Human resources are sources of competitive advantage for an organization. While higher productivity and efficiency of employees contribute to achieving organizational goals, overloading the employees with additional work without compensation leads to employee dissatisfaction. Heavy workload also adversely impacts the productivity of employees. This proposal analyzes this specific issue of forcing employees to work long hours without leave. This proposal also evaluates the possible consequences, and recommends solutions to this problem. 

Background

Phoenix Advertising is providing services to a wide range of industries. Lately, focus has shifted to increasing profitability. In an attempt to show increase in profitability, branch is accepting any offer that can contribute to profit. This approach has created a problem as branch is accepting orders without considering workload on employees. Presently there is one manager, one administrative offer, and 10 employees handling advertising jobs. In past few months, employees are working 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week to meet targets. Specially advertising staffs are overworked. They do not get leave, and they have to work long hours every day. Phoenix Advertising is not paying any extra compensation to employees for putting extra hours. This situation was supposed to last for few weeks only, but it is dragging for past 6 months. Advertising staffs usually work 8 hours a day and 5 days a week. Hence, they work on average 40 hours a week. In changed scenario, staffs work 72 hrs and above per week. Employees are not unhappy about this situation. They do not get compensated for doing extra job. Their personal health and family life is also suffering. It is observed that average productivity of employees has come down significantly in past 6 months. 

Major causes of this problem are:

1. No clear cut guideline about which projects to undertake. Presently branch is accepting any project which has potential to generate profit.

2. No clear communication from management to employee about how firm is going to handle extra work. Employees want to know if management is taking steps to handle this issue. The ad-hoc arrangement of overloading employees with extra work cannot work in long run.

To solve these problems. Following key stages will be developed:

1. Analysis  of project. This analysis will include rate of increase in projects, total number of hours required to compete the projects, profit earned per project, and profit per hour.

2. Analysis of working of staffs. This analysis will unveil processes which can be improved.

3.  Analysis of communication between management and staffs.

4. Exploring possibilities of use of technology to improve productivity

5. Training need analysis

Proposal

The above mentioned problem can be solved using following steps: