University at Buffalo Strategic HRD and Motivation Case Study Analysis

Abstract

A major purpose of HRD is to change employees’ behavior through training, development, and other incentives. Understanding how to influence employees’ motivation is central for supervisors to building successful relationships with employees for organizational success.

Strategic HRD and Motivation Case Study

XYZ is a company that works in the field of selling cars. Though the market is highly competitive, and though the company lacks resources to hire additional organizational development or training professionals, the management decides to open a new facility to gain competitive advantages and approach new opportunities. The current number of employees in the company is 500 in which, only, 90 employees are working as customer service representatives. In 2020, the pandemic of Covid 19 forced the company to release 25 customer service representatives, and recently, the dilemma of the electronic chips occurs in Taiwan has, also, impact on the market and 15 customer service employees have left the company. The company now is left with 50 customer service employees.

Mary, the Training Department Director, received an email informing her with the management decision. She has only one organization development (OD) specialist—David–, one customer service supervisor—Dana–, and three trainers on her staff. Mary has three months to prepare a strategy to meet the new facility training needs utilizing her current resources.

David has recently promoted to the position of Training Director. His first project is to set a plan to motivate the remaining 50 customer service representatives to provide better customer service. The volume of work has not decreased, no new employees will be hired, and there will be no pay increases for the remaining employees.

Dana is the customer service supervisor and her job is to distribute the workload among the remaining 50 employees. Donna has contacted David and requested cross-training of her employees as a motivational tool. She is hoping that the knowledge of new skills will be a motivation to the remaining employees so that they can obtain enhanced knowledge and skills for possible future promotions.

Analyze the above case and provide solutions by answering the following questions:

1. How can Mary ensure that her training goals align with the organization’s goals?

2. What are the important components that need to be included in Mary’s plan?

3. How can David motivate customer service employees to learn new knowledge and skills? What key motivational theories are applicable to this case and why?

4. How can Donna motivate the customer service employees to apply the knowledge and skills obtained during training? How can she maximize employees’ learning?