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Group Case Study Project: Part 1 (15%) Assessing the Case…
Group Case Study Project: Part 1 (15%)
Assessing the Case Individually
Purpose
This project provides you with the opportunity to apply what you have learned about organizational behaviour to a practical case.
In this case, you will consider an organization that is experiencing a significant challenge. In this part of the case study project, you will examine the case individually and consider the topics of Units 1-5: personality, perception, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, bias, motivation and leadership.
Imagine that you are one of the external consultants hired to assist the organization and have been asked to help map out options for how the organization can improve going forward.
How to Proceed
Part 1
Read through the case.
1. Examine the case by listing key information. Include the facts that you feel are most relevant. Consider:
Who are the key players?
What are the most significant issues?
Where is there conflict?
How are people behaving?
What role is leadership playing?
2.Describe the key issues in the case and write the “problem statement.” It is often difficult to narrow down a situation to get to the “core” of the problem. In your opinion, what is the primary issue in this case? You will resolve this issue by developing solutions. Be specific. The more specific your problem statement is, the more relevant your solution will be.
3.Consider possible courses of action. Draw upon specific topics from the course and readings or other resources to consider possible solutions to the key issues in the case and make a short list of possible solutions. For each potential solution, consider the advantages and disadvantages, including their positive and negative consequences.
4. Analysis the case, including the key issues, your proposed course of action, and an explanation of why you selected this approach. Be sure to write in complete sentences and to avoid bullet lists.
Case Study
Winnipeg’s Get Fit 4 Life Sees Declining Revenue and Increasing Staff Turnover
About Get Fit 4 Life
A gym interior.
Get Fit 4 Life started as a stand-alone fitness facility in 1995 in the south end of Winnipeg. It was owned and operated by four friends, who met while studying physical education and recreation management at the University of Manitoba, and who were equal partners in the business. They applied their knowledge of fitness to build a regular client base and learned the business side of the operation through experience. Each was a director of the organization and in the early years of the business, they each acted as floor manager, working rotating shifts at the gym.
For the first few years, the business grew steadily. Revenue was generated by membership sales. Monthly and annual memberships were offered, with annual memberships priced to equal the cost of nine months of membership to encourage clients to buy an entire year’s membership. Located in what was once a warehouse space, the business sat at the end of a strip mall with lots of available surface parking. Get Fit 4 Life offered a wide selection of fitness equipment, including free weights, cardio equipment facing television monitors hung from the ceiling, and a large, well-lit padded floor space for group fitness classes. The business model included having each director work shifts as on-site manager, hiring full and part time staff as fitness attendants who were responsible for welcoming members, managing attendance records for each shift, and keeping workout spaces tidy, and then hiring fitness instructors on short term contracts to offer specialized group classes. Building maintenance and repairs were covered in their space rental agreement, and they contracted daily overnight cleaning to a private company.
Over the years they made small renovations to their space, including adding a family change room and a sauna, and installing a length of retractable wall to divide the large floor space into a private space for smaller group fitness classes. Staffing remained relatively stable over the years, with regular, full-time employees working as attendants during the weekdays and part-time staff, typically students or adults looking for a second job, covering the evening and weekend shifts. Having graduated from a physical education and recreation management program themselves, they typically hired students from that program to work at the gym. Turnover was steady at about 10% per year for full time staff and just over 30% per year for part time staff, primarily due to students who would quit their part time job once they graduated. The business continued to earn its revenue from membership sales, with monthly or annual membership passes available. A membership included access to all fitness facilities and any group fitness classes on a first-come, first-served basis.
By 2005, the business was doing extremely well offering new classes, such as yoga and cycle fitness, to meet the current trends relating to health and wellness. Membership sales were supplemented with vending machines selling sports drinks, packaged protein bars, and other snacks. At the 2005 annual strategic planning meeting, the four owners decided that they were well enough established in their business to expand and, over the next three years, opened three new Get Fit 4 Life locations.
By 2008, Get Fit 4 Life had four locations and a presence in each quadrant of Winnipeg. The Directors removed themselves from the day-to-day operations and hired a floor manager for each location to oversee operations and manage the human resources at their location. The Directors focussed on finance, planning, and marketing for all locations. Each were still equal owners and partners in the business. The new locations followed the same operating and staffing model as the original: spaces for free weights and fitness equipment, large changing rooms and shower facilities, including a family room, with full-time staff as fitness attendants during the weekdays and part-time staff on weekends.
By 2015, anticipated revenue across the organization was not meeting expectations and new membership sales at the three new locations were not keeping pace with the original location upon which their business plan was made. There were also increasing customer and employee complaints, which caused concern for the owners. Staff turnover was high, with 35% full-time staff leaving in the 2014 fiscal year and over 80% turnover in part-time staff.
The Directors met for their 2016 annual strategic planning meeting and reviewed their lower than expected revenues and increased staff turnover, and began sharing stories of staff and customer complaints. They recognized that the expansion had shifted their own focus away from the day-to-day management of the company and worried that they no longer understood the staff and client needs. At the end of the planning meeting, it was agreed that they would hire a consulting firm to help them design a way forward and that each director would spend the next month completing an assessment of a single business location.
During the assessment, the Directors talked to the floor manager, interviewed staff, spoke with customers, inspected facilities, and observed classes. They are holding a round table meeting to share what they have learned and compile the results of the meeting into a report to provide to the consultants.
The goal of the round table meeting is to share the current challenges facing the floor managers, employees, customers, and the organization and then seek the advice of the consultants to address the challenges, so that the company can move forward and improve on staffing and revenue performance.
ORG CHART
Directors
Donald Baker (examined the original south location)
Allen Macdonald (examined the northern location)
Eric Thompson (examined the western location)
Andrew Harden (examined the eastern location)
Staffing (per location)
Floor Manager
Fitness Attendants
6 full-time working 40 hours per week, Monday to Friday (2 per shift)
24-30 working part time (4 per shift)
Contract group fitness instructors as needed
Annual Memberships 2005 2010 2015
Original Location – South Region 1,800 2,200 2,600
New location – West Region 1800 2200
New location – North Region 1400 1500
New location – East Region 1800 2100
The Round Table Meeting
The following is a summary of what the senior leadership team heard at the round table.
Image of a male gym manager.
Donald spoke first saying, “the community is changing and we haven’t kept pace. Things were working so well in this location that we didn’t pay attention to what was changing. We have had many members start families or new families moving into the area, and they ask why we don’t offer childcare or new daytime group fitness that would include classes like “Mommy & Me.” My staff say that they are feeling frustrated, because some members are bringing young children to the facility when taking evening classes, and then those kids are left unsupervised to sit in the lounge area, or they hang out in the locker rooms. We have had a significant increase in damage to our vending machines, and the floor manager thinks that there is a connection.
There have also been some serious complaints made against staff at this centre. When I spoke to the manager, he showed me a list of members who have reported that the staff are not being respectful. There are language barriers, so staff are struggling to explain some of the courtesy rules, like how long a member can stay using a machine when others are waiting to have a turn using it. When I talk to the staff, they are frustrated and angry at the complaints, because they feel that they are explaining the rules and that the members are ignoring them. So, the staff feel that they are not being respected. Its causing problems amongst the staff as a whole at this location, as some of them feel that they can’t do anything to improve the situation and that there is no point in trying to communicate with members who they feel are just choosing to not understand. So, the team itself is not moving forward together and there is a general sense of ‘why keep trying if nothing is going to change.’ Others worry that if they don’t try harder, they will not be offering good customer service and that hurts business and might affect their jobs.
When I raised some of these concerns with the manager, his frustration was obvious as well. He says that he has tried talking to his team, but when he mentions this issue at staff meetings, it comes across as criticism that the employees aren’t working hard enough or trying hard enough. The full time staff are able to connect regularly, because of their schedules, so the Manager is trying to have more meetings and conversations with them. During our conversation, he asked me about training, and I didn’t know what to say. We haven’t talked about training, beyond ensuring that everyone who is offering classes has their certification to do so. Our fitness attendants are providing customer service and administration support and that training is all on-the-job from more experienced staff. The manager asked how we, as a company, wanted to teach people to work well together, to connect with our members, and how to be excited about the job that they are doing. All I could say in reply to that is this concern is why we are going through this process now, so that we can figure out what to do next.
I asked the manager how he communicates with his staff, and he said that he explains what he wants them to do and has tried asking them what they think needs to be done differently at this location. A couple of people on his team have shared their thoughts, some pretty angrily, with ideas for what the company should be doing differently. A couple of others haven’t said anything, but he thinks they might have some good ideas; he just doesn’t know how to get them to share their ideas with him. Frankly, he says that he feels stuck. He has a pretty stable team of full time staff, and he used to feel that they were all on the same page and could talk to each other. Now, he says that he is concerned that he sees people just focus on their own job and not offer to help anyone else, even if they see that another staff is struggling and that really concerns him, and it really concerns me.
One other thing that surprised me, and I don’t know why we haven’t noticed it before, is an employee at this centre accused us, as owners, of being biased, saying that as four men who started this company, we have only hired men to be floor managers. I know that we take our selection and hiring process seriously and look for skilled managers with lots of experience. I honestly don’t remember having a lot of women apply for the floor manager positions when we opened the new locations, but I said that I would make a note of that concern and bring it to this meeting and now I have.”
Image of a man smiling and standing in an office space.
Allen followed saying, “I appreciate Donald going first, as our original location was the foundation for the decisions we made around expansion. The location I examined is in a community with a long history of diversity, and we hired a long time resident of that community to be our floor manager, and the staff all reside in the area as well. Maybe they are more used to thinking about inclusion and having members that come from very different backgrounds and cultural experiences. When I visited the location, I asked about the poster on the front door, which looked really cool, and I was told it says, “Hello and thanks for visiting” in 12 different languages. People seem to think that community has more crime and that if we don’t have staff watching the door and front desk, people are going to just wander in and take stuff out of our client lockers. I found that the members seemed to be familiar with each other and so watched over each other’s things. The membership here is not really growing, and we might need to make some physical changes to this location to draw more members.
The floor manager has the staff working really well together, and they seem to believe in the work that they are doing. He holds a staff meeting every month, where they all chip in for pizza at the end of the day on the last Monday of the month. The day staff stay a bit later for the meeting, and the part-time staff either come in a bit early, or if they are not scheduled to work, will still drop by for the hour. They all spoke really highly of the work atmosphere and how well everyone works together. They are a bit concerned about jobs, with me coming by to ask how things are going. Revenues at this location are a bit lower. The floor manager and several of the staff told me that since our monthly memberships are priced on the higher end to drive people to buy the annual membership, an annual membership may be out of reach for folks in this community, and the monthly membership is just too costly to maintain over a longer term. Our vending machine sales in this location are almost nil, and there is a convenience store nearby selling sports drinks and other snacks at half the price of the vending machines.”
Image of a cheerful business man.
Eric spoke next and shared, “the manager and staff of our western location were really uncomfortable talking with me. They didn’t want to meet with me as a group at first and then were hesitant in our one-on-one meetings to say anything about management or human resources. The western location covers a big area of the city, and the manager seemed happy that they were seeing growth in membership at all. There have only been a few customer complaints at this location, but it also offers the least amount of group classes, so there may be fewer complaints just based on the scale of the business. The floor manager says that he runs a really tight ship, with a monthly team meeting for the full-time staff. He is proud that there is a standing agenda to review and feels that everyone knows what is going on. He mentioned providing updates on equipment in need of or being repaired, any safety concerns or reports of violations, and making announcements from our head office, and then he said that there is a round table from the team. The team tells a different story about those meetings and says that they are too one sided, that it is all about listening and not being listened to. The meeting time is before the gym opens, so that they don’t impact clients, but even though staff are paid one hour of overtime pay to attend, the change in schedule for the day impacts getting their kids to school or daycare, and to be frank, many told me that the inconvenience of shifting schedules wasn’t worth the money. They have asked to hold the meeting over a lunch hour instead and to make it a “working lunch” or take the overtime then, but that the Manager says things are working, so why change it.
One of the biggest surprises was how the part-time staff are engaged, or that they really aren’t. Part-time employees don’t meet as a group or have regular meetings with the floor manager. There is an announcement board in the staff room and that is the only communication they receive. If they need to change schedules for personal reasons, such as exams at school or family commitments, they have been told to work it out with another staff member to switch their shifts, and then they still need approval from the manager before the swap is official and allowed.
The customers at this location seem to be pretty happy. This part of the city has a stable population, and the hours of the gym and the fitness classes and schedules seem to be working in that location.”
Image man in a grey business suit smiling.
Andrew was the last to speak and said, “the location I examined is the eastern one, and it serves a population of about the same size as the original south location Donald spoke about earlier. Other than that one characteristic though, everything else seems different. To build upon what a few of you have said, our customers are getting more diverse. I heard frustration from both the full time and part time staff, and from members, that the equipment we are providing in this location isn’t what they are looking for and they are not interested in the group fitness classes. They know about the climbing wall we put in the south location and wonder why they can’t have one. Members actually accused me of dumping old treadmills and elliptical machines into that location, so that we could buy new ones for the south location. The staff are frustrated, and this location is unique, because they are on their third manager since we opened this location in 2007. The full-time staff say that they feel like they just keep training new floor managers and that the company isn’t moving forward, so they have no enthusiasm for the work.
When they try to make suggestions for new classes or events that might attract new members, the floor manager rejects the idea, saying that he has to get a handle on how things are done before he changes them. One attendant said that they had suggested a Friday night “speed workout” event that sounded really interesting. It would be like a speed dating event, without the dating, where single members would be invited to a group workout, where a member and a partner would each complete a short workout on a piece of equipment, and every 5 or 10 minutes people would change partners. Now, I don’t know if that would work, or if we would just be putting ourselves in a position where we had safety and respect or privacy complaints or concerns. My biggest concern is that the idea was just rejected without any conversation with the employee or with giving a group of staff the chance to toss the idea around and see if they could create something that would meet our safety and client service standards and still be a fun event, where members could attend and perhaps encourage others to attend and get us new members. When I asked the manager about how he draws in new ideas from his staff, he talked about the announcement board in the staff room and how open he is to communication. It actually didn’t make much sense, but I could tell that he was getting agitated the more we spoke about communication. I am glad that we are talking, and I know it’s difficult, but maybe the consultants we’ve invited to listen to us today can help us to figure out what we can do next.”
The Consultants Role
The Directors closed the meeting by telling the consultants that they would like help to achieve the following goals:
all employees feeling engaged in their work;
reducing staff turnover by 20% in the next fiscal year;
teams at each location working more effectively together;
reducing customer complaints by 50% in the next fiscal year;
improving communication amongst employees, floor managers, and the Directors that results in ideas and suggestions for improvements being shared; and
managers leading their team to be successful in achieving the customer service and revenue goals of the company.
They asked the consultants to first look at the employee experience and consider how the staff are understanding their work role and how they serve their clients within each community, how employees feel about their work, and what steps could be taken for improvements. The consultants will then examine how the various groups and teams, including the full-time, part-time staff, the floor managers, and the organization as a whole, communicate with each other and how the different groups are working together now. The Directors expect to receive recommendations on how they can change the way they operate the company, so that they see improvements in these areas going forward.
