Organizational Behavior

MT302 Organizational Behavior

Unit One: Case Incident 1

How a UPS manager can cut turnover

9/26/2010

1. In dollars-and-cents terms, why did Jennifer Shroeger want to reduce turnover?

Turnover is bad for business, it means lost time, lost product output

and lost operational efficiency. It is costly for the company because it

would mean that the work left by the employee would be distributed to

the remaining employees which would mean that they would be burdened by

the additional job. Also, turnover would mean additional costs for the

company since it would take money and resources to look for and train a

replacement. Jennifer would be losing dollars if turnover continued to

rise in the company, while she would only be spending cents to keep the

employees happy and keep them from leaving.

2. In addition to turnover, what other criteria should Ms. Shroeger examine in evaluating the effectiveness of the UPS program? Why is it important to examine multiple criteria in evaluating an OB program?

Part-time employees generally have higher motivation to stay in the

company since they don't have job security as they are only part-timers.

However, it is also true that part-timers have lower performance output

since they do not expect to keep their jobs thus they should also be

motivated. Jennifer's scheme to motivate the employees can also be

applied to the part-time employees as it would be an instant reward to

their work performance hence compensating and reinforcing their outputs .3 . What are the implications from this case for managing in future years

when there may be a severe labor shortage?

People who work are motivated to earn a living, thus they would look and

try their best to keep their jobs. But in the face of labor shortage,

such as when there is more jobs than workers , it would be a reality that

to cover the need for labor , people would be working in a number of jobs

part-time . Thus, in order to keep the...