"To Heck with Them!"

Situation:

Isabelle Anderson is the plant manager for Hall Manufacturing Company, a company that produces a line of relatively inexpensive painted wood furniture. Six months ago Isabelle became concerned about the turnover rate among workers in the painting department. Manufacturing plant turnover rates in that area generally averaged 30%, which was the case at Hall. The painting department, however, had experienced a turnover of nearly 200% in each of the last 2 years. Because of the limited number of skilled workers in the area, Hall had introduced an extensive training program for new painters, and Isabelle knew that the high turnover rate was very costly.

Isabelle conducted exit interviews with many of the departing painters. Many of them said that they were leaving for more money, others mentioned better benefits, and some sited some kind of personal reasons for quitting. But there was nothing to help Isabelle pinpoint the problem. Isabelle had checked and found that Hall's wages and benefits were competitive with, if not better than, those of other manufacturers in the area. She then called in Nelson Able, the painting supervisor, to discuss the problem. Nelson's response was, "To heck with them! They will do it my way or then can hit the road. You know how this younger generation is. They work to get enough money to live on for a few weeks and then quit. I don't worry about it. Our old-timers can take up the slack." After listening to Nelson for a moment, Isabelle thought that she might know what caused the turnover problem.

Discussion questions:

Do you believe that the exit interviews were accurate? Explain your answer.

What do you believe was the cause of the turnover problem?

What would you recommend that Isabelle should do to address the retention problem?

What would you do if you were the HR Manager at Hall Manufacturing Company?