PHD/ MBA Assignment solutions on Identification of Design and Implementation of Domino's Pizzas strategy, Competitive advantage in Marketing strategy of DOMINOS

 Assignment task

Identify a strategy of a business unit (Domino's), identify the critical activities required to implement it and critically analyze to what extent are the culture, structure, routines, resources and capabilities aligned with the strategy.

The objective of the assignments is to critically identify the design and implementation of strategy. It should identify the successful application as well as the shortcomings.

Strategies and the meaning of success

Business strategies succeed when they lead to business growth, strong competitive position, and strong financial performance. Many different strategies are possible, but all are meant to bring improvements in these areas. In highly competitive industries, the firm's officers and other senior managers take a keen interest in knowing precisely how well their strategies succeed in serving this purpose. This is especially true just after the firm changes, or adjusts strategies.

Domino’s Pizzas changes strategies

In 2009, for instance, managers and owners of Domino's Pizza, Inc. were seriously concerned because the firm had just had 3 years of negative sales growth and shrinking market share. The firm was, in particular, losing market share to two major competitors, Papa John's and Pizza Hut.

Domino's operates in the "Quick Service Restaurant" (QSR) industry. Many people call this industry, unkindly, the "Fast Food" business. The firm competes not only with other Pizza restaurants, but also with restaurants with different menus such as Subway, McDonalds. This segment of the Restaurant industry defines itself not by menus, but instead by the words "Fast" and "Quick." Understandably, therefore, Domino's started with a strategy based on "Quick Service Delivery." The firm excels in fast delivery, a point that separates Domino's from its competitors. Nevertheless, in 2009, the strategy was clearly failing.

In late 2009, therefore, the firm's new CEO chose to "re-center" strategy on pizza quality. Market research showed that customers rated Domino's pizza taste as very poor ("like cardboard"). As a result, by the end of 2009, the firm had substantially improved the pizza recipe and launched a marketing program to bring this news to the market.

The firm began in 2009 detailed tracking of growth, competitive, and financial metrics appearing in the next section. By the end of 2010 the first results were impressive. Metrics in all three categories showed remarkable improvement. Domino's took this as confirmation that the new strategy was succeeding.

Now in 2017, the firm continues to research and improve the pizza recipe, while adjusting its marketing strategy at the same time. The firm is guided by a 7 year tracking history with these metrics.

Analysts measure impact on financial performance with metrics that focus on the firm's core line of business. Domino's prefers to measure strategic impact with EBITDA—Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. This is because EBITDA and other selective income metrics measure strategic impact more precisely than overall Net income after taxes.

Strategy Implementation

Just being able to conceits bold new strategies is not enough. The general manager must also be able to translate his or her strategic vision into concrete steps that "get things done”

Strategy formulation entails heavy doses of vision, analysis, and entrepreneurial judgment, successful strategy implementa­tion depends on the skills of working through others, organiz­ing, motivating, culture-building, and creating stronger fits be-teen strategy and how the organization operates Ingrained behavior does not change just because a new strategy has been announced. Practitioners emphatically state that it is a whole lot easier to develop a sound strategic plan than it is to make it happen. In case of Domino’s, hey failed in the first time in identifying the reasons for decline in sales and profit margin.

Constituents of Strategy implementation

What makes the job of the strategy manager so complicated when it comes to implementation is the number of tasks involved and the variety of ways to approach each task. Strategy implementation has to be tailored to the organization's overall condition and selling, to the nature of the strategy and the amount of strategic change involved and to the manager's own skills, style, and methods.

Four broad areas stand out:

1. Performing the recurring administrative tasks associated with strategy implemen­tation.

2. Creating "fits" between strategy and the various internal "ways of doing things" in order to align the whole organization behind strategy accomplishment.

3   Figuring out an agenda and a set of action priorities that matches up well with the organization's overall situation and the context of the- sluing in which imple­mentation must take place.

4.  What managerial approach and leadership style to adopt in inducing the needed organizational changes.

The strategy implementers’ challenge in performing these tasks is to bring the organization's conduct of internal operations into good alignment with strategy and to unite the total organization- behind strategy accomplishment. The implemented job is one of building such enthusiasm and commitment up and down the ranks that a virtual organization wide crusade emerges to carry out the chosen strategy.

Strategy-supportive matches are needed with organizational skills and capabilities, functional area activities, organization structure, reward systems, and incentives, policies and procedures, information systems and control mechanisms, budgets and programs, and shared values and cultural norms. Domino’s started focusing on improvement in quality of its products rather than delivery. It also focused on improving its incoming figure by continuously doing market research and surveys with regard to the public opinions about the industry it belongs to and the things they prefer.

Administrative Aspects of Strategy Implementation

The Manager's role in the implementation process is to lead and keynote the tone, pace, and style of strategy imple­mentation. There are many ways to proceed. A strategy implementer can opt for an active, visible role or a low-key, behind the scenes role. He or she can elect to make decisions authoritatively or on the basis of consensus, to delegate much or little, to be deeply involved in the details of implementation or to remain aloof from the day-to-day problems. It is up to the strategy implementer to decide whether to proceed swiftly (launching implementation initiatives on many fronts) or lo move deliberately, content with gradual progress over a long period.    

To some extent, therefore, each strategy implementation situation is unique enough or require the strategy manager to tailor his or her action agenda to fit the specific organizational environment at hand- This forces the manager to be conscious of all that strategy implementation involves and to diagnose carefully the action priorities and in what sequence things need to be done. The manager's role is thus all-important His or her agenda for action and conclusions about how hard and how fast to push for change are decisive in shaping the character of implementation and moving the process along.

Successful strategy execution depends greatly on good internal organization, resources, healthy work culture and com­petent personnel. Building a capable organization is thus always a top strategy imple­mentation priority. Some of the organizational issues that stand out as dominant:

·       Developing an internal organization structure that is responsive to the needs of the people of the organisation.

·       Keeping a tune with the culture of the organisation that is aligning strategy with corporate culture and competencies.

·       Developing the skills and distinctive competences in which the strategy grounded and seeing that the organization has the managerial talents, technical expertise, and competitive capabilities it needs.

·       Keeping a match among the resources and routine activities that can be easily incorporated with the strategy.

·       Selecting people for key positions.

Matching Organization Structure to Strategy

The following five-sequence procedure serves as a useful guide for fitting structure to strategy:

·       Pinpoint the key functions and tasks requisite for successful strategy execution

·       Reflect on how the strategy-critical functions and organizational units relate to those that are routine and to those that provide staff support-

·       Make strategy-critical business units and functions the main organizational build­ing blocks.

·       Determine the degrees of authority needed to manage each organizational unit, bearing in mind both the benefits and costs of decentralized decision making.

·       Provide for coordination among the various organizational units.

1. Pinpoint the key functions and tasks requisite for successful strategy execution

 In any organization, some activ­ities and skills are always more critical to strategic success than others are. The strategy-critical activities vary according to the particulars of a firm's strategy and competitive requirements. To help identify what an organization's strategy-critical activities are, two questions can usefully be posed:

"What functions have to be performed extra well and on time for the strategy to succeed? And

 "In what areas bad performance would seriously endanger strategic success?

In case of Domino’s it has become very important to understand and raise the reasons for decline in its sales volume. Contrary to the perception of the industry it belonged, to have fast delivery, the problem was of focus on quality.

2. Understanding the Relationships among Activities

Activities can be re­lated by the flow of material through the production process, the type of customer served, the distribution channels used, the technical skills and know-how needed to perform them, a strong need to centralized authority over them, the sequence in which tasks must be performed, and geographic location, to mention some of the most obvious ways.

3. Grouping Activities into Organization Units

If activities crucial to strategic success are to get the attention and visibility they merit, then they have to be a prominent part of the organizational scheme. Senior managers can seldom give a stronger signal as to what is strategically important than by making key function and critical skills the most prominent organizational building blocks and, further, assigning them a high position in the organizational pecking order.

4.Determining the Degree of Authority and independence to be given to Each Unit

Activities and organizational units with a key role in strategy execution should not made subordinate to routine and non-key activities. Revenue-producing and results-producing activities should not made subordinate to internal support or staff functions. The crucial administrative skill is selecting strong managers to head up each unit and delegating them enough authority to formulate and execute an appropriate strategy for their unit.

5. Providing for Coordination among the Units

Providing for coordination of the activities of organizational units is accomplished mainly through positioning them in the hierarchy of authority. Managers higher up in the pecking order generally have authority over more organizational units and thus the power to coordinate, inte­grate, and otherwise arrange for the cooperation of the units under their supervision. The chief executive officer, to chief operating officer, and business-level managers are_, of course central points of coordination because they have broad authority. Besides positioning organizational units along the vertical scale of managerial author­ity, coordination of strategic efforts can also achieved through informal meetings, project teams, special task forces, standing committees, formal strategy reviews, and annual strategic planning and budgeting cycles.

Structure Evolves as Strategy Evolves: The Stages Model

Four distinct stages of strategy-related organization structure have singled out:

Stage I  organizations, are small, single-business enterprises managed by one person. The owner-entrepreneur has close daily contact with employees and each phase of operations. Most employees report directly to the owner, who mates all the pertinent decisions regarding mission, objectives, strategy, and daily operations.

Stage II organizations differ from Stage I enterprises in one essential aspect: an increased scale and scope of operations force a transition from one-person management to group management.

Stage III consists of organization whose operations, though concen­trated in a single field or product line, are scattered over a wide geographical area and large enough to justify having geographically decentralized operating units. The key difference between Stage II and Stage III, however, is that while the functional units of a Stage II organization stand or fall together (in that they are built around one business and one end market), the geographic operating units of a Stage III firm can stand alone (or nearly so) in the sense that the operations in each geographic unit are not dependent on those in other areas. Typical firms in this category are breweries, cement companies, and steel mills having production capacity and sales organizations m several geographically separate market areas.

Stage IV includes large, diversified firms decentralized by line of business. Typically, each separate business unit is headed by a general manager who has profit-and-loss responsibility and whose authority extends across all of the unit's functional areas except, perhaps, accounting and capital investment (both of which are traditionally subject to corporate approval). Both business strategy decisions and operating decisions are concentrated at the line-of-business level rather than at the corporate level

Competitive advantage in Marketing strategy of DOMINOS

Supply chain – Vertical integration across the supply chain has helped the company in aligning its resources and controlling the cost structure so as to be competitive in the market & at the same time emerge as most preferred Pizza provider.

Fast Delivery – Whether you have the mouth-watering Pizza at their outlets or get it delivered at your place, one can always count on Dominos for its quick delivery services which have helped the company in improving its value delivery process. It even brought in packaging to prove that its pizza is delivered Hot.

Low-cost outlets – It is one of the major cost components making their business viable as compared to the rival Yum brand’s outlets. There is no outlet of Domino’s which is premium designed with plush interiors. Instead, the outlets promote faster consumption so that people can order, eat and move on. Pizza is promoted exactly for what it stands for – Fast food.

The Strategy-Related Pros and Cons of Alternative Organization Forms

There are essentially five strategy-related approaches to organization:

(1) Functional specialization,

 (2) Geographic organization,

(3) Decentralized business divisions,

(4) Strategic business units, and

For instance, Sales at Domino's have soared since the company came out with a new pizza recipe in 2009. Having a better core product was necessary for business to turn around. Domino's has also innovated its sandwiches, pastas, and side dishes. The "specialty chicken," strips topped with cheese and sauces increasingly ordered alongside pizzas, driving up the average ticket sale at Domino's,

Domino's has opened 1,800 new stores in 10 countries in the past four years, Doyle told investors. Domino's is thriving in emerging markets like Brazil and China because it is a relatively inexpensive luxury. 

Selecting People for Key Positions

Assembling a capable management team is an obvious part of the strategy implementa­tion task. The recurring administrative issues here center on what kind of core management team is needed to carry out the strategy and finding the people to fill each slot. Sometimes the existing management team is suitable and sometimes the core executive group needs to strengthened and/or expanded, either by promoting qualified people from within or by bringing in skilled managerial talent from the outside to help infuse fresh ideas and fresh approaches into the organization's manage­ment. In turnaround situations, in rapid-growth situations, and in those cases, where the right kinds of managerial experience and skills are not present in-house, recruiting outsiders to fill key management slots is a standard part of the organization-building process.

Aligning culture and strategy:  Impact of Organizational Culture on Strategy Implementation

Organizational culture includes the shared beliefs, norms and values within an organization. It sets the foundation for strategy. For a strategy within an organization to develop and be implemented successfully, it must fully align with the organizational culture. Thus, initiatives and goals must be established within an organization to support and establish an organizational culture that embraces the organization’s strategy over time.

Dominos have both Veg & Non-Veg Pizza in its menu with options of different toppings to choose from. Though they offer both Veg & Non-Veg Pizza, Dominos Veg menu is more popular and hence it is Star in BCG matrix. With Domino’s almost taking away the market share of Pizza’s from Pizza hut, Non veg pizzas are in fact a cash cow for Domino’s (at least in India) because veg pizza’s have a lot of local competition but there is very less competition for Non veg pizzas.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Organizations that remain flexible are more likely to embrace change and create an environment that remains open to production and communication. This provides a model that welcomes cultural diversity and helps clarify strategy implementation. Culture within an organization can serve many purposes, including unifying members within an organization and help create a set of common norms or rules within an organization that employees follow.

Characteristics of Stability

A stable culture, one that will systematically support strategy implementation, is one that fosters a culture of partnership, unity, teamwork and cooperation among employees. This type of corporate culture will enhance commitment among employees and focus on productivity within the organization rather than resistance to rules and regulations or external factors that prohibit success.

Goal Unification

Flexible, strong and unified cultures will approach strategy implementation and affect implementation in a positive manner by aligning goals. Goals can come into alignment when the organizational culture works to focus on productivity and getting the organization’s primary mission accomplished. This may include getting products delivered to customers on time, shipping out more products than the organization’s chief competitor or similar goals. This will create a domino effect in the organization that ensures that all work performed by each individual in the company and work group focuses on performance and on the strategic importance of the company. This allows culture to align with strategy implementation at the most basic level. For this level of unification to work, goal setting must align with and be supported by systems, policies, procedures and processes within the organization, thereby helping to achieve strategy implementation and continuing the cultural integrity of the organization.

In year 2009 it has released its video under “Oh yes we did” campaign claiming it as a turnaround strategy where different stakeholders explained how they handled the critics. Company also communicated through it the innovating strategies they are following to cater the customers changing needs.

“30 minutes guaranteed delivery or free” is all-time popular campaign that helped the company increase its awareness across the geographies & demographics. Currently, in 2016, the brands ranking is 301 in the global brand ranking of Forbes. Pizza hut is also close with a ranking of 355.

Process Implementation

Part of cultural alignment and strategy implementation involves process implementation. Processes include utilizing technology to facilitate goal attainment and the results a company is looking for when working with customers to meet their needs. While most of the time the hard problems and needs of an organization get met, the culture becomes neglected in the process. That is where processes come into place and strategy implementation gradually comes into existence to uphold and maintain organizational culture and strategies.

Cultural Alignment

When culture aligns with strategy implementation, an organization is able to more efficiently operate in the global marketplace. Culture allows organizational leaders to work both individually and as teams to develop strategic initiatives within the organization. These may include building new partnerships and re-establishing old ones to continue delivering the best possible products and services to a global market.

Customer of Dominos varies geographically across the world. In developed nations like US, UK etc. consumers are of all age groups whereas in developing nations like India majority of customers are younger generations in the age group of 20-40 years.

Furthermore, health consciousness is definitely affecting the consumer psyche as people are looking for healthier options such as Subway or others which are lesser in calories as compared to a complete pizza

Aligning resources and capabilities with strategy

In appraising resources and capabilities to guide strategy formulation there are four key steps. Firstly, the key resources and capabilities have to be identified. Next they have to be appraised both for their strategic importance, and then for their comparative strength in relation to competitors. Finally, strategic implications — how these capabilities can drive value — have to be developed.

1. Identifying Key Resources and Capabilities

The first step is to identify the firm’s key resources and capabilities, and this should be done both from the client end (what the clients need) and the firm’s supply end (what the firm offers). It helps to thoroughly identify, analyze and appraise key resources and capabilities. This work should include an overall look at the practice, some investigation of client needs, industry and sector analysis, financial analysis, market intelligence, partner interviews and practice-group discussions.

2.  Assessing the Strategic Importance of The Firm’s Resources and Capabilities

The principle here is to assess how vital (or unimportant) it is for the firm or a department to have certain capabilities in order to successfully pursue their strategic objectives. The true test of strategic importance is to assess the extent to which the resources and capabilities of the firm actually give the firm a sustainable competitive advantage against its rivals.

3.  Relative Strength

Resources and capabilities need to be assessed for relative strength compared with those firms identified as competitors. A thorough competitor analysis — considering the likely strategies of competitors, their overall objectives, their resources and capabilities, their positioning in their markets, their specialist strengths, the sorts of clients and sectors they serve, their pricing, service levels and profitability — all helps to establish ways in which the firm can successfully compete. In its review of comparative strength of resources and capabilities, the firm should also look out for stagnating capabilities and declining competitiveness. Where relevant, benchmarking and other analytical methods should be used to move from subjective to objective analysis.

4. Bringing It All Together

How does the firm exploit its key strengths more effectively and what should the firm do about its vulnerabilities either to correct them or reduce the firm’s exposure to them? The next step, therefore, is to develop some strategic implications so as to exploit strengths more effectively and so as to address weaknesses by correction development, outsourcing or acquisition of further resources.

 

MBA SHRM Case Study on Sexual harassment at Workplace and its impact on Performance, Workplace Discrimination, Biasness of Grievance Redressal System and Challenges in functioning of Grievance Redressal System

 

E-MBA SHRM Case Study on Sexual Harassment & Discrimination at Workplace

Abstract

This case study deals with topic of sexual harassment in India. “Sexual & mental Harassment” – a stigma which was prevalent both in organized and unorganized sector carrying a social taboo which hampered its discussion. The women workforce of many companies was at the receiving end of the torturous behavior of their peer and boss but never raised their voice against it. In India, it was only after legal consideration by Supreme Court in August, 1997 that the problem of sexual harassment was thought upon and took a standardized approach towards curbing it. The court of jurisdiction of different nations has framed different policies for sexual harassment. Every law defines sexual harassment in a different way but the sole aim is to comfort women in their respective workplaces. One’s “gender” should not become a restriction for one to work. It is breaching the principles of human rights. In this case, name of the employer company, the employees and place of incident has been changed for the sake of confidentiality of the victims as promised by me to her. This case has happened with one of my close friends working in a telecom Company few years back.

Introduction to case study

The present case talks about Mary who after completing her graduation from a reputed institute joined Teletol Services as Graduate Engineer Trainee. She was stuck in the criticalities of her workplace conditions. She has been an outstanding performer throughout but now her manager Arvind and her Human Resources Manager Rinu are forcing her to come to work in graveyard shifts. Moreover, the manager of another department has tried making a move towards Mary. Mary is in a dilemma whether to be a passive sufferer and continue with her work or to report the matter to the concerned authorities or to quit and look for another job.

Mary did her engineering in Electronics from NIT, Patna (India), and a premier engineering institute of India. She had been a bright student throughout. She was from 2006-2010 batch of NIT. Being a consistently high performer, everybody around, expected her to get a job from one of the best companies that recruit from their campus. But unfortunately recession hit India in 2008.

As Mary and other students of her batch progressed through their engineering, recession also grew. A campus which was visited by more than 400 top companies was all dry and pale during the recruitment season. It was in the month of March when Teletol Pvt. Limited showed interest in hiring from NIT. Mary and her entire batch started preparing for it. The campus recruitment process designed by the company was such that only the exceptional students could make it to the final round. The first round was a technical test, followed by psychometric test, group task, group discussion and personal interview in the subsequent rounds. After a rigorous process of 5 rounds, Mary was the only one from SRIT to receive the final offer from Teletol. 15th April 2010 it was, when Mary was on cloud nine. Her dream of working in a telecom company was finally materializing.

About Teletol Pvt. Ltd.

Teletol Pvt. Ltd. was started in the year 2000. It was an Indian subsidiary of Teletol Services based at Germany. It was among the leading telecom companies as it was launched PAN India and started its operations in all the telecom circles country wide. Based at Bangalore, India, the company has progressed extensively since its inception in the telecom sector of India. Teletol India has grown leaps and bounds by acquiring different small and medium sized telecom companies. Teletol has acquired around 1.5 lakh mobile broadband subscribers in less than six months, for its high speed mobile broadband service, DataTel. Presently it is considered as one of the best telecom service providers in India and has its market share at 3rd position.

Joining of Mary in Teletol

Mary joined Teletol Services on 6th July 2010. Its corporate office based out of Bangalore. She had her induction for a period of 15 days where she and 25 other Graduate Engineer Trainees(GETs) like her, got the opportunity to meet leaders from various domains viz. Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Research & Development etc. The sessions they took and the experiences they shared were very insightful for the whole batch. After induction, Mary was sent to Delhi to undergo a mandatory training for 6 months. The training comprised of two main domains: -the in-function and the cross-function.

As Mary is from the engineering background she was recruited for the technical department. Thus for her, in-function training would include departments like Radio Frequency(RF) Planning, Switch, Quality, Base Station Subsystem(BSS), Intelligent Network (IN) etc. And cross function would include departments like Human Resources(HR), Marketing, Finance, Sales etc. She performed excellently well throughout and was rated A+ in the review conducted at the completion of training after 6 months. After her training, she was posted to Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh (M.P), India. Gwalior was the regional head office of Teletol Services M.P. circle. Mary conveyed her wish of working in Switch department to the technical head of M.P. circle. Considering her academic performance and feedback which endorsed her to be hard-working, agile and quick learner, her request was acknowledged and she was placed at the switch department.

Problems faced by Mary while working in Teleltol

For the first few days everything was according to Mary’s expectations – challenging work, cooperative colleagues, lot of learning and new enriching experiences. After spending some time with her teammates she sensed a hidden awkwardness between them. She realized that her fellow team members were not able to accept her in the team. She tried every possible way to gel with them but sarcasms and bullying was all she got from them. After having a word with few of her colleagues she learnt the fact that she was the first girl to have opted to work in switch department. The team somehow could not understand how to deal with a female colleague and continued treating her as their male counterpart. On conversing with a GET of a previous year, she got to know that most of her team members are on the M1 Level while she was recruited directly on M3. She was earning almost 2.5 times the salary as compared to them. A female, who has got no prior work experience, coming directly at M3 and possessing an exemplary learning capability created a concealed hiatus between she and her colleagues. She still decided to be patient and continue with the job when the unexpected happened.

One fine Tuesday morning Mary reached office at 7am sharp. Her manager, Arvind Mishra reached office at 10am and asked his secretary Manisha to call Mary for a small meeting. Arvind wanted to apprise Mary with the new decision he had made that Mary has to come to work in night shifts as well. The night shift in switch begins from 10 pm and stretched till 7am. So Mary’s confrontation was not limited to her colleagues only but also to her manager.

An excerpt from the conversation which took place between Mary and Arvind is posted below:

Arvind: Good Morning Mary. How are you? How are you finding your work? Mary: I am good sir. Work is going on fine. However, I think that the team is taking sometime to accept me. Arvind: It’s ok Mary. You are a fresher. Make sure you gel well with them. Do not give them any room to complain. Mary: Sure sir, I will try my best. Arvind: Mary, in the meantime, I have to assign to you a very important task. We will be upgrading our Mobile Switching Centre (MSCs) and Signal Transfer Points (STPs) this month and you know that such activities can be carried out only during off-peak hours from 1 am to 5 am when call and message traffic is minimum. I want you to handle the process and thus you are required to come in night shifts from tomorrow onwards. Rajiv, Ravi, Ashish, Prashant, Nishant and 5 other of your colleagues would accompany you for all these activities. Once this up-gradation process is over you will be required to make some changes in the system for which you will have to come to work in night shifts only. Mary: Sir, I am pleased with the opportunity given to me. I somehow am not convinced with the idea of coming to office in night shifts when I would be alone working with 15 odd guys. Arvind: O’Come on Mary!!! They are your colleagues. Nothing is so awry. If something goes wrong, we will look into the matter. Do not worry. Mary: Sir, You will look into the matter once it has already happened?  You will not take precautionary measures? Won’t you make some arrangements for extra security of female employees? Am I demanding too much. Mary contemplated. Arvind: Look Mary, I treat you as an ‘employee’ not as a ‘lady employee’. I do not want my team to blame me for being partial and biased towards a lady employee. I want you take up this task and do not want any further discussions on this. Mary (firmly): Sir, I am not ok with the work timings you are putting me through. Nevertheless, I will think about this and will let you know.

 

Non Support of HR manager and criticism faced by her for not joining night shift

The decision made by Arvind came as a shock to her. She mulled a lot over it. She tried her best to convince him about her inability to work during odd hours, but, her manager paid a deaf year to whatever she said. Disgruntled and frustrated Mary came back to her desk thinking about the discussions she had with her manager. She never expected to confront such a situation. Is it my fault that they don’t know how to address the concerns of a lady employee? Or Is Arvind a Sociopath? Mary is stuck in the labyrinth of her own thoughts. She wrote a mail to Arvind expressing her inability to come to work during graveyard shifts. She waited for his response, but, Arvind was out of town for a Managers’ Meet and did not revert. Or was he shunning away from sending a written communication in this regard, so that there could be no documentary proof in this regard? A few days passed, after which she started getting calls from her manager insisting and pestering her to come to office during night shifts. A few of her college friends requested her to contact HR with this issue but she was too cautious to take that step, thinking that it might jeopardize her career progression in the long run. It was now a month since the dialogue has happened between Mary and Arvind when one day her HR Manager, Rinu called her for a meeting. Happy with the illusion that HR will do something about this, she went to have a word with her. The conversation between Mary and Rinu is appended below:

Rinu: Good Morning Mary. You seem to look energetic today. Mary: Hello Rinu. How are you doing? Rinu: Mary I am terribly upset about something. Never expected you to be a part of it . Mary (stunned): What are you talking about? Rinu: Arvind told me that in spite of knowing the criticality of the task you have shown disinterest in coming to office in night shifts. You know the importance of the Switch department at our workplace and still you had the audacity to refuse? Can you imagine how much negativity you have brought into the system and also on your career? This will hamper your appraisal this year and your progression in the company for all the coming years. Did you think of all these aspects before reacting apprehensively and in a hasty fashion? Mary (in defensive tone): Rinu, I fairly understand the criticality of the Switch department. I had requested Arvind that I would like to have some better security for working in the graveyard shift, but, he did not seem to care about this aspect. Rinu: Security and other agenda would be looked upon later, but make sure you start coming in night shifts from next week onwards. Mary: Rinu, you said that my appraisal and career progression will be affected, if I do not comply with what Arvind is asking me to. Does that mean that my work and my efficiency have no weightage? Are we being assessed here, only on the basis of work timings? Rinu (perplexed and irritated): I do not have more time to discuss this and have to cut this conversation right here, I have to rush for a meeting immediately. I believe we have discussed on your problem area and you know what best you should do to progress in your career. Bye. And Rinu rushed towards the meeting hall.

Mental & Physical Harassment faced by Mary in the job and Drop in performance

Contrary to Mary’s expectations HR did not support her rather they criticized her for confining herself to regular work timings. She was alleged for not contributing enough to the success of the department. Mary quoted some genuine statistics to prove that she has worked extensively on improving the network quality and has decreased call drop rate by approximately 18%. She has evidence to show how efficient she has been with her work throughout, but, Rinu did not care to listen let alone acknowledging it. Mary was taken aback. In a growing company like Teletol, can senior level managers be expected to be this apathetic towards his employees? Is there something which is bothering him? May be the presence of a female in his team or the probability of her being more successful than him in future? Scared and upset Mary came to her desk again.

Mental Dilemma faced by Mary to discuss her problem with Senior Authorities

She logged into her mailbox when she received a mail from Bala Krishnan, Vice President-HR, Teletol Services that she had her final feedback scheduled for day after tomorrow. She realized that she has completed a year at Teletol and hence this feedback session was taking place. She was told in her induction that the whole aim of this process was basically to capture the feedback of all to check and see how comfortable they were working in the organization and if anything specific they would like to share with corporate HR. Mary is in a dilemma now. Should she share this with Bala Krishnan about the mental harassment she is going through? Her last hope – the HR department, also failed, should she escalate the matter to senior authorities? Will it not hamper the growth prospects of her job over here? What if the senior authorities would give a similar response? What would she do then? Should she look for another job? But getting an offer in the current market scenario would be a tough proposition. The market is terribly low because of recession. Mary is in a dilemma now. Bala Krishnan called Mary on the scheduled date, time and asked about her experiences so far. She learnt that sharing anything with corporate HR at this moment will be too early a step and might be perceived as an impatient and naive move. She spoke all fair things about the work culture and her colleagues. Mary decided to face the present situation wisely and to fight all odds accordingly.

Discrimination faced by Mary at her workplace

One week has passed since all this chaos and Mary was completing her routine tasks with full dedication and perfection. She received a mail from Arvind which had an attachment in it. The attached file was the shift plan for the coming week which allocates morning, general and night shifts to all the employees of switch function. The mail said that from every week then onwards, every employee would be required to come in different shifts and weekly offs will not be given on fixed days. She opened the attachment and upset on reading it. In spite of requesting and also pleading, she still had been given night shifts. Moreover it was only her in the whole team who was not getting offs on fixed days. For all the other team members the weekly offs were fixed. She could not understand the reason behind such discrimination. She tried finding out the same from one of her colleagues in the other department when she discovered that off late the Switch department has faced a very high attrition rate and somehow Mary’s manager had a strong hunch that she might start preparing for her post graduate studies. Giving her offs on fixed days and not pressuring her with work might motivate her to join some preparatory classes. He did not want to lose another of her employee under any circumstances and hence took these measures to retain Mary in his department. He thought that by doing so he would be able to prevent Mary from preparing for any post graduate programmes and was very proud of the subtle nuances he played. The streak of troubles for Mary did not end here.

Sexual Harassment faced by Mary

The senior manager of Intelligent Network Department, Prabhash Kumar was highly impressed by Mary’s charisma. But this was not just as a boss’s admiration towards his employee. Over the time, Prabhash had developed some feelings for Mary and would look for ways and means to talk to her. He would intentionally allocate work to her and will create small hurdles so as to force her to seek for his help. It was New Year’s Eve and whole of Teletol went to celebrate at Revorb the biggest bar cum restaurant at Gwalior. Prabhash was drunk that night. After the party was over he insisted that he should drop Mary home. Mary was highly skeptical in saying yes but, saying “No” to a senior professional might be considered as rude behavior and arrogance too. Prabhash while on their way back home made a move towards Mary. She immediately pushed him back. Though Prabhash was drunk, he realized his mistake and immediately apologized. The next morning Mary was highly embarrassed in facing Prabhash. She had no idea of how to react. She could not discuss it with anyone with the fear of being ridiculed and mocked around. Later in the afternoon, Mary was completing some of her pending work when everyone else in the department had broken-off for lunch. Prabhash sensed this and came to Mary to apologize. Mary felt a little awkward and told Prabhash that she has forgiven him considering the fact that he was drunk the other night. Since then, Prabhash would look out for ways to apologize to Mary in some or the other way. Mary found this getting on her nerves, but, being her junior she preferred not to retaliate. Mary was stunned to no end. Does this company have level of professional ethics? Does Teletol actually respect woman? Is there any way of getting out of this maze?

Grievance Redressal Cell at Teletol and biasness in redressal of employees grievances

It has a centralized grievance handling mechanism which permits employee to register any grievance or complaint on company’s intranet. This directly goes to the central grievance handling team. Online registration of complaints is done to provide assurance to employee about the confidentiality of the matter. The involvement of central team adds to the accountability of such procedures. When Mary got to hear about this, she thought of filing her case with GRC at Teletol. It is then, when she heard another alarming story.

There was a lady in the marketing department named Shivi Saxena. She was an outstanding performer and has contributed significantly when Teletol was in its expansion spree in the areas of Kerala and Karnataka. Shivi’s case is currently under investigation, with GRC. Shivi has put an allegation against her manager Sandeep Singh that he had always forced her to come for team parties which last till late in night. When Shivi refused to attend, she was threatened of a transfer or poor performance appraisal review. She indicated that she has tried reaching out to her HR but Sandeep’s seniority and influence has made HR indifferent to Shivi’s problems. Bearing these atrocities for around a year she filed a case with GRC which is still under investigation. She threatened the management of her resignation and said that she would definitely sue the company for treating her this way. It was only then, they decided to settle this matter as soon as possible. Mary got to know that Sandeep has good say in GRC and the final judgment of the case may or may not be in favor of Shivi. Mary smirked. “What kind of system is this? Isn’t GRC supposed to act independently and judiciously? The whole purpose of setting up such a cell is lost, if at the end of everything it is nothing better than a puppet in the hands of a privileged few?”

Sexual Harassment Policy at Teletol

Myriads of thoughts were crossing her mind now. She was not able to concentrate on her work. A job taken with so much passion has gone for a toss now. Mary was blank. She just logged in, when a mail popped up in her inbox. The content of the mail were as follows:

“Get to know your organization better. Log in to your E-GURU account and have a look at all the policies, benefits, learning modules and upcoming events Log-in Id- Your employee code Password- <first 2letter of your name><Last 3 digits of your employee code>”

“E-GURU? What is that now?” Mary thought. She quickly recollected that during her induction she was informed about this intranet portal E-GURU which contains details of all the policies, reimbursement forms, e-tests etc. She in fact had taken one test which was based on the values of the organization. Mary (with an utter sigh) said to herself “I hope this does not have any kind of hidden agenda. I do not want to open another Pandora box.” She worked out her password and it came out as “ma672”. She entered the E-GURU portal and browsed a few of the quiz forums which say “How much do you know about your company”. She fared well in all of them which proved that she knew Teletol well. She saw a tab saying HR and workplace policies. She entered that section where she encountered a policy saying “No woman employee should be asked to come to work in night shift (night 10 pm to morning 7 am) in the organization. Under any circumstances if such a case arises, it has to be reported to HR which has to deal with it immediately.” Mary was in a state of shock. A policy which so clearly states that women should not be forced to come to work in night shifts is completely overlooked and played with and the irony above all is that even HR was a party to this. She finally reached a conclusion that the GRC and sexual harassment policies seem structured only on paper. Only a few employees would know about it, and very few among those would care to use it. There is no initiative being taken from HR to make people understand these policies better. Mary suddenly recalled reading a book “The first 90 days”, by Michael D. Watkins, which says that a new hire makes up his mind for staying in the organization in the first 3 months itself. Thus employer puts in a lot of efforts, to show its best to the employees during this critical period. Teletol seemed to be challenging the work of Watkins as well. “90 days are too much for them to make an employee run” May thought. The unorganized work culture and growing pressure has made Mary ill at ease. She did not hold any prior work experience to handle such situations in a work environment. On top of that, a subtle move by Prabhash has added to her miseries. Mary has to take a decision now. She could not go on working like this.

About Arvind Mishra & HR Personnels ignorance about his behaviour

It has been 4 years since he is with Switch at Teletol. He was awarded the best employee of the month, innumerable times. He also received the award of a star performer in the year 2003 by the CEO of Teletol. Though nobody can point a finger at the impeccable work delivered by Arvind, HR has found that his inter personal skills are not up to the mark of a responsible manager, he also needed to be a bit more assertive when dealing with employees. In the language of Teletol, a responsible manager is described as a person who accomplishes his goals, gives full attention to the work of his team and puts in extra efforts for their learning and development. In 360 degree, conducted last year for all the employees, feedback was taken from an employee’s manager, peer, clients and all other stakeholders with whom he interacts with at professional level. While evaluating the inputs received for Arvind, HR found that, many employees have given a review that Arvind’s professional behavior was not something they admired about. Many members from Arvind’s team, even changed their departments because they were unhappy with the way they were treated. Though HR had a fair hint about all these incidences no corrective action was taken. Arvinds’s high performance and contribution towards the company’s revenue has forced them to keep this matter out of their discussion purview and Arvind continued enjoying the accolade of a High Potential Employee.

About Rinu Fernandes & her biased behavior towards Mary & Arvind

She came in contact with Arvind, through linkedin, and requested him to consider her candidature for any HR openings in his company. Arvind browsed through her profile on linkedin. Impressed by the profile and recommendations, Arvind referred her to Teletol. She went through a process of a written test and two rounds of interview and was finally taken as Assistant Manager in the HR function in November 2008. She respects Arvind a lot and was indirectly indebted to him for giving her the job and in spite of being aware of the recent situation as to what other employees feel about him, decided to keep mum.

About Prabhash Kumar

He was assigned the post of a Manager in the Intelligent Network Department. His stint at Teletol was applaudable. He has been in good terms with all his colleagues. His team members have given him a nick name ‘Boss of Choice’. Prabhash was highly focused towards his work and made sure that all work process and practices are in place and tried his best to produce error free work.

Challenges faced by Functioning of Grievance Redressal Cell at Teletol

Grievance handling team at Teletol consists of eleven dedicated members which look into various complaints across the country. HR-Heads of each circle are also a part of this committee and works with the central team to resolve issues pertaining to their circle. The team worked quite efficiently till 2006 but with the increasing size of company and dynamic work environment, the team is not able resolves most of the issues effectively. Since last 3 years, grievance handling committee has addressed only 30% of the issues. Many of the complaints were not handled effectively which eventually resulted into employees’ resignations and legal issues. Moreover less awareness amongst the newly joined employees about the grievance handling procedure has aggravated the issue.

Figure: Grievance Handling Procedure at Teletol 

Solutions to overcome the challenges of Grievance Redressal System

“The key principle of confidentiality, fairness, impartiality, timely resolution and freedom from victimization and repercussions which makes a grievance handling system effective has to be supported by better investigation procedures and improved awareness and confidence amongst the employee about the system. Certain important factors which were not given importance earlier such as state of mind or intention of individual, needs to be taken care of while any grievance redressal ”, he added further. Another challenge faced by Teletol was no or limited awareness about the grievance handling by the newly joined employees. Many fresh graduates with almost no awareness about any such mechanism should be made aware and proper redressal of various issues such as women biasness, mental harassment as in case of Mary and sexual harassment as in case of Shivi should be addressed fairly to avoid separation of employee from the organization and arousal of legal issues against company.