Time Management and Department Integration Are Two

Time management and department integration are two of the things crucial in a company and which determine the final outcome of any action or project one may embark upon. As is the case here, Carl Robins found himself in a difficult situation because he was no able to properly schedule the activities that needed to be performed in his department so that the project could go on at the planned date and time.

Carl Robins, working as a campus recruiter for ABC Inc. successfully managed to hire 15 new employees, trainees which would have been working for Monica Carrolls, the Operations Supervisor. In order to properly integrate them into the working mechanism, these new hires needed to be trained and they needed to have all their hire paperwork ready so that they could start working by July, as it had been discussed with Monica Carrolls.

This meant that Carl needed to properly coordinate all the tasks he needed to perform in order to make the hires operational and the most important actions referred to training sessions and all paper work completed by the 15th of June, when a new hire orientation was to take place.

The problems began to appear after Memorial Day, when Carl discovered that none of the hires had taken the drug test and that many of the new trainees had no application completed. This meant that the finalization of paperwork may have been compromised and that June 15th became a fantasy date.

In other conditions, the training seemed compromised as well: there were only three orientation manuals and these had pages missing. On the other hand, the training room had been booked for the entire month of June by his colleague from technology services, who had the room for other training sessions. In this situation, Carl needed to come up with swift solutions.

In my opinion, the first stringent problem he needs to deal with is the training room problem. As we have seen previously, this has been booked for the entire month of June, time during which Carl planned to get the new hires ready to start working in July. At this point, there are two alternative solutions that Carl can pursue.

The first one would include postponing the training session for the beginning of July and perhaps shortening it for a two weeks period, so that the trainees could be ready to start work by mid-July. Of course, this has several disadvantages. First of all, the deal with Monica had been that they would be ready by the beginning of July. Second of all, shortening their training period may mean that they will not be fully able to perform tasks within the company.

The second alternative solution to be considered: working out a common schedule with Joe, so that the two teams can actually share the training room throughout June. For example, Carl can use the room later in the afternoon and during lunch hours, because it is less likely that Joe intends to have training seminars in the room for the entire month of June, for 8 hours a day, every day of the week. Joe can show that he is a team player, understands that his colleague has made a mistake and helps out with the situation.

On the other hand, a note is to be made here. The problem with the training room is only a manifestation of the actual problem here, strictly related to Carl and Carl's behavior. By his actions, he has shown that he has no actual ties with the company and that he doesn't really know what is going on there. On a larger level, he is totally unorganized: the training room could have and should have been reserved by him before even hiring the new trainees.

A second problem Carl needs to deal with is the fact that some of the new trainees did not have applications completed or their transcripts on file, and none of them had been sent to the clinic for the mandatory drug screen. Again, this is only a manifestation of the problem Carl is dealing with here and that problem is time management.

Indeed, Carl knew how much paper work needed to be done. He could have probably well estimate how much each of the paper work activities would take him, so as to avoid a time crisis. Additionally, Monica contacted him on the 15th of May and again reminded him of all that was to be done. He has been receiving consistent signals, but refuses to acknowledge that paper work needs to be done and it takes plenty of time and nerves: everything is left for after the holiday.

Further more, in the same problem, there is a work management problem with Carl. He never seems to know exactly what needs to be done, in what order, when it needs to be ready, etc. In this particular case, a scorecard where he could check the activities as soon as he performed them would have been perfect.

There are not many solutions in this case, as the main problems are the casual problems that have led to this situation in the first place: bad time and work management, no coordination with the other member of the company etc. However, for the operational problems we have discussed in the previous paragraphs, we may recommend two solutions.

The first would refer to discussing the schedule with Monica, explaining her the problems that have appeared and ask her for a postponement on the deadlines. This solution has its obvious disadvantages: Carl has assured Monica everything would be ready by the set time. Trying to talk her out of something that had been discussed and agreed upon would only mean losing Monica's trust.