Background: You have been tained as a member of a consulting group to analyze, interpret, and recommend a course of action to a client company addressing the results of the firm's recent employee climate survey. The fictional client, Hytec, Inc., is an electronics manufacturer, and unit of a Fortune 300 information & communications corporation, with operations located throughout the U.S. The corporation serves the global cellular communications market with leading edge products and technology solutions. The Texas operation is home to 500 employees who represent a diverse highly technical workforce. Employees largely fall into a number of job categories: electronic technicians, assemblers, machinists, fabricators, engineers, and support staff (IT, accounting, HR, procurement, etc). The firm has transformed from conventional manufacturing operation to building a high-performance enterprise. Having successfully integrated "just in time" manufacturing methods and "total quality management" into its operational strategy, the firm has recently launched an initiative to add a self-directed workforce to its competitive arsenal solidifying its operational strategy. The survey: The firm has been committed to a bi-annual employment climate survey. The purpose for the survey is to solicit employee opinion on their degree of satisfaction among a range of considerations affecting life at work. The survey measures the following climate dimensions: 1. Job demands 2. Working conditions 3. Pay 4. Employee benefits 5. Friendliness & co-operation of fellow employees 6. Supervisor-employee interpersonal relations 7. Confidence in management 8. Technical competence of supervision 9. Effectiveness of administration 10. Adequacy of communication 11. Security of job and work relations 12. Status and recognition 13. Identification with the company 14. Opportunity for growth & advancement 15. Reactions to the attitude survey 16. Overall employee opinion The survey measures the degree of "favorableness" (employee satisfaction) as a percent favorable to each of the climate dimensions. The survey captures 3 evaluation cycles (disregard the years) in which the survey has been taken providing an excellent perspective on changes in employee opinion for each of the climate dimensions over the 3 survey cycles. Additionally each climate dimension compares the client's workforce to the "norm," (darken circle), representing average employee response for employers utilizing the climate survey. A new approach: The Company has routinely developed action items and focus groups to address employee concerns resulting from the survey. However previous efforts have resulted in management being overwhelmed with the volume of actions created. The effort has generally left both management and employees wondering whether any real progress is being made. The firm looks to you to advise them on a different approach relying less on tactics and more on a strategy for tackling the most recent survey. Teams should consider the value of using the Pareto Principle as a possible new management "approach" to addressing climate survey data. The Pareto Principle is a business principle that holds that 80% of the impact of a problem will show up in 20% of its causes (i.e. 20% of the trouble causes 80% of the problems). Rather than analyzing each of the 16 survey dimensions separately, teams are encouraged to examine the data for patterns and/or trends among the dimensions for possible clues. Such data distillation leads to identification of underlying issues, i.e. significant change to norm or