Problem Definition: Intersect Investment Services Company
Situation Analysis and Problem Statement
The financial service industry was rocked by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Intersect Investment Services was no exception. Once enjoying top status is now struggling to maintain client trust and credibility on Wall Street. The leadership at Intersect Investment Services realizes that they must offer a large variety of innovative products along with expert advice to maintain top ranking within the industry.
Situation Background (Step 1)
Intersects CEO Frank Jeffers came up with a new vision, ¡§Provide a broad set of products and services to consumer and small business customers using a model of customer intimacy that will build long-term relationships based on trust and value to the customer.¡¨ (Company overview, 2006, P1)
Mr. Jeffers realizes that implementation of his plan will necessitate radical change within the organization. He already relieved one Executive Vice President (EVP) of Marketing and Sales because he did not support the vision or lead his staff to follow it either. Mr. Jeffers has brought Janet Angelo on board due to her expertise in implementing a customer intimacy model in her previous positions. She improved customer loyalty and sales in those positions and therefore is expected to do the same at Intersect but within a 12-month time frame.
Intersect has also fallen short of revenue targets, sales employee turnover is up 25% and customer satisfaction is down by more than 10% all within the past year.
Issue Identification
One of Intersects more obvious issues is the internal forces for change such as decreased job satisfaction, productivity and conflict. Employees are leaving, according to Annie Sorrento ¡V Director of Sales Operations, because they do not understand the new direction; are not confident in upper management¡¦s ability to implement the new strategy and are not being kept informed enough to get their jobs done. Due to the increased employee turnover, there is a loss of revenue. Tom Hardy ¡V Senior Vice President of Human Resources, has briefed the senior leadership team that it would take three months to fill a position, four months to train the new employee and another eight months to ensure that he or she is properly trained. There is a revenue difference of approximately $110 thousand for consumers and $300 thousand for small business between new employees and average employees. Other employee issues include rumors of layoffs; concerns of being told what to do and not why it is being done; getting mixed messages from leadership; not having access to the proper information to conduct their jobs nor the confidence in the managers¡¦ support for the vision.
The next problem is poor morale. Morale is the job satisfaction, outlook, and feelings of an employee. Right now, employees do not feel secure within the business and are rebelling against it. They do not have a positive outlook for the future of the business and feel betrayed because of all of the people getting let go. The employees right now have a poor morale due to all these factors.
Moreover, the company has placed great significance on open and honest communications with the employees on many levels. Even more, leadership expected a plan that would utilize all human assets in a way that would support the organization’s attitude in servicing customers and employees. As such, they found it important to centralize the staffing initiative in order to maintain the unique corporate culture created in the beginning. Every one of these strategies would be focused on centralizing staffing, brining in the best possible employees, and retaining each on a high
Change affects more than just a program or a process within an organization, change affects employees, collecting data on employee’s readiness and willingness to accept a change will help leaders know if the organization is socially ready for change (Cole, Harris, and Bernerth, 2006). A change might be positive for an organization but if the employees who will be affect by the change are lost in the process then it could create a greater issue than not making the change. Leadership needs to communicate and inspire the employees to be positive toward the change, seeking to enhance their job satisfaction not make changes that will increase their desire to leave. This data is best collected early in the change initiative allowing leadership to properly cast the vision while addressing concerns. This requires leadership to create platforms for employees to engage in the change initiative freely (Ford, 2006). Employee attitudes can be measured through these dialogues providing leadership with necessary measureable data (Hughes, 2007).
As the company grew they were advised to seek some additional help in the upper management positions. It was impossible to keep up with the increasing volume of orders, contract negotiations, suppliers and integra...
While the changes were necessary an area of focus would be for top management to be able to apply the new strategy and cutting sot simultaneously. Furthermore, the new market provided new challenges that allows the new strategy to be in place without affecting the employees motivation. This may be a perfect initial focus on the Human Resources department as a triggering gap that may need an analysis. Training is a significant tool thus knowing what needs training on was very crucial at this point. As stated in the case study "we don 't have a coherent HR system in place ' ' and "we have grown too large for our human resources information system(HRIS)."(Blanchard 52). This alone suggested that the firm did not know their employees weaknesses nor understood them. Since MHC was having financial difficulties this could also reflect as a competence issue with the CEO, however, since the HRIS did not have the valid information this was entirely a matter of
Peak, Martha H. Time for a change. Management Review. 84(9): 25. 1995 Sep. Organizational change.
The polices implemented by the Lincoln Electric Company have been so effective that the rate of turnover is restricted to retirements and new employees leaving the company. Long term employees of the company usually find no reason to leave. The organization doesn’t have
Consumer confidence remains high, supported by solid job growth, rising wealth and still-low interest rates. Job growth was disrupted by hurricanes in September, but the unemployment rate dropped to 4.2%, and they expect solid job growth to resume (Economic Outlook - Edward Jones). Revenue has increased since 1990 from 18 million to over 4 billion (Gale). One of Edward Jones’ most valuable qualities are their financial advisors. They offer a plethora of investing products to help you build a diversified investment portfolio, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and Unit Investment Trusts. (The Jones Financial Companies,
Turnovers are the worst situation a business can face, after of course, a lost income. Harry Davis is looking different alternatives in which he can avoid or at least minimize MedEx’s turnovers rate. One of the best solutions to figure out the root of the cause that creates turnovers is conducting an employee survey. After conducting the survey, Harry finds out about several reasons why his employees were quitting their jobs at MedEx. “Turnover is one's propensity to depart the job that the individual is currently pursuing (Sondhi et al, 2008)”.(Anwar, Sidin, & Javed, 2017, p. 86).
It is becoming difficult for the company to hire more and more people and retain the best and the brightest of them.
Since the technology has moved on from printing and hard copy shares to electronic sharing of documents and pictures through social media as well as sharing websites like Drop Box, customers preferences have gone from printed copies of such items to electronic sharing and with that the market for printers has substantially gone down; which is a market that H-P is heavily involved in but now has to make major changes to adapt to the new customer preferences and state of technology; for example by putting in more resources into software making and tablet markets. The internal forces include human resource concerns and manager behavior. Human resource concerns have shown a greater sense of insecurity between workers due to increased turnovers; as a result, the manager’s behavior, in this case being Whitman, is focused on not having any barriers between the employees and higher ranked workers or officers and that is supposed to bring down a sense of unease or work
More than just a sale promotion strategy Lisa and her team have built lasting relationships
1) He is facing huge protestation from the employees due to their angriness. This is because the employees are resisting the change in the organisation which is break out in the form of their protesting nature.
Wiersema, M. T. a. F., 1993. Customer Intimacy and Other Value Disciplines. Harvard Business Review, p. 92.
-Customers: The company felt the importance of being customer-centric and innovate by adapting to customer