Poor Workplace Effects

Summary

According to the case, Canadian National Railway Company (CN), Canada’s largest railway in terms of both revenue and physical size of its rail work, was requiring a large turnover to become a success. Mid - 1998 E. Hunter Harrison, the executive president and chief operating officer, wanted to change the culture of CN. After being promoted to his current position after Illinois Central Railroad Company (Illinois Central)- the company he was working for- was acquired by CN the same year, Harrison’s first task was to make changes on CN’s operations across the country. The first poor workplace practice he was to stop dealt with the premise of ‘early quits.’ This policy allowed employees to leave work up to 4 hours early on an 8-hour shift. This of course led to low productivity in all regards. Another policy he needed to change was due to the fact that  employees were tending to start work late and it would lead to low productivity throughout the day due to the substantial loss of working hours. As a result of fixing these issues, the number of employees greatly decreased but the organization  achieved one of the most significant turnarounds in railway history.

Symptoms

One of the symptoms for “early quits” would be the presence of loss of productivity within the organization. With productivity levels decreasing, and employees lacking the ability to get their task done properly in the late afternoon, could lead to negative impact to the organization. The second symptom of “early quits” could lead to poor workplace habit, which might result in an unprofessional working environment. The outcome of the major problem in CN was supervisor had granted “early quits” to employees, believing that the incentive of having half of a typical workday off would motivate employees to perform better at their jobs” ( Mark,2014).  He believed that having “early quits” activate would have the potential for increasing self-esteem, and thus the likelihood that the employees will want to stay at the organization that recognizes their needs. However, the underlying problem of CN would be the culture of the company is what causing all those problems, labor problems of the transportation industry have been given a great deal of publicity throughout the past due to the pressure and difficulty of the workplace.

Major Problem

        As stated in the article, the major problem that the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) is dealing with is a reduction in productivity. Certain policies such as the ‘early quits’ and “the practice of easing into the work day” (Mark, pg 1) which are holding back the company from attaining their full productivity potential. If this problem is not solved and the productivity of the Railway Company stays at its current reduced rate, the company would lose valuable work hours and money.