Question

Disciplining Employees – Reflection Questions

You are a manager at a large IT and software company. You have approximately 50 people on your staff.

1. Cindy is on your staff. She has worked for you for approximately 6 months. Cindy is a recent college graduate and started at the company in May. Cindy completed her training at the company in July. Shortly thereafter, you met with Cindy and set five S.M.A.R.T. goals for Cindy to work on achieving in the next year. These goals were linked to Cindy’s job requirements/expectations.

Cindy is not making much progress on achieving her goals. When Cindy encounters a new problem, she is content to rely on others to solve the problem for her instead of taking the initiative to learn new information and solve the problem herself. In addition to not the fact that Cindy isn’t demonstrating initiative to develop her knowledge, she is also taking up valuable time from the other more experienced team members, which slows down the progress of the staff. Cindy also tends to spend a lot of time texting or using her phone while she is at work. On more than one occasion you have come over to her desk to find out the status of a project to find her on social media. Other team members have noticed as well and are starting to resent her.   

How should you handle the discipline of Cindy? What approach do you want to take? Outline the process that you will follow. Provide detail and support your reasoning. Your response should be at least 2 paragraphs.

2. Marco is also on your staff. Marco has been with the organization for 2 years. He has worked for you for 1 year. Marco meets his position expectations. One day, Jenna, who is also on your staff, asks to speak with you privately. Jenna’s desk is next to Marcos and she reports that she has seen Marco viewing pornographic images on his computer on more than one occasion. Yesterday, when she saw him looking at these images she confronted him. Instead of apologizing, Marco asked her if she wanted to look at them with him. Jenna is offended and feels harassed. She wants you to move her desk and do something to make him stop.

Your IT department verifies the presence of pornographic images on Marco’s hard drive. Assume your company has a policy against such use of its company equipment, as well as a sexual harassment policy.

How should you handle the discipline of Marco? What approach do you want to take? Outline the process that you will follow. Provide detail and support your reasoning. Your response should be at least 2 paragraphs

            

                       

Answer 1

Answer to first question:

From the given scenario, it is clear that Cindy is not an active worker and when she encounters any problem, she heavily relies on other staff rather than searching and finding a solution. Also she spends and wastes much of her time on social media and lagging behind her work schedule. Such behavior should not be tolerated at the workplace as it put negative effects on other hard working and sincere employees. Further, she also wastes time of other staff.

She must be warned for such behavior and put under strict probation as she seems to be habitual of not working and going to office only for chatting on social media. This will make her to think for positive course of action and make her believe that she needs to find solutions on her own and also needs to show performance at work. Her job is not secure at all and she may loose it to some other person if her behavior at office does not change.

Answer to second question:

From the given case, Marco's intention are clear. He has no guilt at all when it was discovered by Jenna that he views pornographic contents at workplace. Even going further, he offered Jenna to view such content with him. It is proved by the IT Department that he indeed views such content at workplace which is enough for initiating an inquiry against him for breaking rules and ethics code of the company and sexual harassment of woman employees.

Further, he must also be tried for such contraventions and harassment at workplace of fellow woman workers. He must be immediately dismissed after completion of fair inquiry as he never showed any dissent after discovery by Jenna and such behavior may prove harmful in near future for other woman staff.