53 Nitish@ Solutions unlimited

Problem statement:

How can Nitish ensure that his career prospects are not hampered and gets opportunities to exploit his potential and prior experience?

PESTCL Analysis:

Factors In the case Impact on solving the problemPolitical Friendship with

existing employees

Vacant key positions

Decentralised structure

Arvind and his wife who have been working in the organisation have been instrumental in getting him the job. And this reference has been impactful for him getting the job.

Due to the absence of top management in the hierarchy, there is distress in the lower order of the company which lacks resolution as of now.

Economic Salary issues It is very evident that existing personnel for HR has been partial towards compensating for what had been promised to Nitish. He was promised to pay 100% severance and travel for whole family, which has not been fulfilled. Additionally, it was seen that the initial CTC of 2.55 INR, that was quoted to him turned out to be way below his capabilities and expectations, whose negotiation led to a rift between Meena and Nitish. She lacked human touch, which is a major cause of this problem.

Social Work environment

Hygiene factors Conflict of roles Informal groups

Multiple employees like Mr. Alagu share a good rapport with Meena, the HR. So this turns against Nitish.

Grapevine among the existing employees is also responsible for the current situation.

Lack of sensitivity towards new employee impacts the role and responsibility of the employee.

Meena, the HR, is from operations. She hasn’t been trained for handling personnel, and most probably not a personality to handle human personnel.

Consistent inflexibility by Meena towards improving relations with Nitish also contributes to the ever increasing problems with them.

Technological N/A N/A Cultural Goal conflicts

Power Distance The organisation is re positioning itself. An image

makeover is what we are looking at. And the

change in the overall culture of the company generally takes a lot of time, which can also be another factor because people are not as flexible as we think they are.

Legal Travel allowance policy

The promises made were not conveyed in written. And there was miscommunication which wasn’t clarified on time. This had impacted the relationship between Meena and Nitish.

Strengths:1. Sound technical educational background.2. Exposure to cutting edge technology in banking sector.3. Experience in preparing bids for projects.4. Good natured, happy-go-lucky, cheerful and friendly person.5. Good technical skills, analytical ability and willingness and ability to contribute in projects.

Weaknesses:

1. Unwillingness to work as software programmer.2. Nitish worried too much, instead of talking straight to Meena and Venkat, he thought of ignoring

the issue. Instead, he could have talked to them and tried to settle the issue.3. He should have dealt with more professionalism and be more formal with the HR folks until they

both understood him completely.4. He was not vocal enough to explain in detail what he intended to say and mean.

Opportunities:

1. Having worked in a lot of diversified projects, within the domain of Finance and IT, he had good deliverables in the project. His work was appreciated by his seniors and could anticipate appraisals and promotions.

2. Make an effort to reconcile with Meena by approaching her in the best possible way.3. Leave the company and look for another job opportunity after completing his project in Nagpur.

Threats:

1. If Nitish decides to stay in the company and keep tolerating Meena’s indifference towards him he would be able to maintain peace and harmony at his workplace, however this might hurt his already bruised ego.

2. If Nitish decides to quit the company and look for another job, he might have to deal with the financial stress associated with this transition.

3. If Nitish’s reconciliation efforts are not successful it might have serious repercussions on Nitish’s equations with his colleagues and senior management.

Identified factors:

Position of power: Meena was at Operations officer level 2 and was also taking care of HR department as the HR head position was vacant. Nitish had recently joined the company and was reporting to Meena for the related issues. It is seen from the case that Nitish had not given importance to Meena and Venkat that Meena had expected from a new entrant. Meena was reporting to Operations head Alagu who was also of the opinion that Nitish was demanding and did not try to mesh with organization norms. Meena’s biases towards Nitish in several occasions (passport issue, project allocation) proved that she commanded a position of respect and power for herself and was using her power to dominate the decisions related to HR issues.

Need for affiliation: We see that Nitish had a strong desire for affiliation while the Meena had desire for Power. Nistish’s desire of affiliation was never satisfied because organization’s policy and norms were not in line with it. While Nitish never had anything against dominant attitude of Meena, he always wanted a free and organic organization culture and not a mechanistic one.

Role Theory: Role theory specify how an individual in an organization sees his position of work in an organization. In the case we see that Nitish had role ambiguity. He was not assigned a project and was currently helping other groups in their projects. On several occasions he was not allowed to continue in the project he was currently working on. There was also a role conflict seen among the various department. The HR department has vacancies and the operation’s department was filling in for that department. The members were not trained for the multiple jobs given to them. The lack of HR judgment created several problems with the HR department and the new employee.

Organizational culture (Subcultures): Nitish was told that the organization is very organic and free culture. But it turned out to be very mechanistic and improperly structured. The hierarchy suggest that there is a need for HR with specific skills in order to implement company policy properly. But the informal culture created a barrier in the proper communication of the members.

Nitish was never informed about several decision taken against him. The only way he became aware of the decision was through grapevine communication or through his mentor. This created a feeling of demotivation for Nitish which was difficult for him to workout.

Informal groups: We find that there are two groups formed in the organization. The first group involved Nitish, his friends Arvind, Vidya and his mentor. The other group had Meena, Venkat and Alagu. These groups were formed because Nitish did not accept the power distance and cultural factors of the organization. It was taken by Meena and Alagu in wrong way. This led to several communication problems between the groups.

Organizational structure: Due to adhocracy and policy ambiguity, there were several occasions where the decentralized structure created problems in decision making. In the beginning of the case it is seen that Meena took the decision on salary and designation (for Nitish) without any consultation. When policies are not clear a decentralized organization structure causes improper decisions.

Information asymmetry: The company policies were not defined properly and also there was lack of awareness among employees about policies which resulted in mismatch of promise done by Venkat to Nitish for severance and spouse travelling and in defined policies. The other reason of information asymmetry is role ambiguity and lack of skills as operations Officer doing the role of HR. Information asymmetry can be reduced by proper awareness training of polices and filling the vacant position of HR as soon as possible.

Power distance: The issue of power distance arise because of lack of willingness by Nitish to accept status and power differences of Meena which made Meena felt for lacking in position of power.

Span of control: The span of control of Mr. Manish Chawla was very wide. Due to this, he was unaware of various issues facing by the employees and made him unapproachable.

Skill based pay: Despite of high qualification and relevant work experience, Meena did not offer Nitish the salary based on his skill. If she would had offered the skill based pay on first hand, the conflict would not had severed.

Maslow hierarchy needs: The problem originated because of safety and security needs of Nitish. Nitish was unhappy with the earlier offered salary and offered severance which resulted into the intervention by Mr. Kapoor into this matter due to which Meena got offended and felt the lack of position of power.

Inter-group conflict: Due to formation of two informal groups in Solutions unlimited, one is of Nitish, Arvind and Mr. Kapoor and other of Meena, Venkat and Mr. Alagu, the inter-group conflict aroused. The issue of inter-group conflict aggravates due to poor formation of organizational polices resulting in information asymmetry and differences between Meena and Nitish.

Constraints:

The major constraint they faced was their complex employee referral policy. Solutions Unlimited being a small firm, with not many employees required to ease its employee referral policy structure. Due to this, they could not hire employees for the other 2 vacant position of HR. It would be good, if the employees sort out their differences which will help the firm in the long run to grow.

Alternatives:

1. Status quo :Nitish should continue to work in same manner and hope for Meena’s mind to change. This would hurt his ego but it would help him to retain his job and the pay he was offered. With time, Meena’s mind might change and Nitish could also end up receiving other interesting offers that would enable him to use his previous experiences and expertise. However, this could take a long time during which Nitish could have used his skills to climb up the ladder.

Need very many justifications for this option. Can be but in rare occasions 2. Resolving the issue:

He can have a one to one meeting with Meena and also a meeting with other heads in order to sort things out. By doing this, he can satisfy the need for power and position desired by Meena.

There should be well defined roles for each position and well-defined policies. Awareness training on policies is also required so that there will be no information asymmetry in organization. These aspects should be covered in the meeting.

3. Quit and look out for a new job :He can quit this job and try looking out for other avenues in other companies through his friends. This will let him hold his ego and he would not be tormented by Meena’s actions and can start a new professional life all afresh. However, he would lose all the knowledge he gained in Solutions Unlimited and would also lead to a black mark in his profile as he would be quitting the job within months of joining.

Recommendations:

The most viable option for Nitish would be resolving the issue. By doing this, he would not waste time waiting for her mind to change. This could also show him a new path to build his career in the company with other new projects that excite him. By choosing this option, he does not lose the pay he was offered and can comfortably lead a life as he has already re-located. The first option is not viable because he would have to wait for a long time and even after that we do not know if Meena would change her mind.Similarly, the third option is also not advisable since it would make him lose his current pay and throw a black mark in his profile.

Outline Plan:

With the decision being that, Nitish has to reconcile with Meena, the following plan would be one of the best possible ways to do the same.

First Month: The company has to formulate it’s polices very clearly and make all the employees aware of the same, so that no miscommunication takes place.

The company must also do a cost benefit analysis to decide, is it good to hire a proper HR Manager or train the existing ones for the same roles as they are more of operations managers than HR. This has to be done so that there are better interpersonal relationships within the company.

In 3 Months: The company must now be sure of either to hire or to conduct training for its employees for the HR side. If the company has decided to give training to its employees, then it has to make sure about the reputed trainers available in the market and should have shortlisted the best one to train its employees.

If they are planning to hire HRs, then they will have to let go of their complex recommendation policy. The recommendation structure works well for big and well-known companies more than it does for a small and growing firm like Solutions Unlimited.

In a Year: The company should have hired the HR managers or should have well trained employees with good interpersonal skills and good knowledge about the company policies on the whole.

By this time, Nitish must also get adjusted to the company environment and should stop demanding things, without the knowledge about the policies.