Case: Where Do You Find the Bodies??
Milt Konrath has just received an assignment of questionable excitement. Milt is a management trainee for a large retail store chain. After graduation from college his first assignment was as assistant manager in the Automobile Service Center in Boomtown, Colorado.
Boomtown sits in the middle of a huge, newly developed coal field and a great deal of oil and gas exploration is going on as well. Boomtown has grown from 30,000 to 60,000 in three years and the unemployment rate in town is less than 3%. Those not working simply would rather not.
The Auto Service Center is normally staffed with three mechanics, two “grease monkeys” who do less skilled work, and three tire changer/clean-up persons. The wages paid these people are dictated from corporate headquarters in an effort to maintain common rates between stores.
Unfortunately the wages offered (although very competitive elsewhere) are well below what people can make in either the coal mines or with the exploration companies. The last mechanic (who made $20,000 a year) quit, Wednesday to go to work repairing diesel earth-moving equipment at $38,000 a year plus overtime. The store had also been unable to replace the grease monkeys and clean-up persons. The last one quit a $5.80/hour job two weeks ago to work in the mines at $14.52/hour.
Milt’s boss, the Automotive Manager, has just given him the assignment of recruiting and filling the vacant positions. The service department has almost ground to a halt without employees and the manager would like the problem fixed quickly.
1) How does this case illustrate the lack of HR planning?
2) What approaches could be used to recruit mechanics?
