For this discussion, you are still playing the part of a Human Resources professional in a human services agency in a large county government located in the southeastern United States. You have already spoken with the manager Chris Brock and got his version of the story. Now, you will meet Terry to hear her side of the story.
Terry Lord (Employee)
Presently, Terry works in a unit of 15 people, some of whom she feels work pretty hard and some of whom slack off. Up until last year, she put in a great deal of effort and tried her hardest. Sometimes she felt that her effort paid off and other times she felt that her efforts were not fully appreciated. Overall, however, she was pleased with her work environment.
Last year she felt that things changed. As a result of cutbacks, she was asked on several occasions to carry what she thought was more than her fair share of the workload. Despite doing so, she was not recognized for this extra effort. Terry said that the last straw was when she received her performance review because almost all of the ratings were average and there was no recognition or appreciation of the extra work she had been doing. She said that Chris did not even mention the one project that she had carried out completely on her own.
She said that, to some extent, the evaluation did not surprise her because for several months Chris seemed like he was under a lot of stress and she hadnt been receiving the type of mentoring she was used to. She feels like Chris has gone from one extreme to another, first providing no guidance and then switching to micro-managing everything she does. She says that she really lost it at the performance review meeting and knows that it was a mistake to show that much anger, but still believes that Chris needs to know how unhappy she has been with how the unit has been managed over the past year.
Now respond to the following questions in the sequence as they are given below:
Based on your reading for this week, particularly the section in the book entitled Motivation (p. 306-311), why do you think that Terry reacted this way during the meeting? What could be done to improve the work environment?
Now that you have critiqued the situation with the manager and employee in mind, please provide a brief summary of the recommendations you will make to both during the upcoming meeting.
