Wei Jiang

Wei Jiang was in her second year as the manager of the Fredericton, NB office of a large
national transportation and logistics company. She loved her job, which was challenging
and provided opportunities to interact with people from across Canada. Recently,
however, she had started to notice some small issues related to the performance of her
sub-unit, which included about 120 mostly full-time employees, working under four
experienced supervisors who reported directly to Wei. The unit operated on a two-shift
system, which provided some staffing flexibility when customers required service on a
24-hour basis.

Specifically, Wei noticed that absenteeism rates among her workers had been steadily
increasing over the last few quarters. Historically, the Moncton office had generally
reported absenteeism levels below the national average. If current trends continued,
however, Wei was concerned that this might no longer be true. Further, Wei had noted
a number of grievances filed by the union, related to the actions of a couple of
supervisors on the night shift. While she had a note to investigate these complaints
thoroughly before responding, the word on the grapevine was that the employees had
some safety concerns related to possible drinking and drug abuse on company property.

Finally, Wei had noticed some increased friction between the supervisors during daily
handover meetings, which occurred as the day and night shifts changed over. These
discussions had on a few occasions become a little heated, going beyond normal
arguments about the best ways to do things. Conflict seemed to be spilling over into
personal attacks, and was affecting the working relationships within and across the
shifts. It was true that the company was successful and the workload had increased
noticeably in recent years, but that was no excuse for this kind of behaviour, Wei
thought to herself.

Wei had taken great pride in building this organization, which was characterized by a
positive, “can-do” culture and freedom for operators and supervisors to use their
judgment about how to get the job done. Pondering the absenteeism data, the
harassment complaints, and her own observations of the hand-over meetings, she
wondered what to do next.

Version: Feb 2, 2021