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Topic:

Les’ Management Challenge at See-Me Sheffield (SMS)

Essay Instructions:

Remember to use the assessment grid to help you plan your assessment and then use it again to check that you’ve delivered on what you were asked to do. 

Word Count

The essay should be 3,500 words in length.  This word limit relates to the word count given by the word counters in Microsoft Word and must be included on your cover page.  When your work is 10% over the word limit, markers will stop reading your work. Essays submitted with less than the minimum word count (90% of 3500) are highly unlikely to contain sufficient depth to demonstrate learning at this level.

Here is some information to help you understand what is included in your word count:

a)    appendices should not be included in word count – this includes all information related to the topics under consideration.  It should not contain small pictures, models, graphics and tables.  They should be appropriately included in the text.  If you use your appendices to extend your essay word count then these will be included in the word count.  

b)    tables should not be included in word count if these are used to present quantitative data, but should be included if they are constructed using words.

c)    quotations and citations should be included in word count.

d)    the references section and any bibliography should not be included in the word count.

e)    abstracts and executive summaries should be included in the word count (so don’t use them!).

Submitting your work

You should submit your work to BOTH the Blackboard site and Turnitin before 3pm on the deadline day (local time).

Online submission (Blackboard)

The submission point will be available on the Blackboard site for this module where you need to upload your work. This is the version that will be marked. 

Turnitin submission

The Turnitin tool is available on the Blackboard site for this module.

You can upload your work as many times as necessary to Turnitin to check your work, prior to the deadline.

You will need to upload your final version to the Turnitin submission point by the submission deadline. Both the online submission version and the Turnitin version must match.

Assessment:  Individual case study

Read the case study below.  Individually, write a 3,500 word essay (+/- 10%) that critically answers the questions asked at the bottom of the case study. 

Case Study: Les’ management challenge

Disclaimer – this case study and the workplaces and characters within it are entirely fictional and have no link to any real organisations with the same or similar sounding names.

Both of the main roles (Les and Sam) have been written as female, however you can choose your own gender and pronouns for these individuals and use them in your writing.

Diagram showing See-Me (Sheffield) company structure.

See-Me Sheffield, (known as SMS) is a small, but rapidly growing, marketing company that is wholy owned by its German parent company whose values are Integrity, Innovation, Compassion, Excellence in Execution and Inclusion.

SMS has been operating for almost 10 years and employs around one hundred people in Sheffield, UK.  The majority of SMS’s customers are small and medium sized enterprises from across a variety of industries.  They are all seeking prompt and expert marketing support with development of their online and physical profiles. Business is good, probably too good. With the pandemic fading away companies are keen to get their brand back in the spotlight, this has put huge pressure on everyone in SMS as the work keeps pouring in.

Les has been recruited directly from university into her first line management role.  She secured the job because she had completed a sandwich year on placement where she worked for a large US based marketing corporation as a brand executive.  Les was attracted to the company based of its scale (she could have a large influence on outcomes) and in particular its values of integrity, innovation and compassion (she can't remember the others) but now she's not so sure she made a wise decision.

Les oversees three teams which each specialise in a particular form of marketing; the Social Media team (looking after all things online, Tik Tok, Facebook etc.); the Printed team (who look after marketing in physical media, such as magazines and newspapers) and the Billboard team who look after a mixture of large physical billboards attached to buildings as well as smaller electronic billboards that you find on bus shelters. None of the teams works well with the others, preferring to remain in their silo.

The Social Media team– Its team members are all under 30 years of age and no-one has been there longer than two years. Turnover of staff is very high, with leavers frequently saying better pay, and lack of prestigious clients forced them to leave. Stress was also an issue, with clients always expecting their promotions to go viral. Maria had been off for two months now, initially with covid and now anxiety, and the Human Resources (HR) department had told Les to “get on top of it”, but she isn’t sure what to do.

Les constantly needs to recruit for the Social Media team as the current process is not working. SMS advertises jobs on a national website and the majority of applicants are from London, who then frequently turn the down the job offer when they find out the pay scales and that they would have to move to Sheffield for their role, despite much of the work being undertaken online. Two people had left last week, and they were already understaffed anyway causing the existing team to complain about being over-worked (or lazy as Les saw it – the American team she had worked in previously would make sure the job was done even it meant staying late AND they each had more clients). She quite enjoys the recruitment part of her role (when she has the time) as it gives her an excuse to be nosey about candidates, looking on social media for inappropriate behaviour, or if they listed an obscure hobby or shared compromising photographs. She hadn’t completed her “unconscious bias” training yet, as she did not think it was relevant.

The Printed team – Almost all of the Printed team has been there since the company was formed. They are all male, with an average age of over 50 and they are often referred to as the “oldies” or “dinosaurs” by the Social Media team. They are the happiest team and content to keep doing what they have always done but don’t like to be stretched to achieve more and are very resistant to change. They’ve started to call Les ‘her highness’ suggesting that Les hasn’t the experience but acts like royalty and demands obedience.

The Billboard team – The Billboard team is a mixture of ages/genders and the most international of the teams, with staff from all over Europe. The German parent company had recently moved 10 employees from France into this team rather than make them redundant, but this had now caused a rift between existing staff (who do not speak French) and the new employees (who do speak fluent English) but were also very happy to remain as an independent group solely speaking French. Les knew she needed to do something about how the Billboard team worked together. Frankly, right now they didn’t really work together at all.

Zach from the Billboard team had commissioned a billboard opposite a school advertising a fast-food outlet, knowing full well that it was inappropriate (and potentially not compliant with advertising standards). It had caused a huge number of complaints and was front page news on the local paper, but the attention on the brand was fantastic, achieving much more than he could have done within the budget, so he thought it had been very successful. Sam (Les' boss) has said that Zach has done a great job and should be praised. Les however is wondering where the company's value of integrity is in this decision, and she worries that congratulating Zach will set a precedent for poor behaviour across the team. On top of this, the recognition seems to have caused Zach to abandon his duties, he now focuses on just 2 rather than his 20 clients and has been turning up late for work. Les is unsure what to do with Zach.

Nihal (from the Social media team) had spoken to her last week about career development and asked Les what he could do to move into a management position. Les (secretly) knew that he had applied for her job as Tracey from HR had told her. Nihal had wanted to investigate and discuss the options open to him but Les saw this as a threat to her leadership, so had simply told him a list of (impossible) tasks that had sent him away despondent.

The three teams were physically separated in different parts of the building as well as psychologically, thinking each was the best. It was not uncommon for beautifully designed “fake” posters to appear in different parts of the building ridiculing another team. Les thought it was probably Zach (Billboard) and Bob (Social Media) but doesn’t know what to do. If only they could all get along!

The Social Media team consumed all of Les’ development budget as it was obviously very important to keep the most technical team up to date with the latest knowledge. The Billboard team had asked for further training but Les told them to talk to the Social Media team and learn from them. The Printed team don’t think they need any development, but they are currently missing opportunities to collaborate with the other teams to generate more revenue. They continue to have their 10am whole team coffee breaks “to share knowledge and potential new opportunities” as they had frequently told Les. She just saw it as an excuse to gossip and has plans to stamp it out – it is such a waste of time! She has already drafted the email that told them from next week, it would be a disciplinary issue. She was sure she was right and didn’t need to talk to her manager and certainly not the team in advance of her official communication.

Les has carried out performance appraisals for the Social Media and Billboard teams (she left the Printed team to get on with it and set themselves some ‘useful team targets’). HR dictates the process and the forms that must be completed by Les. Everyone had been given the targets from senior management to “be 10% more effective” and “reduce costs by 5%” but Les wasn’t exactly sure what that meant so she ignored it. She struggled to understand the company values when “Integrity” felt more like “Do as I say, rather than as I do given the tacit approval of Zach’s billboard campaign and following a recent scandal concerning office expenses. 

Pay was always a contentious topic and the recent pay-review had not been received well, further widening the gulf of hostility between the three teams. Les has given the largest pay award to the Social Media team (“we need to recruit more people”), some to the Billboard team (“they should be thankful that they still have jobs”) and a very small award to the Printed team (“they’ve all bought their own homes so don’t need it”). Les was keen to see how she could improve retention using other incentives and has persuaded Sam that the company join the “Cycle to work” scheme that provides cheaper bicycles for staff to then ride to work. She also wants to get free gym membership as she knows a healthy work force is more productive and that everyone enjoys going to the gym.  She sees these as great ideas as they are based around being environmentally friendly and keeping fit, which are subjects she personally feels very passionate about.

Sam is very compassionate but Les doesn’t think she is very effective, and is far too soft – why would she congratulate Zach rather than discipline him for his poor choices? Every time Les goes to Sam with an issue, Sam would always ask her questions “What is the situation?”, “What could you do?”, “What should you do?” rather than telling her the answer, which she found incredibly frustrating. Once, Les had stormed out of a meeting with Sam, shouting “Just tell me the answer!”.  Les doesn’t feel like she had a clear direction from Sam, she is aware that Sam has targets, but they are not formally shared. Sam hasn’t identified any development for Les as part of Les’ performance appraisal discussion – instead she asked Les to identify what she thinks she needs – “how would I know what I need, except a new boss?” thinks Les.  Sam originally came from the Printed team, and she loved being the only woman there, and still makes time to join them occasionally for their ‘coffee break’ which Les thinks just undermines her efforts to get the Printed team more focused on generating output and revenue for the business. Sam has also set some diversity targets for recruitment in both the Printed and Social Media teams, as they are not very inclusive. Les finds this really frustrating as it is difficult getting anyone to apply, regardless of worrying about whether they bring something different to the team.

Les needed to get ready for her cross-team meeting. She dreads these, even though there is only 3 other people - an elected representative from each team. Somehow, she needed all the teams to agree on certain topics and thought that by having a representative from each team, it would work, having fewer voices at the table, but it always seems to just turn into a shouting match, where she has to shout the loudest to be heard.

Les had spent the last 2 hours trying to work out why people just wouldn’t do what they were told.  It is now lunch time, she leans back in her chair, sighs aloud and with no-one around, flicks onto the job adverts website.

Case study assessment task

 

The essay should be 3,500 words (plus or minus 10%).

 

Using HIGH QUALITY * research and APPROPRIATE^ organisational case studies, answer all the following questions in your individual essay (there are more notes on how to do this below – so keep reading):

Case Study questions

 

There are three questions that all have to be answered.

 

  1. Critically analyse the case study situation and apply theory in the identification of the key issues and challenges that Les is facing in her job.  (We suggest this should need around 25% of your word count – you can use examples from across the case study to answer this question).

 

  1. Provide justified and critically-argued actions (using theory and organisational examples) that address the following:

 

  1. How Les, the line manager, could improve the performance of the people in her teams in your three chosen topic areas – one from each theme.  (We suggest this should need around 25% of your word count).

 

We have identified the themes in the schedule of study.  Simply put you need to choose one topic from each of the following:

 

  • One from ‘The Context’ theme

a)    Devolving HR to Line Managers and the role of a Line Manager

b)    Talent management, acquisition (recruitment and selection) and development (learning and development)

c)    Psychological contract including Justice/Equity/Fairness and ethical working 

d)    Diversity and Inclusion

e)    The International Manager and Cross-Cultural Management

 

  • One from ‘The Individual’ theme

a)    Coaching and the line manager as coach

b)    Performance management and appraisal

c)    Managing underperformance

d)    Absence management

e)    Employee health and wellbeing

 

  • One from ‘The Team’ theme

a)    Leadership and management skills including Emotional Intelligence

b)    Followership and Teamwork

c)    Decision making in teams

d)    Employee engagement, emotional wellbeing and teams

e)    Supporting team cohesion and collaborations (including managing conflict)

  1. How Sam (Les’ manager), could improve her relationship with Les and support Les in her first line management role.  What do you see are Sam’s strengths when it comes to team leadership and where do you think Sam could change to improve her line management?  (We suggest this should need around 20% of your word count – you can use examples from across the case study to answer this question).
Essay Sample Content Preview:

See-Me Sheffield Case Study
Topic Areas:
The Context: Talent management, acquisition (recruitment and selection) and development (learning and development)
The Individual: Absence Management
The Team: Employee Engagement, Emotional Wellbeing, and Teams
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Title
Date
A Critical Analysis of the Case Study Situation
Line management is one of the most important departments in an organization when it comes to employee development. Les, the new line manager of a rapidly growing marketing company, is tasked with the huge responsibility of enhancing the productivity of employees from different departments (Yang, 2021). From the case study, it is clear that Les faces various challenges in her new role, which hinder her from effectively executing her role as the line manager for See-Me Sheffield (SMS). Some of the issues and challenges by Les include deficiency in recruitment, lack of effective communication, inadequate conflict resolution, confronting performance problems, and ineffectiveness in retaining star employees.
Recruitment Problems
Effective recruitment is one of the most critical roles of a line manager (Worren, 2018). Les is faced with the challenge of finding the right personnel to fill different responsibilities in the company. For Les to improve the performance of SMS, she needs to make the right hiring decisions regarding qualifications and the willingness to adhere to the organization's values on the part of potential employees. One of the issues that contribute to this challenge is the means of advertising available jobs at SMS. The company lists available job opportunities on a national website that attracts offers from the most populated cities, such as London. According to Wåhlin-Jacobsen (2020), this creates a geographical gap between qualified employees who apply for the jobs and their availability to relocate to Sheffield, where SMS is located. For instance, most of the applicants for social media job opportunities come from London, but they are not willing or able to move to Sheffield to take up the jobs. Another issue contributing to Les' poor hiring decisions is her unwillingness to let some social media department employees work remotely. Most roles executed by employees in the social media department can be completed remotely, which would increase the pool of qualified employees attracted to the company.
Lack of Effective Communication
Tawalare (2020) argues that effective communication plays a crucial role in every organization's day-to-day running and performance. One of the primary responsibilities of a line manager is to ensure that there are clear lines of communication between senior management and the different departments in the organization. In this case, Les needs to create effective lines of communication between her and Sam (her senior) and the three departments she manages. For instance, Les complains of Sam's unwillingness to give straight answers every time she goes to her with a problem for guidance. Although some of the blame, in this case, can be put on Sam because of her seniority, Les should learn to be more initiative when communicating with Sam. This is because Sam's suggestion-based model of communication has been proven to be very effective when it comes to creating a collaborative environment in an organization.
The communication between Les and the three teams she manages could be better. This can mainly be attributed to Les' authoritative nature of management. For her to communicate effectively with the teams, she needs to establish a means of communication that is collaborative as opposed to the "do what I say” method. Stone & Cox (2020) argues that employees are more willing to communicate their challenges or their suggestions to enhance productivity when they feel they are part of the decision-making process. At SMS, it is clear that the three teams work independently from each other due to the need for more clear communication between the teams and the line manager. The lack of collaboration in the company is mainly because Les feels that some teams, such as the Billboard team, do not answer to her authority or respect her due to their age in relation to hers. As a manager, age should never be a topic of discussion when guiding subordinates (Schermerhorn Jr, 2020).
Conflict Resolution
As the line manager at SMS, Les is responsible for resolving conflicts that may arise among the three teams she manages. From the case study, it is clear that there is a conflict between the three teams because every team feels superior to the other. For instance, there have been more than just posters where one team makes fun of the other such as calling the Billboard team 'oldies' or 'dinosaurs .'Les is faced with the challenge of creating a more collaborative working environment between the three teams and creating an understanding that every role in the company is as important as any other. Les's favoritism, however, does not help the case to create a more collaborative environment. For instance, she feels that the social media team is more important than the other two teams in progressing the company's goals (Mizuno, 2020). This is clear in the case where she allocated the entire budget to the social media team, and the Billboard team is required to discuss their budget issues with the former. This indicates that Les needs an important management trait to unify all departments in the organization through fair resource allocation.
Retaining Employees
For any organization to be competitive and successful in today's market, it should be able to retain its star employees (Griffin, 2021). Keeping the most productive employees at SMS has been a major challenge even before Les took charge as the line manager. Most employees cite inadequate remuneration and a toxic work environment as the reason why they leave their posts. Although it is common for the best performing employees in any company to be poached by another company with better perks, the recurrence of SMS indicates a challenge in the internal running of the company. Due to the limited budget at SMS, Les is faced with the challenge of enhancing its remuneration structure to be more attractive to its star employees. However, she can start by creating a better working environment for their workers to retain their best employees.
Justified and Critically-argued Actions Addressing the following:
(a1) Talent Management, Acquisition, and Talent Development
Talent Management
As the line manager at SMS, Les is responsible for reviewing and managing different talents in the company to improve the performance of the three teams. She can achieve this by tracking and measuring every team member's performance through a standardized talent review strategy. To achieve this, Les will need to come up with specific and measurable goals for each of the three teams and subdivide the tasks for achieving these goals to a specific member of every group (Griffin, 2021). To ensure that the review is standard and fair, it is important to have a time frame for the completion of every task, which should be based on the complexity of specific tasks. This will create healthy competition among the team members while maintaining the spirit of collaboration in every team. For this to succeed, Les should ensure that there are clear lines of communication between her and every team member to allow her to provide feedback on their performances.
Les can also enhance talent management at SMS by recognizing and rewarding top performers in the organization. According to Gallardo-Gallardo (2020), recognizing and rewarding the efforts of the best-performing employees in an organization is one of the best ways to motivate them and consequently improve their productivity. Les should note that for any rewarding system to work, equity and fairness are non-negotiable. Les, as the line manager, must ensure that every team member is provided with equal and fair chances to showcase their talent. Up to now, Les has yet to be fair to the members of the teams in providing them with a fair opportunity for growth in the company. For example, when Nihal from the social media team came to her for advice on how he could advance his career, she allocated the most difficult tasks to him to hinder his development because she was worried about losing her position to him.
Acquisition (recruitment and selection)
Effective acquisition is integral to the performance and success of any organization. The effective acquisition involves selecting qualified personnel with the right set of skills to fill a position in a company. Although Les enjoys the recruitment and section process, she is driven by her need to assess and read the personal posts of the applicants as opposed to the qualification of the candidates. The best way for Les to enhance her recruitment process is to use the time provided to assess the skills possessed by different applicants and how well they can fit the company's needs. It is also important to use the posts and photographs posted by the applicants to judge their moral values and decide whether they align with the organization's values (Stone & Cox, 2020).
Talent Development
Training and talent development is the only way to get your employees' productivity. However, for this to be effective and significantly impact the company's performance, the process needs to be fair to every member of the organization (Follows, 2022). In the past, it is clear that Les has not been effective or fair in talent development in the company. For instance, when the Billboard team asked for a budget for training and development, she asked them to ask it from the social media team, to which she had allocated the entire budget. Les can improve talent development at SMS by allocating each team a fair share of the development budget to enhance their skills and abilities.
(a2) Absence Management
Employee absenteeism can be very detrimental to a company's performance because it can leave the company short-staffed in a time of need. Since there are situations where em...
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