By Jaime Rodriguez Marta Malasobras is unreliable. She has
arrived late to work almost everyday. Her co-workers are quite angry about this and discuss their frustrations with the supervisor. They claim that she is affecting the work environment; because she is not
doing her share, everyone else in the work team is overloaded.
This particular process relies on work in teams. It requires four operators to operate as one, coordinated production
unit. If one team member is absent, the rest of the team works less efficiently. Company policy mandates that hourly employees must begin everyday at 6:00 a.m.
The supervisor talked
with the employee and asked her why she was late so many times. She burst into tears. She had to drive her six-year old boy to school every morning. The school gates did not open until 6:30; she had to
wait for them to open before she could drop off her son. This particular morning, bowing to the pressure she felt from her work team, she dropped her boy off before the gates opened. She had worried about
him the entire morning. She knew that she had to get to work on time. She understood the effect that her habitual lateness was having on her group's effectiveness. Yet there was no one she could find
to take her boy to work in the morning.
Question:
What should the supervisor do? What are the alternatives of action? Which meet the tests of feasibility and ethics?
Solution: The supervisor asked the employee for permission to discussion her problem with her co-workers in an effort to find a team solution. The group agreed to make a special arrangement until
she could solve her problem. Her schedule was changed so she could begin work at 6:30 instead of 6:00; to facilitate this a technician offered to operate the machine she worked on until she arrived. This
gave her time to find a baby sitter willing to drive her boy to school. She eventually was able to begin work at 6:00 with the other team members.
