INCIDENT To Heck with Them! Isabelle Anderson is the North Carolina plant manage
ID: 448179 • Letter: I
Question
INCIDENT
To Heck with Them!
Isabelle Anderson is the North Carolina plant manager for Hall Manufacturing Company, a company that produces a line of relatively inexpensive painted wood furniture. Six months ago, Isabelle became concerned about the turnover rate among workers in the painting department. Manufacturing plant turnover rates in that part of the south generally averaged about 30 percent, which was the case at Hall. The painting department, however, had experienced a turnover of nearly 200 percent in each of the last two years. Because of the limited number of skilled workers in the area, Hall had introduced an extensive training program for new painters, and Isabelle knew that the high turnover rate was costly.
Isabelle conducted exit interviews with many of the departing painters. Many of them said that they were leaving for more money, others mentioned better benefits, and some cited some kind of personal reasons for quitting. But there was nothing to help Isabelle pinpoint the problem. Isabelle had checked and found that Hall’s wages and benefits were competitive with, if not better than, those of other manufactures in the areas. She then called in Nelson Able, the painting supervisor, to discuss the problem. Nelson’s response was, “To heck with them! They will do it my way or they can hit the road. You know how this younger generation is. They work to get enough money to live on for a few weeks and then quit. I don’t worry about it. Our old-timers can take up the slack.” After listening to Nelson for a moment, Isabelle thought that she might know that caused the turnover problem.
Questions
1. Interpret a turnover rate of 200 percent. What does it mean
2. Do you believe that the exit interviews were accurate? Explain you r answer
3. What do you believe was the cause of the turnover problem?
Explanation / Answer
1. Turnover rate can be defined as the percentage of employees that leave during a certain period of time. 200% turnover rate at Hall's implies that twice amount of people working the painting department of the company were leaving within a year. i.e. if say for example, 100 workers were working in the painting department, then in a year 200 workers left the job, and new workers were hired in there place to maintain the strength of the department.
2. Exit interviews were not accurate, as the reson cited by the leaving workers were mainly leaving for more money, better neifits or personal issues, whereas Hall’s wages and benefits were competitive with, if not better than, those of other manufactures in the areas. The supervisor's attitude was the major issue behind the high turnover, which the exit interviews failed to pin point.
3. the major cause of turnover was the negative attitude of the supervisor regarding the young aged workers and his indifference towards leaving workers. Supervisor’s response was, “To heck with them! They will do it my way or they can hit the road. You know how this younger generation is. They work to get enough money to live on for a few weeks and then quit. I don’t worry about it. Our old-timers can take up the slack.” Hence, it shows that the supervisor was not flexible in his working methodology, and he wasn't sensitive to the fact that a skilled worker will leave the job. He put in no efforts in convincing his workforce to reduce the turnover, more so he believed, if the worker doesn't agree with his working style the oly solution was firing the worker rather tahn training him, or showing flexibility in his management style.