Analysis

Teacher DrainFlow Case DrainFlow is experiencing unusually high and employee dissatisfaction rate. This issue is traced back to flawed job design and unequitable salary structure. To address this issue, a cash reward system is proposed to improve employee performance that could lead to customer satisfaction. A standardized hiring process is also proposed to address the seemingly lack of emotional labor among employees that resulted to 30% of customers considering other plumbing companies should they encounter similar issue.
I. Cash reward system
Reward is a common motivational tool used by managers to increase productivity and efficiency as well as to promote employee satisfaction. Therefore, the cash reward system proposed at DrainFlow should be aligned with this objective.
Unfortunately, the proposed mechanism of individual productivity as a basis of cash reward is not aligned with this objective. DrainFlow’s performance are often dependent on another job category to perform effectively and efficiently. For example, the 20 completed calls of order processors does not necessarily translate to customer satisfaction because other employees has to do other jobs in the chain to satisfy customers. It does not guarantee that the plumber will do the job well as well as other employees such as billing representative and assistant plumber. It does not also address the root cause of job dissatisfaction which is unequitable salary structure and flawed job design. Also, customer satisfaction requires team work and collective effort in plumbing business so instead of individually rewarding employees, emphasis should be made on the customer satisfaction as the criteria of reward. Individual reward system will still be installed in the company’s reward system such as commendation from customer but will not be the sole criteria of reward.
II. Hiring recommendation
At present, there is little consistency in the hiring practice of DrainFlow. This hiring practice is flawed because the company may be getting talents that is not consistent with company objective. For example, its employees has little customer service aptitude and see the business in terms of technical plumbing practice. While this may mean that the employees know how to do the job, this still could result to low customer satisfaction evident with the following problems. 25% percent of customers ended in no service call because customers was confused by the diagnostic questions the order processors asked and did not sufficient skill to explain the situation. 40% of customers are not satisfied with the service, 75% of completed work ended with other problems and 30% of customers would consider the competitor if they have another plumbing problem. These problems can be traced to lack of personality trait to complete customer interaction component of their jobs. This deficiency should be addressed by the hiring practice of DrainFlow and should include it in the standardized hiring process. Among the trait of the big five personality that should be standardized in the hiring process is the extraversion personality trait. Extraversion refers to the sociability and high degree of emotional expressiveness of an employee (McCrae and Costa 83) of which employees of DrainFlow lack that led to customer and employee dissatisfaction.
Work Cited
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. “ Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 81-90.