PART B: CASE STUDY (20 marks total)

Maria has been working in the accounting department of the Williams Widgets Co. for four years. Before that, she worked in her family's small company and received her diploma in accounting at the local college.

Amrit, has been the department manager for just over a year. When she joined the department, she introduced some upgrades to the accounting software and procedures. As she walks around the department Amrit has noticed Maria cannot keep up with these changes and her work has suffered as a result. While she was never the quickest worker in the department, Maria now falls behind on a regular basis and is constantly asking her co-workers for help and advice on how to proceed.

People in the department like Maria but her constant requests for their help have become a burden; they have their own work to finish and have started to complain to Amrit about it. The fact that Maria frequently consults the operating manual and asks questions about routine procedures, is another problem that none of her co-workers seem to be having.

Amrit knows that Maria is the only member of the department without an accounting designation and wonders if that could be part of the problem.

In her first three years at the company Maria's performance was rated by her old manager as "satisfactory" and each year she received a salary increase and a small performance bonus. Since Amrit took over as her manager just over a year ago, Maria's performance has been rated as "below satisfactory" and she has not received a salary increase or a bonus.

Six months ago, when Amrit and Maria formally discussed her performance, Amrit noted that Maria was late with 10 percent of her weekly reports and had an error rate that was 8 percent higher than the department standard. Amrit documented that Maria had not learned the new accounting software and procedures, and that she has not obtained her accounting designation, a new requirement in the department.

Maria committed to improvement at the time but is very unhappy about the way things are going and feels that Amrit doesn't like her and is out to get her. Amrit does seem to have more stringent standards than Maria's previous supervisor, who was willing to help Maria with her work and overlook some of her performance deficiencies. Other members of the department seem to be thriving under Amrit's approach, but Maria is not. She believes she is underappreciated and unfairly treated. To make matters worse, Maria feels under increased stress as her husband is self-employed and times have been hard in his line of work.

Recently, Amrit has noticed that Maria has developed something of an attendance problem; she seems to miss a day of work every two or three weeks-often it seems, on a Monday or Friday. On several occasions, she has had to leave work early to check on her elderly parents, or so she says. This usually seems to occur in the afternoon, and Maria rarely returns to work.

Amrit feels it is time to meet once again with Maria.

Q1. What three pieces of evidence does Amrit have that Maria is not performing well? (3 marks)

Q2. What three things do you think are contributing to the problems Maria is having? Why? (3 marks)

Q3. Analyzing the case, how should Amrit proceed in managing Maria? What four things do you think she should do to deal with Maria and her issues? Explain. (8 marks)

Q4. How should Amrit deal with the fact that Maria feels badly treated and underappreciated? Explain (3 marks)

Q5. How should Amrit respond to the pressure Maria feels because of her husband's failing business? Why? (3 marks)