GrandOtter3248
From his own station, Lukman spots Badri working with one junior…
From his own station, Lukman spots Badri working with one junior sales associate trying to complete a sales transaction on the new system, PRECISE. Lukman watches as Badri fumbles his way , again, through another transaction. He could feel his own annoyance rising and couldn’t stop himself from shaking his head in frustration.
Lukman is the manager of Home Station, a multi chain home improvement store headquartered in Petaling Jaya, Selangor. At 30 years old, Lukman is one of the younger branch managers in Home Station and is in charge of 20 full time and 8 part-time sales and service associates. Lukman has been with Home Station since joining as their management intern eight years ago after graduating from university. Badri is 20 years older than Lukman and has 15 years’ experience in sales and retail. He only has basic paper qualification but throughout his 15 years with Home Station, he has proven his capability and has risen through rank and file to be the First Supervisor of the Outdoor Department where he is now working.
About six months ago, Home Station introduced a fully automated sales and service system to help boost sales and to keep up with changes in the industry. The mostly manual way of taking orders, updating stocks, delivering purchases and processing payments among others has now been migrated into a fully automated processing system that is faster, more efficient, and secure. Under the new integrated system, all retail functions would be merged into one system while linking all the stores across the country. This would give the headquarters better control of the transactions and speedier response to customers demands and market trends.
As a result of this, virtually every job in the company was changed in some way especially for the sales associates, supervisors and branch managers. All the changes have resulted in major learning stress on the employees as they had to basically unlearn their old ways of doing work and relearn the new system in record time. To prepare for the conversion, employees were given five days of intensive and comprehensive training program to learn how to access, operate, transact, and correct errors through the system, all while doing their daily work. Managers and supervisors were among the first batch of employees that were trained so they could later help coach their subordinates once the PRECISE system kicks off.
Lukman and Badri attended one of the early programs together. Lukman was impressed by how comprehensive the training was. The trainers went through every conceivable transaction and procedure, explaining and demonstrating the steps carefully and repeatedly. Each participant was also given the chance to practice on the demo terminal. Manuals and hand-outs were also given to the participants even though most of it seems very technical and quite confusing at place. Lukman remembered how Badri attended and participated in each session with enthusiasm. Granted, Badri has very little exposure to computers and systems especially during the early years of his career with Home Station, but he tried to hide his anxiety and sportingly tried his hand on all transactions and tasks given by the trainers.
It has now been more than a month since the new system is officially launched and all the sales associates in the store have completed their training on and off the job and are fairly efficient in using the new system, minus the occasional glitch and error. All except Badri.
That is what is so troubling to Lukman. In spite of the training that they went through together, and the periodic updates given by trainers and managers, Badri has not shown satisfactory progress in using and
mastering the system. In fact, all the junior associates are doing better than Badri despite some being new on the job. Lukman recalled when Badri asked him how to complete a simple transaction on three different occasions, despite being shown how to do the same exact transaction just a few days before. Sometimes, Badri would even asks a customer to go to another sale station just because he could not figure out how to process the customer’s request. When one of his junior associates tried to help him, Badri brushed him away saying that he knows better and has been on the job longer than anyone in the department.
Lukman wonders how much longer he should wait before taking action. Already he has received some complaints from the other sales associates and a couple of customers about Badri’s work. He is puzzled why a good employee and competent salesperson like Badri finds it so hard to cope with the system. He has tried to approach Badri about his performance, but Badri insisted that he is doing fine and is only having some adjustment problem like everyone else in the company.
Questions:
1. Is the problem faced by Badri a training issue or a learning issue? Explain your answer by giving ONE (1) point to justify. (4 Marks)
2. What should have been done by the management of Home Station prior to the training that could help prevent the issue with Badri? Explain your answer with TWO (2) points. (10 Marks)
3. What kind of support that Lukman as a manager can provide to Badri to ensure successful transfer of learning and achievement of training objectives. Explain with TWO (2) points. (6 Marks)
(TOTAL: 20 MARKS)
