Exam 12: Section 1: Managing Individuals and a Diverse Work Force

Pay TV One industry with a reputation for less­than­stellar customer service is that of the nation's pay­TV providers. Much of the terrible customer service is blamed on outsourcing. To cut costs, most pay-TV providers have farmed out customer service functions to vast call centers that hire low-paid, poorly trained employees who lack any incentive to care about faceless customers. There is one exception to that rule-DirecTV, which has the best customer service record in the industry even though it, too, uses outsourcing. The primary difference between DirecTV and other pay-TV providers is motivation. The customer service reps get free satellite TV at their homes after three months on the job. The call reps are invited to special events and given the opportunity to mingle with NFL stars and television celebrities. In addition, the reps were given the power to handle customer's complaints themselves, rather than simply acting as listeners. -Refer to Pay TV. According to______ , employees at most call centers would likely believe they are being treated unfairly compared to DirecTV employees.

The owner of a small local chain of retail stores that target affluent women and carry eclectic lines of wrapping paper, stationery, invitations, and gifts has expressed a strong need to expand nationwide. According to McClelland's Learned Needs Theory, the owner has a need for____________ .

Wegmans Wegmans, a supermarket chained based in the northeast United States, has been in business since 1915. Its founder believes that if the company could survive the Great Depression, it can survive the intense competition of today's grocery industry, fueled, of course, by Wal­Mart. The grocery business has margins between 2 and 4 percent. Plus, because of low pay, long hours, and, frankly, a mundane industry that doesn't attract and keep top­ notch talent, employee turnover averages 100 percent per year. In fact, turnover costs are so high and profit margins are so low (because of intense competition) that over the last 13 years, 13,500 individual grocery stores, 17 percent in all, have closed because they weren't profitable. Wegmans plans to beat those odds by differentiating itself through service. Providing great service requires a highly educated, motivated work force, and accomplishing that won't be easy. The first step in Wegmans' plan to recruit a highly motivated work force is to offer workers excellent medical, dental, and life insurance as well as long-term disability coverage. Everyone who makes less than $55,000 a year receives complete medical insurance and a 401(k) retirement plan in which every employee dollar is matched by 50 cents from Wegmans. In addition to benefits for full-time workers, part-time workers such as cashiers and baggers, most of whom are high-school students, can earn a scholarship bonus (for good grades) of $6,000 over their four years of high school. In fact, Wegmans has given 17,500 full- and part-time employees $54 million for college scholarships over the last 20 years. Wegmans also pays some of the highest salaries in the grocery industry, which, combined with the company's benefits package, keeps Wegmans' turnover rate at an astronomically low 6%! Wegmans also invests in its employees through training. Employees must pass 30- to 55-hour long training classes before they can work in the meat or fish departments. And some are sent to Italy to learn about cheeses or to France to work in patisseries (pasty shops). Produce employees might be sent to California to learn from strawberry growers. At Wegmans, the motto is "Employees first, customers second." But because Wegmans' employees are so satisfied with their work and because the company invests so heavily in them, they are glad to deliver what Wegmans calls "telepathic levels of customer service." In pursuit of "telepathic" customer service, employees are allowed, even encouraged, to do anything they need to do to satisfy customers - and that's without getting approval from their managers. In fact, Wegman chefs have gone to customers' homes to fix incorrect food orders. When a customer purchased a Thanksgiving turkey too large for her oven, a Wegmans' employee cooked it for her in the large ovens at the store. Bill Gamer, a part­time employee in a meat department, said, "They let me do whatever comes into my head, which is kind of scary sometimes." Jack DePeters, head of company operations concurs, saying, "We're a $3 billion company run by 16­year­old cashiers." -Refer to Wegmans. Wegmans' scholarship bonuses for part­time workers indicate the company is using________ .

France has 14 million smokers. More importantly, smokers in France are closely associated with the French culture. To reduce the number of smokers in the nation, the French government has increased the costs of cigarettes to a price twenty times greater than that charged in any other nation in the European Union. In terms of reinforcement theory, what kind of a reinforcement schedule is being used?

___________strengthen behavior (i.e., increase its frequency).

A glass of water and shelter from a snowstorm would be examples of____________ and a gold necklace and tickets to see professional wrestling would not be.