First Day on the Job

Case Study: "First Day on the Job"

Harry F. Wilkes

Dr. Lucinda Lawson

Strategic Human Resource Management

HRM 530

4 Mar 2010

Background

Malik is a new manager and on his first day of work a female employee approaches him and starts expressing her dissatisfaction with the job. He is caught completely off guard because she has been identified as being one of his best performers in the division. Although an important matter, Malik was not able entertain the situation because he had to leave for the day to address a pressing issue.

Discuss the factors causing the employee's dissatisfaction.

Reflecting back on case scenario there was no information conveyed as to why she was so despondent; however, most conflicts that are not communicated can cultivate emotional frustration within employees that sometime leads to dissatisfaction on the job. It is obvious from the case study that the employee is discontented with either her current profession or her employer and has planned to quit her job. (Stewart, G., &Brown, K (2009) discuss many factors for employees' dissatisfaction throughout the textbook.

Two main factors causing the employee's dissatisfaction are burnout and the lack of career development. The author defines burnout as a "psychological phenomenon involving emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a decline in feelings of competence about work". Symptoms include feelings of being overworked, having a distant attitude toward work, and reduced expectations of success at work. Burnout is also related to workload, pressure, stress, and interoffice discord.

Malik's employee approaches him expressing the same systems of frustrations, the quantity of work sometime being too little and others times, too much. In addition, she alluded that there is no excitement or job satisfaction, and does not feel that she is being challenged to enhance the skill sets required to reach her ultimate goal of owning a company. One approach described in our readings is the career development process, which is a series of steps that helps employees determine and develop in career paths and goals. The employee does not feel that she is being challenged in areas that would help her reach her long term goals of business ownership. It is apparent this employee has formulated a career goal, but without gaining experience in her current position, she feels her time there is being wasted.

What I learned through experience and through studies suggests that managers and leadership can play an important role by being exact about their expectations, providing support, and empowering employees with the grow opportunities. Ideally, Malik should request more details from the employee, while simultaneously looking at how the organization handles employee's development.

In addition, Malik may need to address his issue with management so that a action plan can be developed to focus the company on retaining and recapturing the motivation and energy of employees at work, and identifying those necessary factors that the company may need to highlight in order to keep the job interesting and challenging.

2. Identify which of these factors could be addressed with improvements in the way the organization handles development as described in the chapter.

With regards to Malik's employee's burnout, it related to workload, the pressure, and stress of someone who did not expect to encounter difficult working conditions. In addition, she also voiced the displeasure for her day-to-day work because it no longer offered her excitement. As described in the chapter, job enrichment would address the employee's expression of lack in excitement and lack of challenge. "Job enrichment involves adding challenges or new responsibilities to employees' jobs" (Stewart, G. & Brown, K. pg. 377).

The enrichment would challenge the employee, and allow her to decide upon a career path of moving up or down within the company. The author also emphasizes that enrichment can have the dual benefit of being motivating because it adds the challenge and novelty of being developmental because it requires the employee to develop new skills. As with any DOD agency, Malik's company could benefit by helping employees to better understand the big picture of what the company does and how, and by encouraging employees to meet people throughout the company so they can collaborate in the future (Stewart, G. & Brown, K., pg. 378).

Another factor that contributed to her burnout was the lack of work of work at times. This is where she refers to the unmet expectations at her job. The employee is looking for the experience that can help her meet the ultimate goal of owning her own business. Malik should explore all formal training courses (instructor-led sessions, web-based training and seminars), in the company that offer flexible alternatives such as coaching, mentoring and job-rotation experiences (Wexley & Latham 2001).

In an article, there is a quote that says, "A good mentor will likely welcome the opportunity to assist you in achieving your personal vision and professional goals." (Lakoski, 2009) A good mentoring