Arthur Reed Case

Arthur Reed – Case Study In this essay, I am going to discuss the staff management problem Arthur Reed faces every summer. Arthur Reed, a supervisor at the Blue Grocery Stores, has an issue with hiring temporary workers in sufficient numbers to cover the sick and vacationing workers for the summer months. As warehouse supervisor in charge of two shifts on the shipping dock, Arthur usually manages to run the shifts smoothly every year except in the summer months. During the summer months, Arthur faces a shortage of staff when most of his senior staff call in sick or take vacation. Arthur runs into this problem every summer and does not look forward to the frustration of trying to hire sufficient temporary workers this summer. Although Arthur
Staff management and on-call workers are the problems. In my opinion, Arthur is having a problem managing his senior staff because he is not communicating with them effectively regarding scheduling vacation and call-in sick days. The reason he keeps having the same problem every summer is that there are no guidelines for the staff on how to submit their schedules for time-off. Perhaps implementing guidelines will enable Arthur to manage the problem more effectively because it will allow him sufficient time to hire temporary workers. In addition, it will enable the senior staff to schedule their vacation periods in advance so that they can book trips and/or travel at a discount. The other issue is the on-call workers. On-call workers only offer a temporary solution to the problem. Arthur requires a permanent solution so that he does not have to face the same frustration again next summer. In addition, it is not efficient to hire on-call workers because the company has to pay them even if they do not
The first solution I suggest is for Arthur to communicate with both shifts of his senior staff to establish guidelines for scheduling vacation. These guidelines will allow his senior staff to schedule their personal time off during the summer months. Perhaps Arthur could set up a schedule plan to demonstrate how his senior staff should spread their vacations throughout the summer without overlapping each other's vacation time. For example, depending on how many senior staff are in both shifts, he could approve no more than two vacations during the same week. The employee could only take one week at a time. Since seniority has its privileges, the employee with the highest seniority will take his or her vacation first, and an employee with the least seniority will get to choose to go on his or her vacation last. Moreover, the staff may only be allowed to call in sick once a month, unless it is an