Service Unlimited's FMLA Concerns

The History

Vince Brown was recently hired as the Human Resource Manager for Service Unlimited which is call center for multiple home improvement businesses. The company was started by Joe and Linda Whitmore in 2003 who also owned their own improvement business. Linda came up with the idea when she found that she was overwhelmed with phone calls from potential customers. Although Joe and Linda had the home improvement business they were still working full time because the business wasn’t enough to support t their family and didn’t provide insurance. Linda decided to have some of her friends who were housewives, assist her with some of the phone calls. Since they lived in a small city other contractors and home improvement businesses heard of the idea and asked if Linda if she would be willing to have people handle their calls as well.
The Structure
As of July 2007, Service Unlimited had established itself as a well known business in the community with over 100 employees. At that time, the call center was taking calls for over 50 local and regional businesses. Since the company was fairly small, the organizational functional structure was very flat. There were five supervisor overseeing the 80 phone representatives and 10 dispatchers. The five supervisors reported to Joe as did the two call analysts. The eight person administrative team reported to Linda. There wasn’t much communication between the workers and the supervisors unless there was a problem. Everyone basically keeps to themselves. The supervisors rarely meet with Joe and Linda unless there is a mandatory meeting, which they all dread.

The problem

In December 2007, Linda and Joe noticed that 10 of their 50 contracts with the home improvement businesses were cancelled due to poor service. This was very upsetting to Linda because she had always prided herself for the type of service she had trained the employees to provide. She wanted to get more information on the poor service.
Joe contacted their former customers and asked what type of poor service they received. Some didn’t respond while others told Joe that it’s his company and he should know what was going on. Joe was surprised to learn that some of the callers complained to the contractors about some of the following experiences:
· Some callers had to wait almost 10 minutes to talk to a representative.
· Calls were dropped
· Many calls were not returned as promised
· Some jobs were not dispatched at all
Getting to the root of the problem
Joe and Linda decided to research the allegations of poor service so they can get to the root of the problem. Linda had the call center analyst find out the percentage of calls that were dropped and the percentage of calls that waited more than three minutes to speak to a representative. Linda was astonished to learn that forty percent of the callers were waited more than three minutes and thirty percent of the callers waited for more than five minutes to speak to a representative. Five percent of the calls were dropped.
Joe decided to hold a mandatory meeting with the supervisors to find out what some of the issues were. The supervisors agreed that they didn’t have enough people to handle the calls that were coming into the call center. Joe couldn’t understand why this was a problem because he didn’t have this issue before. Once Joe learned that each supervisor had four to seven employees who were on sick leave, he wanted to know who authorized that many people being out and why it was never communicated. Since none of the supervisors would elaborate more, “I will conduct an investigation and will hold each of you accountable for any wrong doing that may be discovered”.
Later that night, Joe talked to Linda about the number of employees who were on sick leave since Linda was in charge of handling attendance. Linda said, “Those employees are allowed to be off work because of FMLA”. Joe wanted to find out more about FMLA and what the requirements were because he felt that some people may be abusing the policy.
Joe got on the internet and went to Department of Labor governmental website to find out all that he could about FMLA. He stayed up all night and drafted a document about FMLA to give to leadership. He also signed up to get posters mailed to him about the law. His document included some of the following information:
· The law pertains to employers who employee 50 or more employees for each working day during each 20 or more calendar work weeks.
· An employee is eligible if they’ve been employed with the company for at least 12 months and have worked a minimum of 1250 hours.
· Eligible employees are allowed to get 12 weeks of unpaid time during a 12 month period for birth and care of newborns, the care of immediate family members with serious health conditions, and if an employee is unable to work due to a serious health condition.
Joe called another meeting with the supervisors the next afternoon and asked that they bring the files of those employees who are currently on sick leave. Linda would also be present in the meeting since she handled the attendance policy. Linda and Joe were surprised to see that most of the employees who were out on leave had a pattern of taking FMLA the same time each year. Some of the other employees weren’t even eligible for FMLA.
Joan Roberson, a supervisor who had been with the company for years stayed after the meeting to talk to Joe and Linda about the situation. She stated the following, “Joe, most of the employees are getting burned out because there aren’t enough people to handle the calls. Some of the callbacks aren’t completed because the first priority is handling those on the phones”. She also stated that some employees don’t feel that it’s fair for the same people to be out sick while they report to work and do their job as required so them maybe quitting. Joe replied “Joan, thank you for your time and information we will bring in a specialist to handle this situation because we value every employee and don’t want to lose anyone”.

The solution

Joe and Linda decided to create a human resource department that will handle employee files, attendance tracking, payroll, and the tracking and education of laws such as FMLA. This person would need to have five or more years of experience in human resources. After placing an ad in the newspaper and over the internet, Joe and Linda decided to hire Vince Brown who was a human resource representative for a telephone company for more than ten years.
Joe and Linda told Vince that they want their business to succeed and that he would be a big part of communicating and reinforcing any company policies and governmental laws. They want every employee educated about FMLA and proof that they understand the law. They also want a policy with repercussions for those who violate or abuse the policy.

Vince is aware of what’s expected of him but first he needs to answer the following questions before he proceeds:

1. How should he investigate the current use and misuse of the current FMLA policy and how should he communicate his findings to Linda and Joe.
2. How should he communicate the FMLA policy/law to the employees and get feedback to ensure they understand it?
3. How can he make the new policy accessible to all employees should they have any questions or concerns.

4. How can he open up and promote more communication among employees?