Case Study James Benker has started the Jamaica Knowledge Services Centre Limited (JKSCL). The company started after James completed his Masters of Business Administration (MBA). He was unable to get a job, so he started offering knowledge process outsourcing to overseas and local clients. As a result, the company has been featured in the Caribbean’s number one growing business and received the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica (PSOJ) as the best business in Jamaica for 2019. One of the employees, Mrs. Suzanne Marcus, has worked at the company since its start-up in 2001, Suzanne is known for her involvement not only in her duties but also in other various activities of the department. She was aware of many minute details about the department throughout her tenure. She is loaded with responsibilities very often, sometimes given to her and sometimes taken by her. In the beginning, she was happy with her profile and gave her the best in all her responsibilities. However, she becomes overloaded when years pass and gets elevated to higher responsibilities. Still, she was happy with her job. Suzanne started realizing that many of her colleagues complete their work on time and equally take care of their personal lives. On the other hand, Suzanne, having been loaded with responsibilities, completed it partially at work and partially during her personal time. This becomes a reason for her stress. She started questioning her ability to not being able to complete her work at the scheduled time. Later, she understood that apart from being given responsibility, she was involved in many other crucial activities of the department, which became her additional responsibility which slowly the people forget that it is not under her job profile. Suzanne, being highly disturbed, started feeling her job as a burden. She thought she can’t come out of this because the habit which she developed for herself and her co-workers is irreversible. So she finally decided to take a break from her job. She fixed an appointment with the head HR, Mr. Marvis Jenkins, for her resignation, He knows the fact that her involvement is irreplaceable, and he also knew that she can be his competitor in a very short period, so, he had some other plans for her. During the conversation, Mr. Jenkins understood that Suzanne is highly stubborn in leaving the job. So, he convinced her to do work from home and advised her to limit her responsibilities as she will not come in any direct contact with the employees. Suzanne happily accepted the option and she felt relaxed. Several employees heard of Suzanne’s option to work from home and started making such requests. They were all told by Mr. Jenkins that he is unable to approve work from home as this will affect company’s profit. He also complained to the employees and their union that it is difficult to manage performance when employees work from home. This has resulted in staff morale for the department being low, which is spreading quickly to other departments within the company. There have been at least TWO (2) industrial actions over the past six months, which have costed the company over Fifty Thousand USD ($50,000.00) One employee Mr. Junio Black, has complained that the HRM department is run by a group of unfair and unscrupulous people who often display no good customer service, He explained that getting a letter verifying your employment status can become a nightmare as there is no clear procedure for requesting such and its based on how the people in HR feel. The company is also accused of failing to provide feedback during the performance appraisal process which has caused THREE (3) pending cases with the Industrial Dispute Tribunal (IDT). You have been employed as a Human Resource Consultant to assist the company with rectifying these issues. Complete the following tasks to advise the company: According to Adam’s Equity Theory, the employees may feel that they are unfairly treated and may start exercising balance redress. Provide a detailed summary of the two concepts (Adam’s Equity Theory and Balance Redress). You should cite an example from the case study.
