HRM Examination: Short Case Studies
Use of these short case studies in an HRM examination paper.
Explain the relationship of each of the following to an employee's contract of employment.
- a staff rota pinned weekly on the factory engineers' notice board by the shift manager. The rota lists the shift days for each engineer for the next month. The rota is pinned up at least 10 days before the end of the month without fail.
- the company's policy statement on equal opportunities and expectations in respect of how staff should behave in relation to the implementation of equal opps at work are listed in the staff handbook. All employees including managers attend a one day equal opportunities briefing course.
- A friend who you regularly take lunch with in the staff canteen was seriously upset by her manager who spoke abruptly to her about "reading a magazine in working hours and writing letters to her friends using the company's word processor and laser printer again - at times when she should be working. On each occasion however was between tasks that her supervisor had given her and was waiting for the supervisor to pass on new items of work. Other people in the office - also use the company's word processing facilities and snatch a glance at newspapers etc.
- The warehouse supervisor asked Braat Shah - a fork-lift truck driver - to work overtime on Saturday from 8.00 am - 4.30 pm. Braat agreed but then did not turn up. He did not phone in with a reason for not attending and the supervisor failed to complete a very important order for a customer. She was very angry and felt let down.
The customer order was the very reason that the overtime had been authorised. In addition Braat was seen by another employee shopping in Sainsbury's at 11.30.
- a recognised union representative of the office union has asked his departmental manager for time off with pay to attend the annual conference of the union. The manager refuses the request.
- a biscuit line manager became angry with an elected health and safety representative who was called away from her job by the company Health and Safety Officer. The latter wished her to join a panel of people investigating a significant health and safety incident in the warehouse.
The production manager gave the representative a stern ticking off when she returned to her normal work - he later refused a request from the representative to take a day's leave. He argued that the representative had given insufficient notice of taking leave. it was normal to give at least four days notice. It was Friday and the representative wanted to take leave on the following Monday.
- a van driver refused to drive a van allocated to her for a normal delivery round. She argued that the tyres were worn and that when braking the van tended to veer to the right. The transport supervisor pointed out that the van had passed its MOT and that the vehicle maintenance mechanic had checked the vehicle.
HRM Examination 1995-96
Case Study Index
These case studies © were written for examination purposes by Chris Jarvis. They may be used for similar academic purposes but not published in any form for resale without the prior permission of the author.
URL: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~bustcfj/bola/cases/shorts.html