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Case Study

A frown appeared on the face of Acme Technologies CEO as she scanned the latest company-wide management survey results. Employee morale was down four points year-to-year. Surveyed respondents’ scores were consistently lower in the areas of inclusiveness and diversity, opportunities to improve skills with challenging assignments, and developing innovative solutions to solve pressing customer issues. What really concerned her was a common theme emerging from the write-in comments – a systemic lack of management engagement.

At an organizational level, the corporate culture at Acme had become restrictive and coercive during this most recent economic downturn. Managers and supervisors weren’t soliciting their teams on how to improve results nor leveraging the diversity of their teams in joint problem solving. First line management and supervisors, by and large, had “hunkered down” and provided the minimum of information to their departments because, in truth, their managers had little information to offer other than “Make your numbers!”

Employees didn’t feel recognized for their efforts when going above and beyond during these challenging times. One write in comment summed up the mood, “Look, I know money is tight and monetary awards aren’t expected, but it sure would be nice if my manager acknowledged when I do something well.”

The latest round of lay-offs had employees feeling vulnerable and anxious wondering if they would be in the next or even survive? The fear factor rippling through the organization had many adopting the attitude of “What’s in it for me?” Few employees were willing to expend incremental effort and even fewer were willing to be held individually accountable for department or team results.

What was just as disturbing was the lack of cross functional cooperation occurring between operations and sales; between sales and IT and between IT and finance. HR was overwhelmed with hourly and salaried dissatisfaction issues ranging from employee relations and hostile work environment to unfair and biased management decisions that had been poorly communicated.

The CEO pushed her glasses high onto her forehead and looked away, reflecting on the sobering data. Something needs to be done, but where to start?

CASE REFLECTION – QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

This case study is common theme of what happens in organizations when levels of engagement begin to drop. SHAMBAUGH’s experience indicates that there are several key levers that need to be considered when determining the root cause and coming up with solutions for a disengaged work environment.

In this particular case, here are several questions that this CEO needs to consider:

  1. What is the company’s value system and how well do they reinforce these? How do the values influence training, decision making, recognition, and correcting behavior that is not in alignment with those values?

  2. How does the CEO create heightened awareness in the minds of management to support and reward employee innovation, prudent risk taking and breakthrough thinking?

  3. What messages need to be communicated regarding managers creating a shared vision of excellence, setting challenging yet achievable goals and holding people accountable for results not just effort?

  4. “How does the the CEO, “re-engage her management team and the employees to make this company successful again?”

To learn more about SHAMBAUGH's offerings on Engagement and how to address these Questions, contact: info@shambaughleadership.com