Caribbean Team Vibes and Whatever! Karen Brown sat in her office and thought about her 20-year career at Bright Lights Corporation(BLC). Her success at BLC has been from her own efforts and management. She had improveddiversity for the team she led, launched new products and had taken on challenges which at timesseemed insurmountable. Recently, she and her colleagues were part of a team that launched anumber of products in the Caribbean region. The successful product launch had created a hugedemand for the company’s products that required BLC to establish and centralize a call center inTrinidad and Tobago. Karen was discouraged that, at the end of their first month of working together, the team members’call response average was a little over two minutes off target. She was also getting complaintsfrom the three Caribbean team members. They calculated that together the three spent an averageof five and a half minutes with each customer; when customers wanted further information, theemployees referred them to the training videos. In contrast, they observed that the Panamanianmember, Maria Perez, spent about 15 minutes with each customer, often walking the customerthrough the videos over the phone. These longer calls were affecting the compensation of allmembers, and the Jamaicans and Trinidadians were angry.Joy Campbell says:This goes beyond being annoyed about how much Maria talks, it now affects my pay—it’s beingdocked. When she does a call, it goes way past product information; she carries on about family,gets wrapped up in their problems, laughs and jokes—but the thing that really put me over theedge was when she told someone she’d put the kids who used our equipment on her prayer list!We don’t do things that way in my country. You should have studied my culture before you joinedthis team. This is serious business. The lives of many children depend upon our product, and theircaregivers need to know our company cares about them. We have to build trust that we aren’tgoing to sell them something and then hit the road. No one else on this team takes the time to earnhealth care providers’ respect. We need to make them feel confident in their decision to buy ourmonitors and not someone else’s. But don’t take my word for it—have a look at the how customershave rated me: my satisfaction scores are exponentially higher than anyone else’s on this team.Karen worried that both she and the team were at a breaking point. The issues in the company BLC are given below: No co-ordination in team, and there is team diversity. The team handled by individual KB is very diverse, and the workforce belongs to different regions. So there is no co-ordination among the workers. The workers themselves are having disputes about there work. The employees are not accepting the work done by others. It makes the work ineffective, and inefficient. There are cultural differences prevailing among the workers in the company. The employees from country J, and country T are accusing that their culture is different from the culture of employees from country P. Their working style is different from the culture they belonged to. So they cannot accept the work done by employee from country P since there is a cultural differences. This creates hatred among the workers, and will have a negative impact of the work done by the employees. No planning in the work process, and there is no common goal among the team members. The employees from country J, and T are saying that referring to training videos alone will help to gain customer satisfaction. But employee from country P says that walking the customers through training video, and engaging more with them will help to create a good customer satisfaction. This shows that there is no proper process or protocols to follow in the job. A team should have a proper goal, so that the team members will work in a similar manner to achieve the goal. A goal should be set as whether to achieve the customer satisfaction or to attend more number of customers. No guidance from the leader individual KB. Before employing the employees in the team, the individual KB should train the team members properly. A particular rules and regulations should be formed, and employees should be made to follow them strictly. When there is a cultural issues, and chaos among the team members, individual KB should interfere between them and should solve the issue. Since there is lack of guidance from individual KB, there is no co-operation, and co-ordination among the workers. As a consultant to Karen, how would you recommend she address the four (4) issuesidentified above at BLC. These solutions must be specific and realistic. You mustindicate why you have chosen these recommendations
Caribbean Team Vibes and Whatever!
Karen Brown sat in her office and thought about her 20-year career at Bright Lights Corporation
(BLC). Her success at BLC has been from her own efforts and management. She had improved
diversity for the team she led, launched new products and had taken on challenges which at times
seemed insurmountable. Recently, she and her colleagues were part of a team that launched a
number of products in the Caribbean region. The successful product launch had created a huge
demand for the company’s products that required BLC to establish and centralize a call center in
Trinidad and Tobago.
Karen was discouraged that, at the end of their first month of working together, the team members’
call response average was a little over two minutes off target. She was also getting complaints
from the three Caribbean team members. They calculated that together the three spent an average
of five and a half minutes with each customer; when customers wanted further information, the
employees referred them to the training videos. In contrast, they observed that the Panamanian
member, Maria Perez, spent about 15 minutes with each customer, often walking the customer
through the videos over the phone. These longer calls were affecting the compensation of all
members, and the Jamaicans and Trinidadians were angry.
Joy Campbell says:
This goes beyond being annoyed about how much Maria talks, it now affects my pay—it’s being
docked. When she does a call, it goes way past product information; she carries on about family,
gets wrapped up in their problems, laughs and jokes—but the thing that really put me over the
edge was when she told someone she’d put the kids who used our equipment on her prayer list!
We don’t do things that way in my country. You should have studied my culture before you joined
this team. This is serious business. The lives of many children depend upon our product, and their
caregivers need to know our company cares about them. We have to build trust that we aren’t
going to sell them something and then hit the road. No one else on this team takes the time to earn
health care providers’ respect. We need to make them feel confident in their decision to buy our
monitors and not someone else’s. But don’t take my word for it—have a look at the how customers
have rated me: my satisfaction scores are exponentially higher than anyone else’s on this team.
Karen worried that both she and the team were at a breaking point.
The issues in the company BLC are given below:
- No co-ordination in team, and there is team diversity. The team handled by individual KB is very diverse, and the workforce belongs to different regions. So there is no co-ordination among the workers. The workers themselves are having disputes about there work. The employees are not accepting the work done by others. It makes the work ineffective, and inefficient.
- There are cultural differences prevailing among the workers in the company. The employees from country J, and country T are accusing that their culture is different from the culture of employees from country P. Their working style is different from the culture they belonged to. So they cannot accept the work done by employee from country P since there is a cultural differences. This creates hatred among the workers, and will have a negative impact of the work done by the employees.
- No planning in the work process, and there is no common goal among the team members. The employees from country J, and T are saying that referring to training videos alone will help to gain customer satisfaction. But employee from country P says that walking the customers through training video, and engaging more with them will help to create a good customer satisfaction. This shows that there is no proper process or protocols to follow in the job. A team should have a proper goal, so that the team members will work in a similar manner to achieve the goal. A goal should be set as whether to achieve the customer satisfaction or to attend more number of customers.
- No guidance from the leader individual KB. Before employing the employees in the team, the individual KB should train the team members properly. A particular rules and regulations should be formed, and employees should be made to follow them strictly. When there is a cultural issues, and chaos among the team members, individual KB should interfere between them and should solve the issue. Since there is lack of guidance from individual KB, there is no co-operation, and co-ordination among the workers.
As a consultant to Karen, how would you recommend she address the four (4) issues
identified above at BLC. These solutions must be specific and realistic. You must
indicate why you have chosen these recommendations
Note:- We are providing the answer in a generalized way.
Cultural differences:-
The various ideas, attitudes, ways of speaking, expressions, and behaviors that are thought to be particular to people of a particular ethnicity, race, or national origin are referred to as cultural distinctions. A few examples of cultural differences in the workplace include those who are younger or older than their coworkers, individuals with greater degrees than others, and those who were raised in either large cities or rural villages. Employees are said to often have more things in common than things to disagree with, although occasionally disagreements may outweigh similarities. These different differences may make the workplace more interesting, but they can also lead to a lot of problems due to cultural friction.
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