Decision making processes and frameworks

Decision Making

As the owner of a small grocery store, it has come to my attention that current business has been slow, and therefore, requires me to let go two employees of my total staff of four. By cutting my staff by half, this means that I would take on extra hours, as would another employee that I feel can handle the work-load, and can be trusted in taking on the extra hours per week.

In order to decide on which employee I decide to keep on, I need to weigh the different factors that besides including the personality of the individual, involve past work history, reliability, customer service and their individual needs. Utilizing these criteria, I can come up with scenarios, and alternative scenarios to make a decision that I see as being the absolute certainty to my problem. By using certain decision making tools, such as Simulation and the Linear method, I can assess each of my employees and come up with the possible solution.

Each employee is currently paid the same per week, but will expect a pay rise with the increase of hours. In order to assess which person would be more suitable for the pay-rise I can do one of two things: I can ask them what they expect to receive, and base my decision on this factor alone, or I can assess the other factors (need, customer service and work history) and come up with what would be an acceptable pay rise and offer this to my personal candidate.

Without having assessed these other factors in making my decision, I face an ill-structured problem. I therefore need to analyze these elements in order to have all the information necessary to base my final decision. I can approach this in one of two ways.

Firstly, I can be up-front with my employees and establish that I will need to let two of them go. This gives them the opportunity of're-interviewing' for the position and creates a competitive atmosphere for the position. This could be advantageous as I will be able to see how each of them works under pressure, as well as how committed they are to the job. On the other hand, this could also cause friction at work, as well as sabotaging of fellow employees because of the competitive nature of competing for a job.

Alternatively, I can not tell my employees until I have assessed them within the work-place and researched their current needs, future needs and overall customer service. Of my three employees, one is a current university student, one works part-time while her children are at school, and the other is a retired gentleman. Looking at their current situation, it is easy to assess that two of my employees would not be able to work extended hours because of current commitments in their life.

The university student, while needs the money for expenses is often unable to work certain hours of the day because of classes or study-time. It has also come to my attention lately that her social life is interfering with her overall customer service, i.e.: she is short-tempered with customers because she has a hangover. While this isn't always the case, I realize that she would not be a suitable long-term employee because of her current long-term goals.

The same can be said for the part-timer who has two children. She is unable to offer a long-term commitment to work full-time because of her family, and also would not consider working full-time for this reason, as well as the fact she is only working to keep herself busy in the morning. She has a wonderful temperament and gets along well with customers and staff, but again, her current situation dictates how many hours she is able to work in a week.

This leaves me with the retired gentleman, who seems the more likely of candidates. He is well-mannered with customers, remembers many repeat customers by name, and above all, has no outside commitments that dictate how many hours in a week he is able to commit to. Initially, he took the position to supplement his social security, and with current economic trends, would find it harder to find work elsewhere were I to let him go.