MGB200 Managing People - Assessment item 3 – Case: TUQ 18 months on Ash’s New Dilemma

Ash’s New Dilemma 

Ash felt invigorated after his early Sunday morning surf followed by breakfast with his family at their  favourite café. He now sat back in his corner office of TUQ’s Burleigh Operations and reflected on  progress that had been achieved in the last 18 months. He was at first sceptical that performance  could be improved through providing staff with more autonomy, in addition to the implementation  of a team-based profit sharing scheme but the results spoke for themselves. He had also modified  his own behaviour based on the leadership training course he completed at the QUT Graduate  School of Business. However, while progress had been made and his team were functioning well  there was still issues which worried him. He was in on this Sunday to prepare his response to one of  these problems, staff requests for flexible work arrangements, which had unexpectedly blown up on  Friday.  

Current Situation 

The Directors had borrowed heavily when they had purchased Rolled Gold. Consequently, staff were  under pressure to perform to ensure that the business continued to expand and the profits to  increase. When TUQ started, one of the attractive features of the jobs was that they were family  friendly. Two key team leaders Jack and Rose were especially pleased to be able to work around  school hours and childcare requirements. This benefit had attracted them away from their previous  employer to TUQ. There had been no written agreement, just an acknowledgement that this  arrangement was fine.  

Rose Waring  

Rose, has been working in Strata Management for over 15 years. She has always worked long hours,  attending numerous weekly meetings and constantly travelling. She often worked weekends to  catch up on emails and paperwork. As a consequence, she had little time to spend with friends or to  develop a long term relationship. It was this aspect of the job she found most disheartening. At 37,  Rose knew she wanted to be a mother, and although she did not desire to be a single parent,  decided that it was time to have children. She had saved enough money and annual leave to take  two years away from her job to look after a baby before returning to work, so without a long-term  partner, Rose undertook in vitro fertilisation (IVF). The IVF was successful and Rose left her position  8 months later to have twins.  

After the twins were born Rose was able to do small projects as a part-time employee for her  previous employer, Sandstone Strata. When she eventually went back to full time work, she took a  lower position. She hoped that she could continue to spend at least 1 day a week working from  home and that some of her hours could be flexible to drop off and pick up her twins from childcare,  but when she tried to negotiate a more formal arrangement, she encountered a lot of resistance.  She had spoken with a senior HR manager at Sandstone Stata who told her that they are very  traditional when it came to working arrangements and that she should look at working for another  company that was more progressive in terms of its work-life balance arrangements, such as TUQ - a  company with a good reputation for flexible work. 

After doing some research on TUQ, Rose contacted one of the Directors at TUQ, Paola Fiori, to  register her interest. Paola and the other directors were impressed with Rose’s skills and experience  and organised a meeting. At the meeting, Rose talked about how her experience could contribute to  TUQ, and she explained that she was seeking a company that took work-life balance seriously. Paola  reassured her that TUQ’s policy was to attract more women into their ranks by introducing initiatives  that supported employee’s non-work demands such as childcare.  

The arrangements worked well for the first 2 years, with Rose able to contribute effectively at work  and adjust her schedule around the twins needs. Rose was asked to take a leading role in the “Rolled  Gold Strata Management” acquisition due to her leadership capabilities and experience working in large Strata Management business. She agreed understanding the importance of the acquisition but  said it would only be a short-term arrangement until the acquisition was bedded down.  

Rose was proud of her new team and how well the Burleigh office was now running. She felt it was  an appropriate time to reinstate the flexible work arrangements so she could spend more time with  her twins. She raised her desire to work from home at least 2 days per week and arrive late and  finish early on 2 other days per week. Ash told her this was fine except during busy periods when she  would be required to work normal hours at the office. These arrangements worked for the first  month. In the second month, there were two weeks in a row when her flexible work arrangements  were interrupted due to what Ash claimed was a heavy workload, and Rose had to call on her  mother to collect the children at the last minute. As the weeks passed, these interruptions to her  schedule continued, and Ash asked her to come in on the days she worked from home. Rose could  never be sure when the so-called “busy periods” were likely and she was often left to make last  minute alternate arrangements for her children’s care.  

She became increasingly frustrated. She felt that on a number of occasions the workload and the  confidence she had in her team’s ability to complete the task, did not warrant her physical presence  in the office. Rose felt she had used the skills developed when she was a senior manager at  Sandstone Strata, to successfully create a self-managed team at TUQ, and felt that Ash lacked  confidence in her abilities. She became more stressed, disrupting her sleep and eating patterns, and  she was worried about the toll this was having on her health. 

The other team leader Jack was experiencing similar frustrations regarding Ash’s reluctance to  provide access to flexible work arrangements. Together they called a meeting with Ash to discuss  their concerns. Both Rose and Jack were frustrated with Ash when he said the Burleigh office was  still in transition and needed them both to be here full-time. When they argued that there had been  an understanding that they could access flexible work arrangements, Ash asked to see where it had  been written into their contracts. Jack and Rose spoke up strongly against this. Ash apologised and  said how much he valued their contributions, and how well their teams were performing. He was  just worried that if they both were away from the office regularly it would disrupt the operations of  their teams and the Burleigh’s office ability to retain and attract new clients. He said he would think  of options over the weekend to meet with them on Monday to discuss.  

Where to from here? 

Ash stared out the window and tried to gather his thoughts. He did think that they could make  flexible work arrangements work in the long term. However, the timing was not right as the business  was still in a consolidation phase and he was worried that without Rose and Jack in the office all the  good work could be undone and opportunities for further growth not capitalised on. He was also  worried if he did not act, he would lose one or both of his team leaders. He also thought that Rose  had set-up her team to function without her presence, was a better team leader than Jack, had a  more compelling case, and was more likely to leave if her request was not accommodated. However,  Jack did have extenuating circumstances for his lower performance, with his wife recovering from  cancer. Jack’s second in charge, Mary was also highly competent and would benefit professionally  from taking on more leadership duties. Ash’s head spun with competing priorities, values, and  eventualities.  

His eyes turned to his bookcase and he saw the report you had provided for him on how to improve  motivation and productivity that was pivotal to the successful growth of TUQ. You had also provided  him with coaching to improve his leadership self-efficacy. He dialled your number and explained the  situation to you. 

What do you advise he do?