Assessment : Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Exercise - Case Study Report Case Study and Guidelines The Case Study: The organisationis based in Sydney, Australia and employs 3,000 peoplein avariety of roles including trades, professional, management and leadership. The company has historically enjoyed a monopoly position but now faces keen competition following decisions by the government regulator. Market share is resting on 65% but falling. The Board and the CEO have begun the process of preparing for full privatisation. The organisation has a small Holding Company and four business units structured around functions. Three of the four businesses are losing money. There is no appreciation of the core business concept although some junior and middle managers (many with business and MBA degrees) have suggested that this is a critical issue for the Executive. They argue that the organisation is still involved in too many areas that might be outsourced. Following a merger the workforce has been reduced from over 5,000 employees to 3,000 employees over the last two years. The reduction in staff levels has been achieved by voluntary redundancy. Unfortunately, many of the staff who left were high value employees. A great deal of corporate memory and intellectual capital has been lost. Employee development has been one of those areas severely curtailed as part of several rounds of cost cutting exercises. Leadership is predominantly white, male, and middle-aged with a long history with the organisation. The seven-man Executive group has no private sector experience. Each has come from the industry with three of the seven beginning their careers as cadets with the organisation. Of the seven, five are engineers and two are accountants. The HR Director is not a member of the Executive but is often invited to attend. Leadership style could be described as transactional. The former CEO was one of the former cadet engineers and was the definitive transactional leader. He had little time for the warm and fuzzy approach. There is no sense of urgency amongst this group. There appears to be no consensus that the organisation is in crisis. The typical senior leader could be described as bureaucratic, risk averse, conservative, and mechanistic in outlook. There has been no clear understanding of what type of leader might be required for the future. The future is seen as an extrapolation of the past. There is a cohort of young fresh and well-educated middle managers with the ideas and drive to help turn the organisation around but invariably, they are blocked by their managers. Consequently, many have left ortalk often of leaving. There is no succession planning in place. Most managers at all levels are working very long hours with little extra compensation and certainly little recognition. The senior team spends much time selling the concept that \"our people are our most valuable resource\" but the message received by the people is that they are the organisation's most expendable resource. Trust and loyalty largely have gone as people wait for the next round of redundancies. The predominant culture is bureaucratic although many people in lower-level positions can see the need for a major culture shift if the organisation is to survive. The Business leaders argue that any attempts at organisational change must be embedded in the culture, but the unions counter argue that management has already well and truly destroyed the culture. The need for a customer-focused culture is obvious to most but little is being done to address the issues. Most of the general workforce have 15-20 years of service and people with over 25 years of service are common. The prevailing culture with this group is very paternalistic and this can be traced to management's past style. Their attitude can be summed up as one where the organisation owes them a living. Payday has always come each Wednesday and always will. The \"good old days\" soon will return. If management wants a little extra, then they will have to pay for it. Senior management is not trusted and whatever respect might have existed has now gone. Flexibility is talked of but is not apparent in practice. Performance reviews have not been a priority in the past and are seen by current managers as a chore rather than as a strategic tool for aligning business and personal needs and objectives. The union takes the view that their cooperation will come only if salary increases are made an integral part of the performance review system. The workforce and customer base are very diverse, but the senior team does not reflect this nor understand the concepts of diversity management. The concept is seen as one of those airy-fairy fads that those People & Culture folk keep coming up with. The People & Culture Director has put forward plans that focus on mirroring the customer base. She has pushed for Women in Management, Disability, and Indigenous Australian strategies. She also suggested an English in the Workplace program when it was found that over 50% of employees had English as a second language. This was seen as an WH&S issue as reading plans, diagrams and instructions was very much part of their work. Compensation and Benefits policy is one size fits all. There is no clear link with performance although senior leaders have an at-risk component within their salary package, but the risk appears minimal. Senior and middle managers can package their salaries and make use of salary sacrificing strategies. The bulk of the workforce is paid to a Modern Award that is extremely rigid and is clearly one of the main barriers to introducing flexible work practices. Management often state they want a more flexible workforce, but on their terms. Many staff have responded to annual attitude surveys indicating their desire for more flexible hours and conditions, including salary packaging. Many argue that they can easily work from home, but this has beenignored by senior leadership even though this flexibility has worked well during the COVID-19 crisis. The industrial situation is sensitive. The union has lost many members through downsizing and will resist any further attempts by management to reduce the workforce any further. At the same time, the union seems not to understand diversity management or many other issues that are important to many employees. Today A new commercially oriented Board and CEO have finally been appointed by the shareholders and have come to understand that things must change rapidly if the organisation is to survive beyond another two years. The monopoly days are gone. Customers are now able to choose their supplier. Several large and successful private companies have entered the market and have already started to poach the best talent. A few months ago, the former CEO was moved on. The new CEO Yichen Lee has identified certain major changes within the external environment that must be addressed. Yichen has seen an organisation that only paid lip service to customer focus and globalisation. He now wants to restructure the four business units around customer groups and to shake up his senior leadership team. Many have mistaken transparent leadership with \"invisible" leadership. As a true believer in the benefits of the transformational leadership style, he knows that he must create and share a vision for the future to provide the inspiration and hope that had been missing. His role is to shape the new organisation. He wants an empowered organisation and for leadership to move rapidly away from its historical command-and-control model to an empower-and-facilitate model. In essence, he will take on the role of principal change agent and one of his first tasks will be to seek out and appoint champions amongst senior and local managers and team members. Specifically, he wants to see far more support for managing the diverse staff that he has acknowledged and now wishes to value as one way to a sustainable competitive advantage. He agrees with the People & Culture Director that the company must mirror its customer base. He also agrees that setting up new leadership competencies is a priority. Yichen's view is that all non-core operations be outsourced and that a core of well remunerated and highly developed full-time employees be kept on the payroll. Gaps will be filled by casual and contract staff. All full-time employees will be moved to individual contracts. Compensation and Benefits must move towards an earned culture rather that the entitlement culture that has become entrenched. There has been an attempt to determine corporate values and to write a Code of Ethics to underpin strategy and culture change, but gaining commitment of senior leaders by way of their actions is proving a challenge. Consultants have been employed over the past few years but most seem to have prioritised their inflated fees and concentrated primarily on extending their contract with the company. As People & Culture Director you have been appointed by Yichen to identify key issues that need urgent intervention and report back to him and the Executive within three months. The Task: Ensure your case study report answers the following questions. Remember this assessment does require references! What is the key issue or problem in this case? Justify your answer with evidence from the case. 2. What are the sub-issues and problems in this case? Provide a short justification for each sub- issue mentioned in your answer. 3. Name and explain four (4) relevant human resource (HR) and employment relations (ER) theories/models that can be applied to this case? Provide ashort justification for the relevance of each theory or model. 4. What four (4) strategies or solutions could be put forward to address the issues and problems in this case? Provide a brief outline of each strategy