Question

Case- Hightower Business School

Hightower Business School has five major departments: Management, Marketing, Finance, Accounting, and Risk and Insurance. In order to maximize the use of secretarial time, the secretaries are arranged in a secretarial pool, with one of the secretaries designated as supervisor. All professors give their work directly to the secretarial supervisor, who then assigns it to one of the nine other secretaries. There appears to be a lot of dissatisfaction in the secretarial pool, even though the supervisor is well liked. Turnover is high, absenteeism is high, and the quality of work is extremely poor. The professors are also displeased. They say that the quality of work is extremely poor and important work is often put on low priority status and occasionally even last. The Dean of the College, however, defends the secretarial pool concept saying that it evens out the workload for the secretaries and reduces costs.

Questions

What suggestions would you give the Dean for job enrichment? How should the Dean implement these suggestions?

Answer 1

The Job enrichment of the secretarial pool can be initiated by taking the following measures:

• Motivation & reward: Link the performance to incentives and reward the secretary with the best work in terms of quality and quantity by publically recognizing her at an event and pasting the employee of month picture on the board. There can also be a reward for the best performance.
• Performance linked Incentive: Best performance more than 4 times a year can entitle you to a subsidized further education in the college in a field of your interest in the college.
• Employee engagement & Create belongingness: Dedicated secretaries can be assigned to each department and in case of extra workload the secretary of another department can be used. This will make the secretary feel more involved and part of a department.
• Employee Engagement: There should be a weekly social event where the secretaries and faculty members interact socially and mingle. The reward and recognition can be presented at the event.
• Training & Feedback: The secretary should also be given training of 2-3 hours every month which is followed by taking their feedback on their issues and concerns.

These can be implemented by the Dean with the HR team by starting all the above initiatives which are not very expensive but will work towards motivating the team.

• The social event can be planned at a lean time where the workload is the minimum like Friday evening
• The monetary compensation or reward recognizing the performance should be large enough to motivate the other team members to perform better.
• Training can be conducted by in-house professors on a rotation basis for each department. This will also give an opportunity to the secretaries and professors to understand each other and create a platform to thrash out their issues.
• The high performer will be encouraged to improve their education and take on another role in the business school.
• Assigning dedicated secretaries to each department can be initiated immediately as it will also train the secretary in the line of communication and make the secretary feel part of a team. When the workload is high the work can be passed on to any secretary available by the supervisor.