Dear [your name], I am writing to you as the Human Resources Manager of Chumhum Australia. Six months ago we built a new office in Sydney and recruited 200 staff. The workplace culture initiatives we...

Dear [your name],


I am writing to you as the Human Resources Manager of Chumhum Australia. Six months


ago we built a new office in Sydney and recruited 200 staff. The workplace culture initiatives we


established at the new office are consistent with our global operations and include innovative


features such as free organic breakfast, lunch, and dinner, free haircuts, gyms and swimming


pools, and nap pods.


Although our workplace culture initiatives are world renowned, we have noticed that some


of our new staff are not responding well to our initiatives. One incident happened earlier this year


when we encouraged staff to use Yammer, our corporate social network, to
socialise
with


colleagues outside work but very few of our employees created an account. We sent out an email


on Saturday 8th February urging all staff to create an account and post a status update, but the


first employee to do so wrote, “I can’t believe we’re expected to do this on the weekends — this


is rubbish!”


At the same time, we have become inundated with staff complaints about our analytical


activities. We hired a team of
behavioural
scientists in March to determine the optimal lunch line


waiting time in our cafeteria, but when staff confronted the analytics team and discovered what


they were doing, we received seven formal letters of
complaint
objecting to being measured in


order to enhance their productivity.


It is also common practice that we ask our managers to deliver warm greetings to their

team
in order to boost productivity. One of our managers who had left to take up a position at


Facebook leaked her training manual online, revealing that we provided a script for her to use to


greet her team members. Employees were outraged when they discovered that the standard


21724


Dr Helena Liu 2


greeting was scripted and we received the highest number of resignations in any Chumhum office


in one day.


Although we have no shortage of applicants at Chumhum Australia, we are concerned that


we are losing so many of our top engineers and programmers to our competitors. Please help us


diagnose the problems
on
our Sydney office and recommend some solutions for change.


Your Tasks


1. Diagnose the problems at Chumhum drawing on relevant theories of strategic HRM.


2. Recommend one or two practical solutions for Chumhum, supported by theory, to help them


retain their employees through a more appropriate organisational culture programme