The Muthu Industries Ltd,

Case study 10

The Muthu Industries Ltd, a highly reputed engineering organization, has shown remarkable growth in industrial electronic goods sector. The GM. Mr Ravi , in a recent review meeting observed certain disturbing factors in their branch office Chennai. The office has observed certain disturbing factors in their terms of sales and the employee turnover at junior level is extraordinary high. He decided to visit the branch and his visit led to discovery of some alarming facts.

First of all, despite being local and enthusiastic youngsters, the employees showed high absenteeism and left within a few months. Majority of them were dissatisfied with the branch head, Mr Aswin, a forty year old, middle level manager working with the company since a decade. Employees felt humiliated and also were reluctant to participate in any discussions initiated by Mr Ravi to know the causes of problems. Mr Aswin, a traditional manager, had been in this industry for last 15 years and saw no harm in his style. On the contrary, he felt that employers are over-reacting to his style of getting work done.

Mr Aswin in an informal discussion with Ravi gave him some details about the ways things were happening in his branch. The branch is responsible for sales in the entire region and looks after the functions such as services, dealers, accounting and collections. Presently we have around seven dealers and customers have grown to almost three hundred. “With the growing market, it’s my responsibility to keep a check on strands of service and I have developed a system for monitoring it. The schedule of every executive is fully planned by me on a weekly basis, depending on our weekly targets. The executives have to submit a daily report showing status of work done. I have been giving them exhaustive instructions on how
to achieve a particular task and try my level best to improve their customer handling skills. At the end of the week, the follow up plan is developed and I try to supervise the way executives deal with the customers for follow ups, etc. just to ensure standardization, all proposals are checked at my end to avoid any omission of facts. But these young executives are not ready for hard work nor do they want to learn from our experience.” He stressed that executives do not appreciate his working and selling style, simply because they themselves aren’t competent enough. The communication was the worst hit in this scenario and motivation level was very low.

Mr Ravi after hearing both sides decided to replace Mr Aswin by Ram, a manager with Coimbatore branch and asked him to take charge for six months initially. The employees at Chennai branch, though pleased, were still reluctant and went on their work in the usual manner. Mr Ram, who had varied experience of about 12 years in sales, marketing and team building started with a difficult work on his hand. He was expected to restore the business and expand in a short time and at the same time win the confidence of the employees and motivate them to establish the team spirit and healthy atmosphere at office.