Case study 7.1 Cemer Corporation: A Stinging Office Memo Boomerangs CASE STUDY 7
ID: 354920 • Letter: C
Question
Case study 7.1 Cemer Corporation: A Stinging Office Memo Boomerangs CASE STUDY 7.1 Cerner Corporation: A Stinging Office Memo Boomerangs We are getting less than 40 hours of work from a large company. There were words in all capital letters like "SICK" and "NO LONGER." There were threats of layoffs and hiring freezes and a shutdown of the employee gym. The memo was sent by e-mail on March 13 by number of our KC-based EMPLOYEES. The parking the chief executive of the Cerner Corporation, a health lot is sparsely used at 8 a.m.; likewise at 5 p.m. As care software development company based in Kansas either do not know what your City, Mo., with 3,100 employees worldwide. Originally intended only for 400 or so company managers, it managers-you EMPLOYEES are doing; or YOU do not CARE I will hold you accountable. You have allowed quickly took on a life of its own. The e-mail message was leaked and posted on NEAL L. PATTERSON, Yahoo! Its belligerent tone surprised thousands of CEO CERNER CORPORATION readers, including analysts and investors. In the stock The only things missing from the office memo market, the valuation of the company, which was $1.5 were expletives. It had everything else. There were billion on March 20, plummeted 22 percent in three lines berating employees for not caring about the days. Now, Neal L. Patterson, the 51-year-old chief this to get to this state. You have two weeks. Tick, tock.Explanation / Answer
1. The biggest business problem in the case is the declining work ethic in the organisation. The employees are perhaps npt satisfied with the work environment, hence their is a decline in the work hours which in turn is impacting the performance and the outputs of the company. To tackle the same, the CEO should have called for a town hall rather than the email that led to the whole situation being public leading to bad PR and fall in the ccompany's valuation while raising doubts in the minds of investors.
2.From the company's perspective the optimal outcome would have been higher involvement of employees, not just in terms of the number of hours but in terms of productivity/ output. The negative publicity from this message that went on web live, could have been reduced if the profits had grown/ attrition reduced after incident.
3. The investors, employees - current/ potential, management and customers are all stakeholders involved. The investors decision to continue with a firm where the culture is not employee friendly may raise questions around higher attrition in future, hence leading to withdrawal from company. The employee and management have a conflict in this case, in aadition the reputation of the organisation is at jeaopardy owing to the visibity of the company in negative light to the customers publicly.
4. The employee involvement could be enhanced by understanding first the delivery and outcome from the employees. The number of work hours are not always in direct proportion to the outcome. Hence evaluation of this factor would lead to further outcomes, and identification of the right medium for the communication of the same. The second thing that would be recommedde is to go in a phase wise manner for increasing the eomplyee engagement, rather than forcing rules in a dictatorial manner.
5/. As mentioned above, evaluation of the problem in hand and then choosing the right communication medium i.e personal active communication would have been ideal. The measure for the issue solution i.e higher employee engagement woould be to evaluate the productivuty which is the ration of output to the number of hours put in. It will enable understand the relation between the two factors, which may not be in line as per the conclusions that the CEO drew, also it will help arrive at a more logical and quantitative evaluation rather than being subjective.