Let’s back up and assume that employees had the KSAs needed to clean the offices effectively. What other factors might you look at as potential causes of the re-cleaning problem?
THE COMPETENT EMPLOYEE1
Schrader–Bridgeport International (SBI) is a large manufacturing company with plants in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. It is a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative engineered solutions to meet system, submodule, and component needs for industrial and automotive applications. Its sophistication in the engineering field, however, does not translate to sophistication in its management system. But perhaps you should judge for yourself.
A few years ago, nine males and one female—Ms. Conner—were hired at the same time for the position of “craftsmen.” They were all graduates of a community college with a degree related to the job for which they had applied. Their job was to operate multispindle machines.
On joining SBI, the men were sent to Department 767, where special one-on-one, hands-on training took place for six months. This training taught them how to operate the machinery used at SBI, including how to load metal bars properly into the machines. Then they were transferred to Department 710, where they began operating the machines. Ms. Conner was placed directly into Department 710, and she did not receive the training.
On numerous occasions, George Schaefer, SBI’s general supervisor in Department 710, stated explicitly that, in his view, women did not belong in the workplace at all. However, he admitted that Ms. Conner had “excellent mechanical ability,” and he estimated that of the 10 persons hired from the community college training program, Ms. Conner was “probably number three from the top.”
When one of the men’s machines malfunctioned, supervisor Bruce Boyd would explain and demonstrate to the operator how to fix the machine and would permit the employee to assist and to learn how to get it going again. If Ms. Conner’s machine malfunctioned, however, Boyd simply fixed it without showing or explaining what he did. When she asked to participate so she could learn, he “rolled his eyes” at her and refused. Ms. Conner then specifically asked General Supervisor Schaefer to see that she was provided with comparable training. He dismissed her request by responding that she had a high rate of absenteeism.
The machines that all 10 employees operated were idiosyncratic—each required its own particular techniques for it to perform well. New machine operators were typically assigned to a specific machine for a long period so they could learn how to keep that particular machine operating effectively. An inexperienced machine operator would advance to learning machine setup and unplanned tool setting only after gaining basic operating skills on a single machine. As a result, the machine operator’s efficiency and productivity were greater.
Mr. Schaefer, however, repeatedly moved Ms. Conner from one machine to another. These machine changes caused her to spend a much greater proportion of her time on setup and unplanned tool setting than on production. She was always learning the idiosyncrasies of a new machine. From October through April, Ms. Conner spent 139.3 hours on machine setup and unplanned tool setting. The male operator who spent the most time on this task during that time period spent 82.5 hours. The male operator with the least amount of setup and unplanned-tool-setting time in the same period spent 12.1 hours.
Ms. Conner put up with a number of other things, such as being ridiculed, being forced to “mop up” the place, not receiving the same pay raise as the men, and so forth. She finally went to the personnel manager to complain. SBI had an antiharassment policy. The policy required investigation of employee complaints “thoroughly and promptly to the fullest extent practicable.” However, the investigation conducted by the personnel manager consisted of asking supervisors Schaefer and Boyd about Ms. Conner. It is not surprising that the findings indicated no problem.