Hallington Utilities Services

Hallington Utilities Services

This case deals with the issues facing Marion Forbes in her new position of senior human resources manager with Hallington Utilities Services. Brand new in her role she is faced with a memo from the CEO, John Swatridge, stating she will have her work cut out for her. His feelings were that the established HR department was not ready for the challenges ahead. These challenges will be brought to light later in the case. First, I’d like to provide a brief introduction of the Hallington company and some of it’s goals. Hallington began as a energy services company serving a medium sized town in Ontario. The company has also recently begun providing retail products to its customers. The company vision is stated as: “Excellence in customer service with competitive electricity rates and a knowledge of power that is first class.” The company is currently facing several troubling issues. Upon meeting with the CEO, Marion is informed of the three issues that he feels are most troubling to the company. The first issues would be privatization, the second is the threat of downsizing, and the final issue would be the employees forming a union. With some ideas as to what she what must do to improve the current state of the company, Marion goes off and interviews some employees.

Marion and John discussed the issues involved with the privatization of the company. Both bring up recent situations which have affected the government’s decision to deregulate the utilities sector. There are fears that private utility companies raise quality concerns. And with a private marketplace, the competitive environment will increase. The fear within management is that the company is run too inefficiently to remain competitive in a situation like this.

The second issue to deal with is Downsizing. The board has considered this for the last year as it feels the company isn’t operating