Pak Sweets, Managing a Diverse Workforce

Case Study: Pak Sweets, Managing A Diverse Workforce

Bowen Li

Background and Introduction:

Shiekh Farrukh Niaz started Pat Sweets in 1984, which originally produced popcorn with multiple flavors. After 30 years of development, Pat Sweets has become quite successful in the local area, and developed from a small room with two machines and few employees to a company with fully functional factory with much more workers with capacity to produce more snacks, such as candies, packed dried fruits, lollipops, etc. The revenue has increased from Rs 200,000 to Rs 2,500,000. Pat Sweets hired workers with diverse background to meet its needs. 39 percent of the workers are Punjabis, 28 percent are Pathans, 22 percent are Sindhis, and 11 percent are Baloch. These ethnicities have entirely different culture and code of conduct. To make workers comfortable and better serve the factory, Pat Sweets provides accommodation and medical care to them within the factory.

Main Issues:

The issues arise from the cultural differences among Pat Sweets’ workers.

• Workers tend to hang out with people with similar background. As time went by, the conflicts among groups became more severe.
• Workers would hinder other group’s work on purpose only to make them being blamed by the managers for delaying the production process.
• When one worker made mistakes, and caused serious consequence to the company, his compatriots would conceal the truth to keep the criminal from being punished.
• New employees were forced to choose a group they are willing to socialize with, otherwise they would be bullied and isolated.
• Since most of the workers live in the accommodation the company provides, they would start fighting after work, which sometimes led to a serious destruction to the factory and CEO was startled.
• Reward system started by the manager did not work well. Selection of the winners largely depended on the evaluation of the mangers, when managers came from various ethnicities as well and were accused of “preferring one group over another.” (case study, p.3)

Analysis and Causes:

There are three reasons in my mind why such issues happened in Pat Sweets

First, the conflicts among different ethnicities had been a major problem in Pakistan since long ago. According to Gulshan Majeed, the conflicts include those on religious ground, the basis of language, the basis of territoriality, and the basis of caste (Majeed). In this case, Punjab “was populated by people indigenous to the region”, Pathans “had a strong and conservative tribal system that defines their way of life”, Sindhis “had a strong association with their language”, and Baloch “wanted greater autonomy from Pakistan”, which “caused tension between the Baloch and Punjabis” (case study, p.2).