Is allowing some employees to work from home “unfair” to other employees who do not work from home? Why or why not? How will you handle potential conflicts between employees over this issue?

Case for Module 5

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Fairness and equity are on your mind today. As the vice president of human resources for

Human Solutions Software (HSS), you have seen fast growth take place since you started

working for HSS 10 months ago.

You now have two new human resource generalists working for you. Over the last couple of

months, it has taken a great deal of your time to train them, but they are now getting to the

point where they can take care of many of the day-to-day details that used to keep you busy.

This has given you time to think about some major projects you have wanted to undertake

before but did not have the time to work on until now.

One project you want to undertake is to put all of the piecemeal employer/employee policies into

an employee handbook and add more policies that you feel are legally necessary. This handbook

will be important from a legal standpoint to show that employees have been informed about the

various policies, and it will also define the processes employees must follow if they have a

grievance.

To date your tenure at HSS has largely been spent dealing with crises and educating the

founders about the possibilities for and responsibilities of human resources at HSS. You now feel

that you have gained enough of the founders’ confidence to be more proactive in eliminating

problems and areas of dissatisfaction for the employees at HSS. Your goal is to help make the

policies at HSS fairer and more equitable.

In-Depth Scenario 1

Because of the nature of their work, many of the software developers could do most of their

tasks from home. You had started to work on a program to allow the software developers to do

some of their work from home before the previous head of software development was fired, but

now the acting head of software development is against allowing any of the software developers

to work from home.

There are two software developers who telecommute now. One just had a baby and wants to be

home with the baby for the first few months. The other has a mother with Alzheimer’s disease,

and he is her primary caregiver. Both of these software developers come into the office

occasionally for meetings and when there is a need to interact face-to-face with other software

developers, but there is often a week or two between their visits.

The acting head of software development is worried that the other software developers will feel

that it is “unfair” for these two to stay home and “work in their pajamas” while all the other

software developers have to come to work on time every day. The acting head of software

development is also concerned about having control over what software developers working from

home will be doing while they are supposed to be working.

You are hoping to recruit highly qualified software developers from around the country to work

for HSS because they can do so remotely. You are also aware of the savings that can be realized

if some of the employees at HSS work from home because HSS will not have to provide facilities,

equipment, parking, and so forth for the employees who telecommute.

The acting head of software development has approached you about whether he can require the two telecommuting employees to stop telecommuting and work only in their cubicles at HSS.

How will you advise him?

A) Is allowing some employees to work from home “unfair” to other employees who do not work from home? Why or why not? How will you handle potential conflicts between employees over this issue?

B) Assuming some employees will be allowed to work from home, how will HSS determine which employees will be allowed to work from home? How will you manage the performance of employees who work from home?

C) Write a brief memo (1 – 2 paragraphs) to the board of directors, either

justifying the expansion of telecommuting for software developers at HSS or

stating why telecommuting should not be allowed for software developers at

HSS. In your memo, include some discussion of why it is important to have a

clear policy on this issue.