BIMS Case Study

The Ballard Integrated Managed Services, Inc. (BIMS) employs a total of 452, of which 409 employees are deployed on a contract-based engagement for providing food and hospitality services to Douglas Medical Center (DMC). The performance of BIMS field personnel has eventually deteriorated and attributed to the sudden increase of operating cost at a rate of 74 percent, divergent to the usual 50-60 percent turnover in the previous months. The disturbing situation has called the attention of BIMS General Manager Barbara Tucker and tasked Human Resource Manager Debra Horner to conduct an initial finding.

In this paper, the case study of BIMS will be discussed to examine the overall situation of the workplace, such as the existing problem, underlying causes and development, resolution and procedure, interested parties and challenges to the management. Situational background and description Based on the case review, correlating the question why does the problem exist could be attributed by the “low-competencies from managerial to rank-and-file positions”.

The managers and supervisors of food catering, housekeeping and maintenance divisions are unaware or misinformed of the prevailing situation on the increase of operating cost at 74 percent from the standard industry cost between 50 to 60 percent. As found, the problem developed upon irregular performance of personnel, such as the higher occurrences of sick leave and dawdling at work that brought about complaints of DMC on sloppiness of BIMS personnel services.

Accordingly, an employee survey has been conducted by BIMS HR Manager to evaluate the underlying causes and development of problems, purposely to resolve the problem prior to initial inclination of replacing the personnel. About 78 respondents have participated on the initially conducted survey, representing 17. 3 percent of the overall targeted personnel. Illustrated below was the survey tool: Source: School of Advanced Studies, Pearson Custom Publishing (2004)

The challenge to finding the causes of problems and its resolution has been devised by the HRM through the above illustrated survey tool, primarily reconsidering the employees to convey their views, such as cited on (1) work condition, (2) shift scheduling, (3) skills training, (4) compensation, (5) communication and information, and (7) job security (School of Advanced Studies; in Pearson Publishing, 2004). Evidently, the management itself is the majority stakeholder to meeting the challenging situation of change in the performance of the workforce in order to resolve the issues.

Thus, the result of the survey is significant to meeting the challenges. Problem Statement It is known that there are major gaps affecting the work performance of BIMS personnel. The problem is primarily attributed by the issue of unfair compensation and secondarily attributed by weak communication between the employees and the management. This problem statement can be well presented based on the result of survey as illustrated below: Source: Author’s own (2009)

As indicated in the illustration above, “Question #6” obtained 19 respondents with negative responses and “0” respondents have ever positively responded, similar to “Question #9” that obtained 17 negative responses and retained “0” positive results. Therefore, the problem statement relating the “inferior performance” of the employees must be significantly addressed by the management with reference to the result of primary and secondary issues affecting the problem. Further findings have found the “range of points” from positive to negative responses of respondents.

It shows that the internal or organizational problem is well expressed on the point-to-point responses from “1 to 5 scoring”. On the other hand, the scoring between 2, 3 and 4 also indicates the relevance of negative responses away from being positive, manifesting that the problems are causal to the dispensation of management, in which is exhibited by the illustration below: Source: Author’s own (2009) The point-to-point scoring from 1 to 5 exhibits the range of responses between 95 (negative) and 163 (positive).

It is noticeable that the scoring between positive and negative has a very significant gap or distant difference. As indicated by the “Median Points between 2, 3 and 4”, the range of points can be noticed to be far different to obtaining positive responses, wherein illustration above has indicated the gaps of scoring at 232, 148 and 113. In sum, the positive responses representing a total of 95 are far distant even from the scoring at median points, of which capsulate the finding of significant problem.