Behavioral and performance issues with a customer service representative - Case Study Example

?Executive summary The case shows a behavioral and performance issues with a service representative ly Pam Stewart observed by service manager namely Lesley Mohan. On the first day of Lesley’s joining in the branch, she was warned about Pam’s behavior by the former customer service manager and she also noticed Pam’s conflicting behavior on their first meeting. Palm was 25 years experienced employee and considered herself a superior person than selected customer service manager; in fact she considered herself deserving for the position of customer service managers but probably due to the lack of academic degree and behavioral problems she was not recommended for the desired position. She usually had conflicts with Lesley and opposed her on performing desired activities such as submission of referrals although it was part of her job description, although Lesley always handled her confrontations very calmly with consideration of Palm’s personal problems. Pam’s problematic behavior could result in low performance in overall branch’s performance. The resulting problems in this case are lack of motivation of Palm, counterproductive work behavior, interdependence conflict and interpersonal conflict and Lesley used collaborative conflict management strategy and behavioral techniques to resolve resulting conflicts. While alternatives suggested are adoption of competitive conflict management strategy as immediate results were the main focus of Pam, Lesley could also use accommodating conflict management strategy on the sake of sustaining and improving Branch’s performance and Lesley could also use expectancy and hierarchy of needs theory to better understand Pam’s behavior. While best alternative is suggested is the implementation competitive conflict management strategy with adoption of negotiation techniques of conflict management. It was suggested after deep analysis that Lesley should take care of its employees’ needs because they are the most important source of success but it doesn’t mean accepting their overstated demands and behavior. Introduction This study focuses on many challenges resulted by the recent deregulation of financial services in Canadian banking industry, many changes have been incorporated in banking system. Previously cross-ownership between four pillars (banking, insurance, trust and security) was not allowed but due to the deregulation it is possible now. This has brought many new opportunities and challenges in the market with increased competition. To meet new objectives pressure on customer service officers have been increased which also meant low flexibility in working hours and job sharing. The Canadian National bank is among the largest chartered banks in Canada with 1600 branches around the nation. The focus of this study is on one of the case of employee behavior in the Chatham branch of Canadian National bank. This case discusses two employees of Chatham branch of Canadian National bank, Lesley Mohan and Pam Stewart. Lesley was a newly hired customer service manager and Pam Stewart was 25 years employee, holding the position customer service executive. The main area of discussion is Pam’s conflicting attitude and Lesley’s respond to it. Problem statement “Although Pam’s (CSR) experience was so vast and past performance was above average, but her conflicting behavior, self superiority and resistance to change was creating difficulties for new customer manager to adopt recently made changes by higher authority and improve assigned bank branch performance while sustaining her growth and position, human resource and conflict management theories could be considered as a measure to decrease the severity of problem” Problems Pam’s (customer service representative) conflicting behavior with Lesley, new customer service manager Pam’s self superiority because of her 25 years of experience Pam’s resistance to change recently made by customer service capacity management schedule Pam’s rebellion attitude towards Lesley Sub problems In result to above problems, Lesley was facing some resulting difficulties due to ripple effect: Difficulty to meet branch performance targets Inability to understand Pam’s previous achieved performance targets Facing dilemma, of whether to consider Pam’s personal issues or highly unwillingness to work to handle the crises Facing hurdles to her self- growth and appraisal To figure out the reason of direct complain to NCEC by Pam(dysfunctional conflict) Difficulty of Sustaining her position Issues in work environment Above problems and sub problems created following issues for work environment: Disturbance in work environment Disruption in flow of work Increased Work load on other employees Palm’s inequality of inputs and outputs could become a source of dissatisfaction for other employees (equity theory) Analysis Lesley Mohan was a newly appointed customer service manager (CSM) in the Chatham branch of Canadian National bank, her stay was expected to be of 18months in the branch during which she would be able to apply in any other branch of Canadian National bank. She was required to make the bank work according to changes made through recent deregulation and to apply CSCM working schedule. Due to the recent change in working style and new rules Lesley was required to do careful planning to perform tasks and improve branch performance which became difficult for her because of Pam Stewart, one of the customer service representatives. Palm conflicting behavior and unwillingness to work according to new rules and Lesley’s instructions was creating a crises situation for the bank. While analyzing Palm’s attitude towards Lesley, it is necessary to mention that Palm had applied for CSM but was not selected and Lesley was appointed as another CSM. This shows that Pam’s desires towards growth, which means there was a lack of motivation for her as she dint get the desired achievement causing motivational issue, she thought herself competent enough to decide by herself the way of working without any guidance of customer relationship manager. Her resistance to change recently made by customer service capacity management schedule and rebellion attitude towards Lesley implies counter productive work behavior (a behavior of any employee which goes against goals of the organization), as it was firstly creating difficulties for Lesley to adopt change and increase branch’s performance which was resulting in a interdependence conflict( a conflict which arises when one’s performance is dependent on another), Lesley’s performance was dependent on her subordinates as she was responsible for branch’s overall performance. The conflict between working criteria of Lesley and Pam is creating interpersonal conflict. To solve above discussed conflicts Lesley had implied collaborative conflict management strategy, which tries to meet the needs of each employee, which reflected through her calm attitude towards Pam with consideration of her personal issues, and ignored her superiority of position. With collaborative conflict management strategy, Lesley used behavioral techniques to resolve the issue; as she never got exhausted on Palm’s attitude, she always communicated her views very assertively and always gave importance to Pam’s views, and she tried her best to understand the reason behind Pam’s attitude. Alternative analysis As it is quite obvious from whole study that the strategy adopted by Lesley to overcome the crises situation was ineffective in this case as Pam attitude did not seem to be improving, while her initiative to complain about Lesley made the situation more vulnerable and hard to resolve; so the alternative available was to adopt competitive conflict management strategy(use of power to take instinct decisions to resolve conflict) which is more appropriate in this situation as the need to implement new initiatives to increase bank performance by Lesley in the period of 18months and to achieve related targets and goals are more important than taking care of the needs of conflicting person. Lesley could have ignored her emotions to take best possible decision. Lesley used behavioral techniques to resolve the issue but in this scenario she could had ignored her emotions and in place of giving importance to Pam’s attitude she could have adopted negotiation techniques for conflict resolution. She could have recognized and state the conflict in more specific way, could have taken initiatives to develop common grounds of interest to promote collaboration between her and Pam, could have come up with more unemotional conclusions based on others thought, she also could have asked for feedback to understand to issue more clearly, and could have decided and implemented alternative strategy such competitive to resolve issue. Another alternative is that Lesley could have also used accommodating conflict management strategy (ignoring own interest for another person interest) for the sake of resolving situation crises and to safe branch’s reputation. Lesley could have also used the expectancy theory of motivation to understand the motivational factors for Pam to understand the unwillingness to perform tasks. There was a possibility that some constructive factors could be seen to deal accordingly in order to increase Pam’s motivation. Lesley could have also checked if there was any lacking in the hierarchy of needs, so steps could be taken to fulfill the missing needs of Pam. Decision appropriate Lesley was on the position where she was authorized to take decisions regarding behavioral and performance attitudes of employees, so the most appropriate decision to adopt was the implementation competitive conflict management strategy with adoption of negotiation techniques as Pam attitude and working style was highly unacceptable and conflicting with branch’s overall performance so she should had firstly warn Pam about her behavior and unwillingness to work, if the idea couldn’t work than she should had given second chance, and if that also not going to work than must had given written warning and if the result was still negative than dismissal was the most appropriate decision as because of one person she couldn’t bear the loss of whole branch. Recommendations It is recommended that Lesley should take care of its employees because they are the ultimate source of an organization’s success but it doesn’t mean overwhelming their demands and unacceptable behavior. Corrective actions should have been taken by Lesley immediately as she faced any such situation. She should starting accessing one’s performance against deadlines assigned. For immediate response to this action crises it is advisable that she must had taken corrective actions and started collecting facts against low performance and miss match of current and past performance of Pam which could be helpful for her to take appropriate possible measures and to protect herself from explanations to higher authority. For long-term it is recommended that Lesley should not provide that much leniency to any worker and should keep an eye on all employees behavior so steps could be immediately taken to solve the issue as raised. Implications The adoption of competitive conflict management strategy with negotiation techniques are best alternatives selected for Lesley to consider, it was suggested to use power against Pam’s attitude. Warning could probably work and improves Pam’s behavior and could increase her performance but if couldn’t resulted so than written decision could have most probably resulted in desirable attitude other firing could the appropriate decision as it could definitely resulted in stability of overall environment and increased branch performance. Work Cited Leadership and Motivation Training. Types of Conflict in the Workplace. 15 May. 2012. Read More