Synopsis
A leading mid-sized Canadian manufacturer, Widgets International with a loyal employee front and a huge client base in the U.S, has been enjoying the benefits of their streamlined production process and technology, to offer innovative, top quality products at lower cost in a highly competitive market. This resulted in the acquisition of a new contract, which led to a younger workforce being introduced at the entry and supervisory level to meet the growing technology and production demands. However, this has led to some unrest among the existing workforce, some of who have been in the organization for over 10 years. They feel the introduction of younger employees could lead to layoffs and this fear has led to lack of discipline, co-operation and teamwork, which has resulted in decreased productivity.

Problem Analysis
Primary Problems
Issues Roles and Responsibility Impact
1) Lack of employee engagement The management and the HR dept. did not have an employee engagement plan There could be a rift between the new and old employees, primarily due to the generation gap, which could lead to best practices not being shared. The organization’s growth strategy was not put across to its employees who thus assumed that new recruitment would result in lay off.
2)Lack of employee development plan The management failed to motivate its employees by designing an employee development plan which would have helped the organization with the skillset management, improving employee performance and potentially grooming leaders for the future The organization had to bear the cost of recruiting 3 first line managers, who could have been potentially recruited from within the workforce at no cost and the employees could have responded to them better as against the new recruits
3)Lack of policies and procedures The management did not enforce the workers