Management Alternatives

Management Alternatives

The management needs to make disciplinary policies for the employees as well as take care of the shift timings. So the objective of this alternative is to provide management oriented solutions to Bridgestone which will help them in reducing absenteeism by enforcing strict policy while keeping overall costs as it is.

1. Penalize employees if they are absent. Make a penalty system similar to driving penalty; scoring mechanism can be implemented, the more an employee is absent the more points from the employee’s work score would be deducted. Creating slabs on the basis of the number of days an employee is absent would be the best way to achieve this:

Slab 1: All the employees with above average absenteeism would fall under this slab; if an employee falls under this slab then his promotion/salary hike for the next one year would be waived off.

Slab 2: All the employees with severe absenteeism would fall under this slab; if an employee falls under this slab then suspend the employee before terminating him/her. After suspending the employee, schedule a one-one session and try to counsel them.  After the suspension period is over, put the employee on a probation period of 90 days with the following conditions:

1. Any irregularities in the attendance will straightway lead to termination
2. Completion of the probation period would be considered a success as long as the employee doesn’t show absenteeism again within the next 30 days after the end of probation. Any kind of absenteeism pattern will show that the employee is habitual and this should again begin the 90 day probation period. ("46 Tips for Managing Absence",2016)

PRO: This will send all the employees a very strong message that any kind of manipulation won’t be tolerated at Bridgestone. The employees will be more disciplined.

CON: Draconian policy

1. As written by Bruke and studied by his research team in his article- “Exploring the work and non-work interface” working overtime i.e. more than 8 hours per day is associated with poorer physical as well as mental health conditions that affects the overall performance of employees in a workplace( Ronald J. Burke, Teal McAteer, 2015). Also one of the first companies to adopt the 8 hour work schedule in 1914 was Ford Motor Company, the 8 hour work policy helped Ford’s productivity and increased their profit margins significantly (Douglas Brinkley, 2003). So the work shifts should be 8 hours long, so three shifts: MORNING (6AM-2PM), AFTERNOON (2PM-10PM), NIGHT (10PM-6AM) per day can be distributed among three teams. The existing employees distributed among four teams can be divided into three teams. These shifts can be alternatively distributed among each team for two weeks.

As shown in the above table, each team has to work for a shift for two consecutive weeks and then swap the shift with the other team. This cycle will ensure proper rotation of the shifts among each of the three teams and all the employees will work for 40 hours per week as compared to the existing 36 hours. This will help Bridgestone reach their production targets without making the employees to work for long shifts of 12-48 hours and coming on two Saturdays. This policy will also ensure that the workers are working for 8 hours per day and it would not be a burden for them.