Acme Minerals Extraction Company - Case Study Example

Summary Acme Minerals Extraction Company had begun a program to improve employee morale in its company. In Wichita, Kansas, the strategy used began in 1995 and was, by 1996, showing itself to be a huge success in that particular plant. Because of this success, Karen Jimenez, who implemented the actions in Wichita, decided to implement these same actions to boost morale at the plant in Lubbock, Texas. However, surprisingly, the program that had worked so well in Kansas did not work in Texas. In fact, morale was actually reduced. Jimenez was stunned by these results and not entirely certain why this situation was occurring. Jimenez was aware, however, of Acme's history. Prior to the implementation of this strategy, the company had been in financial trouble. The admission of this issue had lead to a decrease in the employee's happiness, and then eventually, this lead to a labor relations issue. Acme, because of its business type, had to employ a wide variety of different workers because of its use of highly skilled technology. Therefore, it had geologists, geophysicists, engineers, (referred to as "the brains")as well as semiskilled labor (referred to as "the brawn") working together to create a functional business. In 1994, these two different levels of employees clashed in a very serious way that also became distressingly public. Engineers at the plant in Wichita locked out union workers and left them outside in the hot Kansas summer. The press got a hold of the story and the media went awry with the issue, and most employees felt that the press went far overboard with its push of the story. However, the bad publicity caused a change of the chief executive, and Bill Daniels was brought in. Daniels displayed talent previously and had experience with teamwork and change. He wound up being a very good selection for the company. Daniels was good with the media, for one, so he was able to deflect some of the bad publicity. Second, he was able to restore the hurting company within his first year by getting rid of unnecessary parts of the business to save money. He was able to change management's tactics and created a shared-services department which focused on total quality management, and Jimenez became in charge of this group. Daniels had wanted Jimenez to improve the moral at the company's five extraction sites, as morale was low all around. Wichita was the only site where things had come to such a head, but the two individuals still felt that all sites needed to be considered in this re-organization project. Jimenez was ready to go; she had an M.B.A. and had also worked with a consulting firm prior to coming to Acme. She had worked at Acme for ten years, and had much experience with the company. She was provided with a team to assist her and she focused on a morale strategy. First, they team focused on Wichita, which had been the company's severe problem area. The plant had other issues other than the "brains" and the "brawn" infighting in the company; the plant was also performing below average, and the former CEO had considered getting rid of the plant altogether. All the change programs the old management had tried had failed, but Jimenez felt that these program's failures were fairly predictable since they had posed unrealistic expectations in the first place. With this in mind, Jimenez was able to fix the labor relations problem. Things were not as smoothly as they could have been, but the plan still worked and things were successful overall. Daniels had bragged about this early success to the stakeholders and ensured that this success could be performed at the other plants. When moving the strategy to Lubbock, Jimenez could have been overconfident. She sent one of her people out there with two other staff in order to implement the strategy. Several problems began to occur after that. In Lubbock, issues that hadn't occurred in Wichita began to occur. The employees seemed reluctant to participate in any of the problem-solving and team-building concepts the company had put together for them, including the company softball games. Nobody showed up. This was only alleviated by the company offering to bring food and beer, and even at that point, people seemed to want to sit around and talk more than they wanted to play as a team. Some improvement was eventually seen, but not at the rate experienced at the Wichita site. Analysis Strengths Acme does have some strengths to help it with its program of raising employee morale. First, they were able to successfully achieve this strategy at the Wichita site, which shows that the company is at least moving in the right direction. Therefore, it does have a plan in action that it can work from. This can be seen as a strength because this plan can be tailored and adapted to meet the needs of the various plants. If the staff is able to do research to see what the overall attitudes and issues are at each plant, the initial approach can be used as a way to initially attack concerns, and then be modified to fit the different plants' needs. Opportunities Opportunities in this case focus on the opportunity to increase employee morale and productivity in the company overall. If this strategy can be successfully tailored to all of the areas of production, then the company can turn itself around completely. It will be able to strengthen itself overall as an organization, and increase its success overall. Weaknesses Weaknesses in this approach are apparent. First, the company cannot think that just because a strategy worked in one place, it can be applied to each plant successfully. While the initial plan can be used as a way to get started, that plan may have to be tailored to each plant. The company can go about doing this by using various forms of research; for instance, surveys and interviews with employees. By taking the time to consider what employees are feeling, they may even be able to open up communication lines and show the employees that they care. All of this is important when trying to increase morale. Threats Threats include the overall failure of the strategy if it is applied incorrectly, or not tailored appropriately to the various plants. This could largely hurt the company's productivity and morale overall. Therefore, it is very important that the company be researching the needs and desires of the employees at the various plants. From plant to plant, there can be very different problems in relationships between different employees. Each plant can have its own significant issue that needs to be addressed. Therefore, the company will need to do the required research when analyzing each plant's issue. What Should the CEO Do If I were the CEO of this company, I would promote a research plan to be used at the four remaining plants that need a morale boost. I would structure this plan to include interviews of all employees at each plant, as well as surveys of all employees. This information could be used to pinpoint the various issues that have gone wrong with employee relations at the staff. Furthermore, the employees can also express their desire for other things that could be in the plant to make them happier; for instance, a gym or a break room. With these concepts in mind, I would then be able to understand the needs and desires of each staff. Some of these needs and ideas could be applied to all plants; for instance, if the idea of a break room helps one plant, it could be applied to all plants to see what kind of morale boost it could provide. Furthermore, by taking the time to talk to each employee and seek out their individual concerns, morale should be increased by this single action, simply because each employee will know that his or her concerns are being taken personally and are being analyzed. The employees will also be notified of this plan ahead of time, and asked, before they are interviewed, to seriously think about what they want, and what the company can do to help them. The employees will need to be honest and reveal anything about any relationships that may be harming their morale or productivity in the company. To keep them satisfied, the surveys and interviews will be kept confidential by leaving names off of the forms. This means that research will simply be gathered without using names so that the employees can be as honest as possible, and so that I can, as CEO, address their needs and concerns. Employees will be assured of the confidentiality, as honesty is crucial in this study. Obviously, morale issues need to be addressed here, and I would not want my employees to be frightened of being honest and thinking that their jobs could be at stake if they revealed something bad or unpleasant at the company or plant. Rather, I would hope that they would reveal these issues and stay honest about them, so that these concerns could be addressed and added into the research data. By compiling this information, we should them be able to outline a way to address the needs and concerns of each individual plant, and tailor the original plan to meet the needs of the other plants. By doing this, I would them hope to implement the network effect and winner take all strategy discussed in the textbook. If morale and productivity can be boosted, there is no reason why Acme could not then focus itself of winning everything in this market. With this focus in mind, and allowing the employees to know about this focus, it can be hoped that they would be motivated to become the best in the business. With a CEO at the helm that cares about them and shows concern and appreciation, this approach should be able to be successfully implemented once productivity and morale both increase. Read More