Assignment Type: Management Decision

Instructions: First, read the case and sources provided. Then, answer the questions shown at the bottom of the assignment. After this assignment is complete, please submit the WORD document to Blackboard. While I am primarily interested on your analysis, spelling check is appreciated.

Managing or Spying?

Well, it$$s the last Friday of the month, and that can only mean one thing$$time to process the invoices from the freelance workers you hired. A few months ago, your company was overloaded by the amount of data processing that needed to be done. There were a few days when the entire staff, even the janitors, stayed past $11$pm to read through, sort, and organize all of your clients$$ account data. The work wasn$$t necessarily difficult. But it was time consuming, and you hated it when your employees and managers had to take time off of other important things to get the processing done. You thought you found a perfect solution when you decided to hire some freelancers$$part$-$time outsiders that you could contract to do all of the processing, freeing up your staff to focus on other things.

What seemed to be a great solution, however, produced a few troubles of its own. It wasn$$t as if the work wasn$$t getting done$$the freelancers actually did a pretty good job with their assignments. The problem was, though, how much time they seemed to be spending on the work. When you used to do the processing in$-$house, it usually took one person about $4-5$ hours to go through the data for one client. Even employees who didn$$t have any specialized training could usually get through one client$$s account in less than $7$ hours. Your freelancers, however, have been charging for more hours$$a lot more. Six months ago, their time sheet showed that they spent an average of $16$ hours per account. Three months ago, their time sheet showed that they spent an average of $19$ hours per account. And as you open this month$$s invoices, you see that they are reporting having spent an average of $21$ hours per account.

You think to yourself $$This can$$t be right?$$ You wonder if maybe they are just working extra slowly. Or maybe they are billing you for hours they spend looking up YouTube videos.