Kelly did not enjoy this week as owner of a Sweep Away franchise. Sweep Away's business model was simple. It contracted to clean office space overnight for various local businesses. It was a fairly lucrative business due to increasing demand for its services. Most businesses found it cheaper to hire outside companies like Sweep Away to do the work than to hire their own staff. Kelly was pleased the business was growing so quickly, but with growth came personnel issues. This week several issues came to a head.

Kelly always knew Justice was going to quit sometime in May after graduation. Working for Sweep Away was just a way to pay for college and have extra cash for fun. Kelly once tried to convince Justice to join the business, but it was not going to happen. Justice was pursuing a dream career in pharmaceutical sales.

Harley's resignation was not a surprise either. Kelly noticed the quality of Harley's work was no longer good—or even average—during recent inspections of offices after they were cleaned. Whatever motivated Harley to do good work at first was no longer there. Although not surprised by Harley's resignation, Kelly was annoyed by the lack of two weeks' notice before quitting. Good employees give two weeks' notice, but what can you do if someone stops showing up? Unfortunately, this probably meant Kelly would have to step in for a few nights until a replacement was found.

And then there was Jayden, who never had been a good employee. Kelly trained and retrained Jayden three times, but nothing changed. After the last retraining, Kelly gave Jayden specific goals to meet or be let go. After Kelly documented the goals were not met on three different occasions in the last month, it was time to let Jayden go.

The day was going to be taken up primarily with a meeting to terminate Jayden's employment, followed by taking Justice out to eat one last time, followed by filling in for Harley. Sometimes being a franchise owner was not much fun.

 

QUESTION: What is a brief framing of this case? What are the issues and opportunities? What assumptions can be made?
What alternatives are there for addressing the Issues/Opportunities that are presented? And what are the pros and cons of each? What are the most important themes of the case and why are they important lessons to learn? Lastly, what recommendations can be made to improve communication in the organization?