Question 4. Global Communications Group

Global Communications Group is a large telecommunication company specifically in business for the purpose of providing video conferencing for clients around the world. You are the supervisor of the internal local area network section of the IT department.

You oversee 15 employees, all of whom are technicians responsible for keeping the companys internal network functioning properly. There are employees with many levels of experiencefrom brand new employees just out of college to employees with 10 years of experience within the company.

You have the following issues to handle:

You have recently noticed that Anna, who has worked in your unit for six years, has been having difficulty finishing work in an appropriate amount of time. You have had two meetings with her about this issue and have been unable to determine the problem because Anna has become defensive in both meetings. Her specific response is usually along the lines of, Ive worked here for a long time and never had any problems. Why are you harassing me now?

4a. Youve decided that you must take some action in order to remedy this problem. Give a detailed assessment of the best way to handle this situation with Anna.

It is time for you to meet with Katy for her quarterly performance review. You are not sure what her goals or interests are. The one real performance issue you have noticed during the review period is that she is sometimes abrupt with internal clients when she is assigned to answer the Help line. In fact, you have received complaints from other departments that Katy speaks to them in such a way that they feel stupid for having called.

Other than this, her general performance is slightly above average. Katy volunteers to help fellow employees with solving problems and implementing new programs in the network. She completes her assigned tasks more quickly than most other employees and her work is almost always error free. When an error is found, she is gracious in her acceptance of feedback.

4b. Please provide a detailed discussion of your preparation for how you will handle the performance review meeting with Katy and any follow-up action.

Martin is a supervisor for the Internet section of the IT department. He oversees 15 employees and is having some difficulty in documenting performance. He uses nothing but computer-generated statistics in his performance evaluations. He has come to you at the suggestion of his supervisor, also your supervisor, who has informed him that your performance documentation is exactly what the company is looking for.

4c. Give Martin a critical assessment of the key features of evaluation documentation.