at the people here, they believe there are not enough people to fill our future production leadership positions. They have asked us to begin a recruiting effort focused on future leaders. I chose the two of you because you all worked your way up here at the company, the same as me. You are good performers and they feel you can talk in a motivated way about opportunities at Gobias.” “Opportunities at Gobias?” snapped Jim. “I don’t even know what they are for myself!” “How many people do they want to hire, Tracy?” asked Maria. “Ten people in the next two years, if we find people that meet our standards. We need to develop a pipeline of future candidates as well, so we can potentially hire two or three employees each subsequent year for the foreseeable future. And, we will focus on women and minorities.” “That makes sense, but this is just going to make things harder, Tracy” said Maria. “The high potential minority candidates have been targeted by the large firms before their sophomore year. And for women the competition is intense too. I had at least three summer internship offers each year. How are we going to attract the top students?” Jim replied, “Campus isn’t the only source of candidates, Maria. Gobias hired me through a recruiting firm when I was leaving the military. Once you’ve been on a submarine for three months, shift work is no big deal. We need to figure out how to broaden our recruitment base.” Tracy leaned toward them. “When we were hired, Gobias was just looking for the best engineer, basically whoever had the highest grade point average. The managers’ hope was that there would be enough employees who would stick around and have the desire to become a production leader. That strategy won’t work today. We are going to have to figure out how to identify those people with “leadership potential” who actually want to move in that direction. The problem is, I don’t even know how to assess whether someone has “leadership potential.” Jim shot back, “Yeah, this is not going to be easy. After the reorganization, there really isn’t anywhere for the production supervisors to go. They’re stuck. The good salary and benefits at that level handcuffed them to Sudden Valley. So even if we can identify people with ‘leadership potential,’ and manage to hire them, can we retain them?” Maria spoke. “I’m still really concerned about this focus on female and minority candidates. This plant is not the ideal place for a female or a minority. Tracy, I heard what Cyrus said to you earlier! That’s so inappropriate. If I hadn’t married Bill I imagine I would have left for a different company by now. Management seems indifferent to the harassment women experience here, and there are no other Hispanic professionals in the entire town! That’s one of the reasons why so many minorities have left Sudden Valley.” Tracy nodded, “I can tell that you’re both frustrated. Trust me, I am too. But we need to come up with a plan. Are you both ready to get started?” Jim and Maria reluctantly nodded....