Task 3. Case Study 3: Motivation and Teams

More Than a Pay Cheque  

Samuel Gibson was a trainer for Britannia Home Manufacturers, a large builder of prefabricated homes. Britannia Home had hired Gibson fresh from graduate school with a master’s degree in English. At first, the company put him to work writing and revising company brochures and helping with the most important correspondence at the senior level. But soon, both Gibson and senior management officials began to notice how well he worked with executives on their writing, how he made them feel more confident about it, and how, after working with an executive on a report, the executive often was much more eager to take on the next writing task.

So Britannia Home moved Gibson into its prestigious training department. The company’s trainers worked with thousands of supervisors, managers, and executives, helping them learn everything from new computer application packages to time management skills to how to get the most out of the workers on the plant floor, many of whom were unmotivated high school dropouts. Soon Gibson was spending all his time giving short seminars on executive writing as well as coaching his students to perfect their memos and letters.

Gibson’s move into training meant a big increase in salary, and when he started working exclusively with the company’s top brass, it seemed as though he got a bonus every month. Gibson’s supervisor, Mirella Carta, knew he was making more than many executives who had been with the company three times as long, and probably twice as much as any of his graduate school classmates who concentrated in English. Yet in her biweekly meetings with him, she could tell that Gibson wasn’t happy.

When Carta asked him about it, Gibson replied that he was in a bit of a rut. He had to keep saying the same things over and over in his seminars, and business memos weren’t as interesting as the literature he had been trained on. But then, after trailing off for a moment, he blurted out, "They don’t need me!" Since the memos filtering down through the company were now flawlessly polished, and the annual report was 20 percent shorter but said everything it needed to, Gibson’s desire to be needed was not fulfilled.

The next week, Gibson came to Carta with a proposal: What if he started holding classes for some of the floor workers, many of whom had no future within or outside the company because many could write nothing but their own names? Carta took the idea to her superiors. They told her that they wouldn’t oppose it, but Gibson couldn’t possibly keep drawing such a high salary if he worked with people whose contribution to the company was compensated at minimum wage.  

Gibson agreed to a reduced salary and began offering English classes on the factory floor, which were billed by management (who hoped to avoid a wage hike that year) as an added benefit of the job. At first only two or three workers showed up—and they, Gibson believed, only wanted an excuse to get away from the nailing guns for a while. But gradually word got around that Gibson was serious about what he was doing and didn’t treat the workers like kids in a remedial class. At the end of the year, Gibson got a bonus from a new source: the vice president in charge of production. Although Gibson’s course took workers off the job for a couple of hours a week, productivity had actually improved since his course began, employee turnover had dropped, and for the first time in over a year, some of the floor w orkers had begun to apply for supervisory positions. Gibson was pleased with the bonus, but when Carta saw him grinning as he walked around the building, she knew he wasn’t thinking about his bank account. 

Answer the following questions:

4.1 Explain the nature of groups and group behaviour in organisations. Make reference to Britannia Home Manufacturers (you can make assumptions).

4.2 Discuss factors that may promote or inhibit the development of effective teamwork in organisations.

4.3 Evaluate the impact of technology on team functioning within Britannia Home Manufacturers (you can make assumptions). Consider how technology can be used to facilitate teams’ effectiveness and communication. 

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