Regulatory Review Commission Case Solution

1. Executive Summary

The case is about a dilemma faced by Monique to deal with an inefficient subordinate, Brian in the operations department in a government office. Monique is dissatisfied by Brian's unprofessional behavior. Even after having a formal discussion with him, Brian did not change his habits and continued to perform poorly by not meeting deadlines or not showing up work without informing. However, there was also an issue of understaffing in the department causing the employees to be over-burdened by a lot of work. Lack of accountability, the limited power of supervisor and job security played a role in encouraging Brian to not work with dedication. It was, therefore identified that a proper mechanism for monitoring deadlines together with the hiring of more staff would help deal with cases like that of Brian's. Three alternative actions were proposed. One involved formally getting approval of revising the probation periods to ease employee hiring and evaluation process. Second involved hiring to overcome understaffing and third was to terminate Brian based on his poor performance in the current as well as the previous department, proving that he would not improve. Out of these three, it was proposed that Brian be terminated immediately by accumulating evidence of his poor behavior despite multiple discussions. However, in case of failure to get the approval for dismissal, the new staff would be hired for vacant positions to spread the workload and improve overall efficiency.

2. Overview

The given case is about working towards achieving organizational efficiency in a governmental organization, where the employees enjoy job security unless or otherwise proved incompetent. There are two employees involved, Monique Ricard and Brian Coffey, Brian being the subordinate of Monica. Brian was considered good at his job as stated in his job description, however, his laid back attitude was what bothered Monica. His previous employees’ evaluation showed similar remarks about his attitude including high absenteeism, lack of responsibility and late submission of work. Even after Monique had a formal discussion with him asking him to be more responsible, Brian's attitude did not change. Thus, as Brian's probationary period was nearing culmination, Monique was faced with a dilemma as to what decision to take concerning Brian's permanent hiring. Once, he would get permanent it would be difficult to discharge him in the capacity of a permanent employee. She had, therefore, three options, which included, to discharge him, either which would be time consuming or transfer him to other departments where his skills would be a match, which would again be difficult considering his bad reputation or get his probationary period extended to better evaluate him and make an informed decision.

3. Problems

The operations center department in the Research Center Commission handled highly confidential and high priority information. However, Brian's performance was not consistent with the department needs as he completed the assigned tasks slowly despite them being a high priority. Furthermore, he would frequently miss the given deadlines and took a longer period to respond to urgent requests. Apart from this, it is important to note that it was a necessity for the operations center to be staffed on a continuous basis during office hours since it was the central point for the disbursement of emergency reports. Despite it being of such critical nature, Brian demonstrated careless attitude by taking long lunch breaks and arriving late at work, leaving the center unattended. He even took an absence from work without informing Monique, which can be seen to be consistent with the evaluation of is former employees who issued a letter of reprimand against him and pointed him out for having lack of motivation and being low on attendance. Apart from this, upon formally approaching Brian to improve his ways of work, he got into a conflict with Monique and refused to follow her guidelines. This can be very detrimental if the employee does not follow his supervisor (Koslowsky, Schwarzwald, & Ashuri, 2001). Considering the operations center, where the focus was on establishing trust between the subordinate and the supervisor, such a conflict would adversely affect the culture of the department and hamper its efficiency (Kim, Wang, & Chen, 2018). Lastly, the probationary period of Brian was about to end after which he would become a permanent employee. If then his unprofessional attitude would not change, discharging him would become problematic.