Managing and Developing People Assessment Task Brief 2023/24

Remember to use the assessment grid to help you plan your assessment and then use it again to check that you’ve delivered on what you were asked to do.

Word Count

The essay should be 3,500 words in length.  This word limit relates to the word count given by the word counters in Microsoft Word and must be included on your cover  page.  When your work is 10% over the word limit, markers will stop reading your

work. Essays submitted with less than the minimum word count (90% of 3500) are highly unlikely to contain sufficient depth to demonstrate learning at this level.

Here is some information to help you understand what is included in your word count:

a)  appendices should  not be included in word count – this includes all information related to the topics under consideration.   It should not contain small pictures, models, graphics and tables.  They should be appropriately included in the text. If you use your appendices to extend your essay word count then these will be included in the word count.

b)  tables  should   not  be  included  in  word  count   if  these  are   used  to   present quantitative data, but should be included if they are constructed using words.

c)  quotations and citations should be included in word count.

d)  the references section and any bibliography should not be included in the word count.

e)  abstracts  and  executive  summaries should  be  included  in the word  count  (so don’t use them!).

Guidance on referencing

Sheffield Hallam University is now using APA 7* referencing style in order to extend the choice of online tools and apps you can use to make referencing easier.  Find    out about APA referencing and the range of apps and online tools for quick and

easier referencing at:  https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/referencing.

Submitting your work

You should submit your work to BOTH the Blackboard site and Turnitin before 3pm on the deadline day (local time).

Online submission (Blackboard)

The submission point will be available on the Blackboard site for this module where you need to upload your work. This is the version that will be marked.

Turnitin submission

The Turnitin tool is available on the Blackboard site for this module.

You can upload your work as many times as necessary to Turnitin to check your work, prior to the deadline.

You will need to upload your final version to the Turnitin submission

point by the submission deadline. Both the online submission version and the Turnitin version must match.

Assessment:  Individual case study

Read the case study below.  Individually, write a 3,500 word essay (+/- 10%) that critically answers the questions asked at the bottom of the case study.

Please note in the below, Kaz could be short for Karen, Kazim and many other    names/genders, so we’ re letting you have the choice of pronoun (he/she/they) in your assessment.  We’ll use she/her/hers in the case study below, just to be

consistent, but please feel free to change it in your written work to something that works for you.

Kaz’s management turmoil!

Kaz works for “ Insurance for all Purposes” , (known as “ IFAP” for short) a UK insurance company with headquarters in the USA.  IFAP provides insurance services for both domestic and commercial customers.

Kaz joined IFAP as a graduate trainee, and having successfully completed the

scheme, she has recently transferred from the Domestic Insurance department to take over as the line manager of Small Business Insurance (SBI) within the

Commercial Insurance Department.  Kaz knew the previous line manager had gone off sick with work related stress but she was sure she would be able to handle the    situation as she had been successful on her graduate scheme.  Now she was

beginning to think that she might have been too optimistic.

Kaz’s manager – Sam, had been transferred directly from America to manage the     Commercial Insurance Department where Kaz is one of the line managers that Sam is responsible for. He was new to the UK but not to management, having gained

significant experience slashing budgets and resources within the US part of the     company. Reducing costs and maximising profit is a big priority for IFAP following the downturn in business since Covid.

The Small Business Insurance (SBI) team was formed last year, as a new

opportunity for the company. There are ten people in total (when they are all there)  but there was enough work for twice as many. The team is internationally diverse (it includes individuals from the UK, USA, The Netherlands, China and India).  The

team are predominantly male and under the age of thirty-five, except for Bryan who  is counting the months to retirement. The women work part-time as they have child / elder caring responsibilities either now or in the past.

Sickness absence is an issue within the Department. Two people were off on long

term sickness (Hendrik with long-Covid and Theodore with stress), and several

people, took frequent, short term sickness absences (one or two days), often either at the start or the end of the week. Kaz had tried incentives to improve attendance

and engagement.  Being a small office there was no canteen facilities, but the

company did provide discounted membership for the local gym, health screening and eye checks. Free eye checks was Kaz’s idea and had been approved, as they were   inexpensive. Kaz often wondered what else could be done to improve the health and  well-being of her staff, but it was never a priority for Sam, so nothing happened.

As her addition to the incentive programme didn’t resolve the absence issues, Kaz    sought out some support from Sam on how to manage the absence situation.  Sam   was eager to help. He had been told to soften his hard HRM approach and develop   some of his people skills and he sees this as a genuine opportunity to try them out.   He’s been reading about coaching and sees the new job in the UK as an opportunity to apply the coaching techniques he has read about. Given Kaz’s desire for support, Sam organised weekly coaching sessions with her that always started with “What

are your dreams?” . She knew she couldn’t say “to run away from here!” but it was all part of the step-by-step coaching procedure that Sam rigidly followed. He didn’t

really listen and often told her what he thought Kaz should do, which was to simply fire the absent staff as they are “ useless” and that was what would happen in the    USA. Kaz wasn’t so sure about it though, ethically or legally.

Kaz had recently tried to complete a round of mandatory appraisals, some staff had declined them, others had readily accepted them, just to complain about how bad

their colleagues were at their jobs. The appraisals did not discuss pay or bonuses

(as there was an overall team bonus) so staff saw them as irrelevant. The Human

resources department said, “They MUST be done!” but then left Kaz to work out

what to do. Goals had been cascaded down from the parent company, but they were quite vague (primarily around reducing costs), so Kaz had told her team “to just

ignore them and get on with it” . She couldn’t think what else to do.

Kaz was particularly worried about Dennis who was struggling with the job.  He had recently been promoted from a purely administrative role to a more technical role

and was finding it very difficult. Initially, the training seemed to have gone fine but he still wasn’t able to do the simple tasks required of him. He was always very keen and professional, but the work wasn’t getting done. This impacted on the rest of the team who were concerned about the team bonus. If the overall quarterly targets were met  then the whole team (including the part-time staff who worked 50% of the week)

each received a £1000 bonus for that quarter (3-month period). This meant a lot to  the staff, if the group didn’t hit the quarterly target, then no-one got a bonus. Some  staff had asked if they could have individual bonuses rather than a team bonus, but this had been blocked by Sam as not being inclusive or equal.

The team bonus did encourage the team to aim towards a shared goal, however it frequently became very tense towards the end of the quarter. Phil took it upon

himself to shout at what he thought were poorly performing members of staff to

encourage them to “work harder” . Kaz knew this was inappropriate.  She also

wondered if Phil had a drink problem as he always seemed short of money and was one of those members of staff who struggled to make it into work on a Monday.  He  often talked about going out with his mates at the weekend for alcohol fuelled fun.    Jingyi held the team together. She was the one who made cups of tea for everyone  and brought cake into the office. Everyone confided in Jingyi, and she always knew  when people’s birthdays were and what was happening in their families. Kaz didn’t   have time for the social chit chat and was jealous of the way that the team held

Jingyi in high regard and not her, so Kaz frequently took to criticising Jingyi to

reemphasise her status as the team leader (“ Lovely looking cake Jingyi, but a bit dry don’t you think?” ; “Thanks for organising the celebration Jingyi, but you really should get back to YOUR work”).

Kaz prepared well for the weekly team meetings (posting an agenda, booking the

meeting room etc.) but they never seemed to work out as she planned. There was    always a crisis to deal with that threw the agenda out of the window, people came    late (“Oh sorry we went to the wrong room”) and Jingyi often produced a cake much to everyone’s joy as they feasted on it, ignoring what Kaz was saying anyway. She   tried shouting but that only seemed to increase the volume of people talking about    how good the cake was! Decision making amongst the team was therefore very

difficult. She had tried voting democratically which everyone was enthusiastic about until it didn’t go the way that they had voted for and then people would refuse to

carry out the agreed actions. Asking people to do 5 minute presentations on their

idea failed too, as people were too shy and didn’t say anything or talked for 20

minutes so in the end Kaz always made the decisions as she thought was best. This always annoyed someone who then stormed out of the room, slamming the door

behind them.

One of Kaz’s decisions was to decide who should go on the 6-month work swap.

This was where the USA team swapped a member of staff with the UK team, to learn  both technically and culturally about how things were on the other side of the Atlantic.

It always created great excitement in the office, encouraging people to look their best until the decision had been made. Then it all went flat again until the next time. Kaz    wanted to give it to Bryan as a “Thank you” for all the years of dedication to the

organisation but then there would be little benefit to the company if he promptly

retired on his return. Then Kaz thought one of the women deserved to go (but

obviously not Jingyi) as they tended to miss out on these things. Raajan had been   promised it the last time but then Sam had stepped in and changed the result at the last minute. Understandably Raajan had been upset and Kaz thought he was

secretly looking for a new job or maybe even attending interviews when he was off “sick” . Sending Simon, in his wheelchair, wouldn’t work either – “ How would he get on the plane?” thought Kaz. Besides Kaz knew he was a proud Yorkshireman and  had barely left the county all of his life, so she couldn’t see him swapping his

Yorkshire pudding for toasted bagels.

Kaz had other priorities she also needed to focus on.  One was to create a new sub- team to work on an exciting UK data project. Technically the three best people were Simon, Raajan and Fiona but Kaz knew they did not get along. She couldn’t decide   whether to put them all together and watch them fight or simply pick other people

which would make her life much simpler, but the project less effective. Kaz had

thought about moving them all into a corner of the room together so that they would    just get on with it and not disturb other people. “That should be enough, shouldn’t it?” .

In last year's employee survey, it said that employees had a high level of engagement, but since then a number of the team had left to go to other

organisations and the remaining team was feeling the pressure of the additional

burden. HR has told Kaz that the next employee survey is now due, but Kaz has

decided to not send it to her team as she knows that the results will not be good. She hopes that no-one in HR will notice if there are no results for her team.

There was definitely a need to recruit more staff. Kaz had never done this before, so she had put out a message on her personal and professional social media saying

she was looking for more employees which, surprisingly, had managed to gain a few more people. They tended to not have a previous insurance experience, so they

needed lots of training which used up all of the training budget, they were also

people that Kaz got on with, as they had a similar cultural background and interests to Kaz.

Kaz had asked Sam for training in coaching as she thought it would help her with the team. In her previous role she had been given a mentor but saw coaching as

something different. It would make it easier to work with the awkward team members (“enable her to convince them to behave” as she thought) however Sam pointed out  that she had already received significant training on the new commercial legislation   so it would be unfair to give her even more training this year when some existing

colleagues had not received any as the remaining budget had been spent on training up the new recruits.

Kaz sat at her desk. Staring out across the office, she could see Sam counting the empty seats wondering who was absent today and why? This wasn’t the line

management that she had expected, where everyone had a good relationship with   their colleagues  and the work flowed efficiently through the team. Just then Jingyi    burst into the room with a delicious piece of chocolate cake on a plate for her, “ It’s a beautiful day! Do you want some cake?” . “Yes, cake that is the answer! That’s

exactly what I need!” thought Kaz, but instead she said, “ Not after last week’s lemon cake, Jingyi, I’ ll pass” . Jingyi’s face was horrified and she slowly turned around and  left. Kaz felt the conflict rising up within her and kicked the desk in frustration!

Case study assessment task

Using HIGH QUALITY * research and APPROPRIATE^ organisational case studies, answer all the following questions in your individual essay (there are more notes    on how to do this below):

Case Study questions

There are three questions that all have to be answered.

1.  Critically analyse the case study situation and apply theory in the

identification of the key issues and challenges that Kaz is facing in her job.    (We suggest this should need around 25% of your word count – you can use examples from across the case study to answer this question).

2.  Provide justified and critically-argued actions (using theory and organisational examples) that address the following:

a.  How Kaz, the line manager, could improve the performance of the

people in her team across THREE key areas. (We suggest this should need around 25% of your word count).

You need to choose one theme from each of the three sections below. So one theme from context, one from the individual and one from the   team:

. Choose one from ‘The Context’ theme

a)  Talent management, acquisition (recruitment and selection) and development (learning and development)

b)  Psychological contract including Justice/Equity/Fairness and ethical working

c)  Diversity and Inclusion

d)  The International Manager and Cross-Cultural Management

. Choose one from ‘The Individual’ theme

a)  Coaching and the line manager as coach

b)  Performance management and appraisal

c)  Managing underperformance

d)  Absence management

e)  Employee health and wellbeing

. Choose one from ‘The Team’ theme

a)  Leadership and management skills including Emotional

Intelligence

b)  Followership and Teamwork

c)  Decision making in teams

d)  Employee engagement, emotional wellbeing and teams

e)  Supporting team cohesion and collaborations (including managing conflict)

b.  How Sam (Kaz’s manager), could improve his relationship with Kaz

and support Kaz in her first line management role. What do you see

are Sam’s strengths and areas for development when it comes to

team leadership and where do you think Sam could change to improve his line management?  (We suggest this should need around 20% of    your word count – you can use examples from across the case study    to answer this question).

Reflection on your learning from the module

3.  Using theory from the module and your further reading to illustrate your discussion, how has your thinking about line management changed as a

consequence of your learning on this module?  Compare your initial thoughts from week 1 with your understandings in the final week. (We suggest this

should need around 20% of your word count).

The final 10% of your word count relates to your introduction and conclusion.  This

should be viewed as a minimum figure, and you may wish to borrow a few words

from the suggestions above to make sure you produce both a sound introduction and conclusion that appropriately structures your work.

*  By High Quality Research we are looking for you to reduce the number of text

books you use and increase your use of journal articles and other academic texts. We would like you to focus on resources accessible from Google Scholar and

organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and The Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM).  If you find yourself using     the first source that appears in a conventional ‘Google’ search – then it’s very likely   NOT to be the quality we are looking for!

^  By APPROPRIATE case studies, we are asking you to think about date,

organisational size and context.  For example a case study based on an international coal mine with mostly unskilled workers is probably not helpful when considering the  operation of an service company operating in the UK. Also a UK case study of

factory life 30 years ago, needs to be treated with care, are its conclusions still relevant in today’s context?

Important points:

.    On your cover page you must include the following:

o Your name and student ID

o Title of the paper

o Details of any learning contract requirements (if applicable)

o Clearly identify your three topic areas – and which sections they relate to e.g.:

. The Context: Diversity Management

. The Individual: Managing Absence

. The Team: Effective Team Leadership

o Include your word count (in accordance with the word count instructions above)

.    Formatting:

o Use Calibri or Arial, 11 or 12 font size and between 1. 15 and 1.5 line spacing

o Add page numbers into your essay (this helps us to provide you with useful feedback)

o Put a clear blank line space between paragraphs

o You can use subheadings within your essay.  We suggest:

. Introduction

. Case Study Issues (question 1)

. Kaz - Team Leader Discussion (question 2a)

.    The context: topic name

.    The individual: topic name

.    The team: topic name

. Sam - Senior Manager Discussion (question 2b)

. Personal Learning from the Module (question 3)

. Conclusion

. References

. Appendices (if you have any – separate title for each appendix).

.    Academic stuff:

o Your work must use relevant academic theory.  We will be looking for evidence that you have read outside of core texts/lecture slides to

inform your discussion.

o Your work should be supported by academic citations throughout the    text, and you should provide a list of academic references at the end of your essay.  This should be done to the current SHU APA 7th

requirements

o Remember to keep your arguments critical. There is no need to

describe the information that we have already been given in the

text of the case. Instead, use what you have been given to select the  key issues as you see them and present a critical discussion based on what you have found.

o Use relevant case examples from case organisations to illustrate how   the academic concepts that you are discussing have been experienced in practice by real organisations.  You may use examples from your

own experience, but please keep them brief as they can eat up your word count very easily.

.    Our support for you:

o A number of the class sessions will focus entirely on this assessment   and give you opportunities to gain feedback on your developing work.  Check the module schedule and your individual timetable for the exact date and times.