As a recent graduate and as a
person who keeps up with the business press, Jennifer Carter is familiar with
the benefits of programs such as total quality management and high-performance
work systems.
Jack, her father, actually
installed a total quality program of sorts at Carter, and it has been in place
for about 5 years. This program takes the form of employee meetings. Jack holds
employee meetings periodically, but particularly when there is a serious
problem in a store—such as poor-quality work or machine breakdowns. When
problems like these arise, instead of trying to diagnose them himself or with
Jennifer, he contacts all the employees in that store and meets with them when
the store closes. Hourly employees get extra pay for these meetings. The
meetings have been useful in helping Jack to identify and rectify several
problems. For example, in one store all the fine white blouses were coming out
looking dingy. It turned out that the cleaner/spotter had been ignoring the
company rule that required cleaning ("boiling down") the
perchloroethylene cleaning fluid before washing items like these. As a result,
these fine white blouses were being washed in cleaning fluid that had residue
from other, earlier washes.
Jennifer now wonders whether
these employee meetings should be expanded to give the employees an even bigger
role in managing the Carter stores' quality. "We can't be everywhere
watching everything all the time," she said to her father. "Yes, but
these people only earn about $8 to $15 per hour. Will they really want to act
like mini- managers?" he replied.
3-21. Would you recommend that
the Carters expand their quality program? If so, specifically what form should
it take?
3-22. Assume the Carters want to
institute a high-performance work system as a test program in one of their
stores. Write a one-page outline summarizing important HR practices you think
they should focus on.
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