Case Study

Every supervisor, at some point in his or her career, is likely to be faced with the arduous task of laying off employees. Assume you are the supervisor in the accounting department of a 750-member organization. Top management has notified you that you must reduce your staff by two individuals. The following are some data about your five employees:

Janet McGraw: African American female, age thirty-six. Janet has been employed with your company for five years, all in the accounting department. Her evaluations over the past three years have been outstanding and above average. Janet has an MBA from a top-25 business school. She has been on short-term disability the past few weeks following the birth of her second child and is expected to return to work in twenty weeks.

Bill Keene: White male, age forty-nine. Bill has been with you for four months and has eleven years of experience in the company in payroll. He has an associate degree in business administration, and bachelors and masters degrees in accounting. Hes also a CPA. Bills performance evaluations over the past three years in the payroll department have been average, but he saved the company $150,000 after he made a suggestion regarding the use of electronic timesheets.

Jos Melendez: Hispanic male, age thirty-one. Jos has been with the company for almost four years. His evaluations over the past three years in your department have been outstanding. He is committed to getting the job done and devoting whatever it takes. He has also shown initiative by taking job assignments that no one else wanted. Additionally, he has recovered a Am I Experiencing Work/Family Conflict? Finally, after you complete any self-assessment, we sug- gest you retain the results, and store them as part of your portfolio of learning about yourself. number of overdue and uncollected accounts that you had thought should be written off as a loss.

Lisa Parks: White female, age thirty-five. Lisa has been with your company seven years. Four years ago, Lisa was in an automobile accident while traveling on business to a customers location. As a result of the accident, she is disabled and now uses a wheelchair. Rumors have it that she is about to receive several million dollars from the insurance company of the driver that hit her. Her performance the last two years has been above average. She has a bachelors degree in accounting and specializes in computer information systems.

Charles Thomas: African-American male, age forty-three. Charles just completed his joint masters degree in taxation and law, and recently passed the bar exam. He has been with the department the past four years. His evaluations have been good to above average. Five years ago, Charles won a lawsuit against your company for discriminating against him in a promotion to a supervisory position. Rumor is now, with his new degree, Charles is actively pursuing another job outside the company.

Given these five brief descriptions, make a recommendation on which two employees you will suggest to your boss be laid off. Discuss any other options that you feel can be used to meet the requirement of downsizing by two employees without resorting to layoffs.

Discuss what you will do to:

(A) assist the two individuals who have been let go and

(B) assist the remaining three employees. Then, determine who else is going to be laid off. Be prepared to defend your actions.

(C) Can you suggest an alternative to laid-off action? If so, how are you going to implement it? Explain in detail.