Problem Optimizing Productivity

Brief Description
A negative relationship between supervisors and employees can cause organizations to have trouble having stable employees, which in turn leads to problems optimizing productivity. Therefore, to optimize productivity, managers sometimes fire supervisors and provide educational services about how to have good relationships with one another in the organization. They fire the supervisors who gave the employees a hard time. These supervisors do not perform their jobs the way that they are supposed to and are not good example of leaders.

Facts of the Case
Health Center had trouble optimizing productivity due to bad supervisors. The top-level managers attempted to avoid productivity issues by hiring intelligent and bilingual case managers. In the past, they hired and spent a lot of money to train many intelligent and educated case managers as a way to solve the problem, but many of the case managers usually had negative relationships with their supervisors. The supervisors gave the case managers a hard time and did so as a way to get weird of the case managers if they felt that the case managers could become their boss in the future. When negative relationships between supervisors and case managers took place, the top-level managers usually kept the supervisors but let the case managers go. Consequently, they had to hire other people to do the job and spent so much money. As a result, employee turnover took place and negatively affected the productivity of the organization. The top-level managers had been firing so many case managers to solve the matter, but the same type of problems had still occurred.

I got a job with Health Center, a marvelous agency with great goals, because the top-level managers thought that I could bring tremendous positivity to the productivity of the organization. The main goal of Health Center was to optimize productivity. I worked for that place from 2014 to 2015. The organization assisted many individuals who were infected by AIDS/HIV. The people who worked for the organization were very committed or determined. They saved many people's lives. They did offer a lot to the community. However, some of the supervisors were so selfish. They were not good leaders. As a result, the productivity of the organization suffered so much.

Health Center had a diversity of clientele who spoke various languages. As a multilingual hire after college, speaking English, French, and Creole, I was able to assist a variety of clients, which led to increased productivity.
I got an interviewed with that company after I graduated from college.

Mary Dubois, the Director of Client Services, told me that she merely offered me the position because I was a Creole speaker. Mike Anderson, the Human Resources Manager, said that to me also. They said that they had so many clients who spoke Creole, so my ability to speak and write Creole fluently would bring a big advantage to the organization.

The company had multiple offices in several cities. They offered me the case management position at the Belle Glade office. I left Boca Raton. I got moving back home in Belle Glade, FL, a great, small, city with tall sugar cane. Most people, the farmers, worked in sugar cane.

By the time that I stepped at the office, my supervisor looked at me with strict eyes that brought bewilderment to my life. My supervisor's name was Marta Rodriguez, a mother, married, forty-one who had been with the company for more than ten years. I was so happy to have my first professional job. However, with that job, my days would be complicatedly terrible and miserable because I could not have a good relationship with my supervisor.

I was so happy to have Marta as my supervisor. I was also content to have new people around me, my coworkers, my clients. They were also so happy to be around me, excerpt my supervisor.

During my first week of work, my supervisor started training me. She made so many bad comments. She badly evaluated me.
"Is that your first professional job?" she asked.
"Yes," I responded.

I remembered that when Mike Anderson offered me the job, he told me that we would be in a six months probationary period. That meant that the company could let me go at any time for no reason at all. Of course, my supervisor knew that! And she knew what she could do to make me look bad so that they could let me go to secure her job. She knew what she could do so that I did not have the chance to become a permanent employee with an MBA in the company.

She wasn't educated, but she knew what she was doing. She knew her job! She was smart. She had been a Case Manager for seven years before she became the Site supervisor of the Belle Glade office. She used to work free when she first started working for the company. Without a high school diploma, her intelligence, her industriousness, and her experience helped her to become the Site Supervisor, and there was still possibility for her to keep moving. Her beauty would attract everyone in the office, even the clients. She spoke English fluently.

I was a black Haitian man who had thick accent. I was still in the process of improving my English skills. I was not a good-looking guy. I did not have any prior work experience. I was not knowledgeable about the real world. However, I was a twenty-two-years-old guy who was working in his MBA, who planned to pursue a doctorate degree afterwards. So she felt insecure with all her good qualities or qualifications! She felt insecure because she knew in the U.S educational qualifications mattered a lot in the job market. She had been in the market for a long time. She knew what might happen! She knew what a young intelligent man with an MBA could do to her who did not have at least a high school diploma.

I remember one day she said to me, "We do not have a key for you. So if you do get in late, it is still not my fault. It is your fault. We do not lie around here. I think you lie on me before."

I was just a quiet guy with great personality. I did not like to talk around people. I did not like to argue. But I did have the belief that my silent mood was the best thing to apply and that it would bring the best results as usual, but this time, it destroyed me. I did believe that she would feel sympathy. She would not look at me anymore with strict eyes. She would not feel uncomfortable around me anymore. But I did think that her smiles were of good. They bewildered me. It was smile of hypocrisy, jealousy, or selfishness. It was a way for her to express her bad personality. It was an intelligent way.

I was doing my best at that time. It was a pleasure for me to satisfy the clients' need. She always said that I did not do well. She badmouthed me. I always thought that she was trying to make me do better. I thought she did that as a way to stimulate me, but it was a way to destroy me, to devalue me, or to make me look bad. I remember that I used to say sorry to her multiple times in a nice way when she got mad at the office. She used to get mad for nothing.

She did not like the way that I worked. She did not like the way that I talked. She did not like anything that I did. She did not like my ability to apply my industriousness in a quick way to satisfy the clients' needs. She did not like my special ability, something that she did not have, to communicate with the Creole speakers. She did not like the way that I interacted with the clients. She did not like the idea that I was multilingual and that I could help any type of clients in the organization. She did not like the idea that she had a young educated black Haitian man who worked around her. She did not like all the good things about me.

I remembered one day that Mary Dubois called me in office over the phone from the West Palm Beach office. The phone was on speaker. She kept asking me questions as she asked Marta questions so that she could find out what was going wrong at the Belle Glade office.
"Jean," she said. "You do not want the job."
"I do want the job," I said. "Why?"

Mary told me that she received a lot of negative complaints from Marta about me. She received more than ten complaints every day. I told Mary that I did my work on time and did everything that Marta wanted me to do. When Mary questioned Marta, Marta felt uncomfortable to talk and attempted to change the subject.

Mary profited this occasion to talk about how the productivity of the company was negatively affected due to employee turnover. She said that she would talk to the president of the organization about such. She would also try to see if they could come up with some reasonable ways to solve the problem.

After that phone call, Marta did not feel embarrassed to tell me that I should not start as a case manager in the organization. I should work free first as she did before I became a case manager. She did not like the idea that I started as a Case Manager.

I called Mary. I explained to her that my supervisor told me that she did not like the idea that I started as a case manager in the agency. I told her that I felt insecure and helpless. She told me that she would do her best to solve the problem.

After a couple of weeks, Marta was not present in the office. There was a meeting about how to have good relationship with employees, how to help the productivity of the company, and how to know every employee represented a big part of the organization.

I could not participate in that meeting because I was in a probationary period. I did not have certain rights yet within the agency. I was not a permanent employee. But I heard that they thought about firing some people, especially some supervisors. They wanted to have stable employees.

Things never changed. She made things difficult for me. They kept calling me in office every day for meeting. They gave me a final warning. She still did not like me, so I resigned after two months but with vision to have my own business. My coworkers felt bad because they did like me.

Months after I terminated my working relationship with the company, Mama, the secretary of the Belle Glade office, saw me at Wal-Mart. I got into a conversation with her. She told me that they fired a couple of supervisors at the organization because they represented big problem. The company had hard time having stable employees due to those supervisors. Most of them wanted to secure their jobs. If they felt that someone seemed to be a threat to their jobs, they would do their best to get weird of that person. They usually gave most new employees hard time. Therefore, the company had hard optimizing productivity. To avoid that problem, the top-level managers fired a couple of supervisors and provided educational services to many.

Case Study Questions
Question 1. What could Mary do in that situation?
Question 2. What could I do to solve the problem?
Question 3. What could I do to have a good relationship with my supervisor?
Question 4. What do the company should do to have stable productivity and employees?
Question 5: How do you think the supervisor harmed the company?

Roldens Paulynice has published many short stories and essays, especially about relationship or love, literature review, education, and politics. Think Before You Act and What Causes Many College Students to Fail or Drop out are two of his works that he likes the most. He has experience working as a Medical Case Manager. He is currently doctorate student in education leadership at NOVA Southeastern University.