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Luthra Engineering Industries (LEI), a small-scale, family-run manufacturing business, based in a small Indian city, is going through a crisis. Due to COVID-19 lockdowns, LEI had been shut for two months but has received the government’s permission to re-open, albeit, if it complies with certain conditions. LEI can invite only 30 per cent of its employees back to the office amidst proper safety, leading to challenges of maintaining equity due to salary dilemmas and implementing various safety protocols. However, LEI’s management are not only dealing with a pandemic looming large along but also macroeconomic uncertainty, business continuity, financial crunch, and employee motivation, equity, and safety. LEI’s leaders need to make sense of this multi-pronged crisis.

In July 2022, the joint general manager of personnel and administration at the Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Limited (IFFCO)’s Paradeep unit received a call from the Delhi corporate office informing him of a complaint filed by the wife of a deceased employee against a current employee of the unit. The complaint alleged that the employee had defrauded the widow of approximately US$40,000—the sum total of her husband’s terminal death benefit. As the joint general manager worked to investigate the matter and prepare a report for senior management, he found himself struggling with the managerial need to safeguard the organization’s image. As a human resources manager, he contemplated several questions: How could an ethical culture be established and sustained in IFFCO? What strategic human resources measures should be adopted to avoid such situations in future? How could communication be used as enabler in this critical situation? Despite his mixed emotions and the limited time available to present his findings, he knew that he needed to ensure a fair and thorough investigation to resolve the issue.

In July 2022, the joint general manager of personnel and administration at the Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Limited (IFFCO)'s Paradeep unit received a call from the Delhi corporate office informing him of a complaint filed by the wife of a deceased employee against a current employee of the unit. The complaint alleged that the employee had defrauded the widow of approximately US$40,000-the sum total of her husband's terminal death benefit. As the joint general manager worked to investigate the matter and prepare a report for senior management, he found himself struggling with the managerial need to safeguard the organization's image. As a human resources manager, he contemplated several questions: How could an ethical culture be established and sustained in IFFCO? What strategic human resources measures should be adopted to avoid such situations in future? How could communication be used as enabler in this critical situation? Despite his mixed emotions and the limited time available to present his findings, he knew that he needed to ensure a fair and thorough investigation to resolve the issue.

In September 2022, the vice president of talent engagement at TBK Beverages met with the executive sponsor of a proposed mentoring program to discuss plans. A year earlier, employees had shared their dissatisfaction with the lack of access for under-recognized groups to executive-level mentorship and training, a dissatisfaction voiced in the context of rising awareness across the United States after the death of George Floyd. The vice president was reviewing survey data about mentorships and was responsible for developing an inclusive leadership mentoring program as part of the company’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives. What approach should the mentorship program take and what elements should it include?

SAP’s global approach of Pledge to Flex was the foundation for hybrid working for its employees. The approach empowers employees to balance when, how, and where they work best, considering business requirements and local legislation. The organization’s people leaders co-developed a model with their team that considers customer and partner-specific needs. The case also describes SAP’s strategic move in establishing the Future of Work (FoW) organization to continually evaluate and innovate in this direction. The case raises the following questions: How does a large multinational company with a research and development centre in India decide on a hybrid model? How does a large multinational with a presence in several countries introduce a change plan conceived in the global corporate office, what are the challenges to this approach, and will it impact people’s experience and turnover? How much customization should be allowed? Will the true shift come with frequent assessment, experimentation, and application as per the changing needs?

SAP's global approach of Pledge to Flex was the foundation for hybrid working for its employees. The approach empowers employees to balance when, how, and where they work best, considering business requirements and local legislation. The organization's people leaders co-developed a model with their team that considers customer and partner-specific needs. The case also describes SAP's strategic move in establishing the Future of Work (FoW) organization to continually evaluate and innovate in this direction. The case raises the following questions: How does a large multinational company with a research and development centre in India decide on a hybrid model? How does a large multinational with a presence in several countries introduce a change plan conceived in the global corporate office, what are the challenges to this approach, and will it impact people's experience and turnover? How much customization should be allowed? Will the true shift come with frequent assessment, experimentation, and application as per the changing needs?

In September 2022, the vice president of talent engagement at TBK Beverages met with the executive sponsor of a proposed mentoring program to discuss plans. A year earlier, employees had shared their dissatisfaction with the lack of access for under-recognized groups to executive-level mentorship and training, a dissatisfaction voiced in the context of rising awareness across the United States after the death of George Floyd. The vice president was reviewing survey data about mentorships and was responsible for developing an inclusive leadership mentoring program as part of the company's diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives. What approach should the mentorship program take and what elements should it include?

The partners at ZGM Modern Marketing were pleased with their growth and progress of working within the highly competitive marketing industry and had confidence in their team of skilled employees supporting the company’s success. But they also knew a good thing never lasts forever and had to continually strategize to stay ahead of the competition. While the partners were used to being very hands-on with the day-to-day management of people, ZGM had grown to a point where it was becoming difficult to juggle all aspects of the business without adding specialized resources. Bringing on non-billable people such as the new HR Director puts a strain on the profitability of a company. The challenge was how to maximize the value of these new resources.

Brice Scheschuk, chief executive officer of WIND Mobile, embarks on a transformative journey to revitalize the company's organizational culture. This case provides a lens into the challenges and opportunities inherent in building a workplace culture in a fast-paced telecommunications market. Scheschuk employs a strategy that places significant focus on the field employees, who are often overlooked in corporate strategies. Students will gain insights into the nuanced art of leading change, leveraging HR as a strategic asset, and measuring the effectiveness of cultural interventions. This case employees qualitative and quantitative data and is an exemplar for those aiming to integrate HR strategy with organizational effectiveness.

Brice Scheschuk, chief executive officer of WIND Mobile, embarks on a transformative journey to revitalize the company's organizational culture. This case provides a lens into the challenges and opportunities inherent in building a workplace culture in a fast-paced telecommunications market. Scheschuk employs a strategy that places significant focus on the field employees, who are often overlooked in corporate strategies. Students will gain insights into the nuanced art of leading change, leveraging HR as a strategic asset, and measuring the effectiveness of cultural interventions. This case employees qualitative and quantitative data and is an exemplar for those aiming to integrate HR strategy with organizational effectiveness.

Orange Sky Australia evolved as an entrepreneurial non-profit organization offering two primary services for the homeless: mobile laundering of clothes and engaging in genuine, individual, face-to-face connections through conversation. In February 2024, with 73 employees and roughly 3,000 volunteers spread throughout Australia and New Zealand, the company’s recent staff engagement data indicated a decline in well-being metrics since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, despite the strong positive organizational culture. The company’s growth strategy to double volunteer numbers within the next two years created additional challenges for how to recruit volunteer team leaders to manage and oversee daily operations as most volunteers did not want leadership roles.

The implementation of the OKR-based Performance Management System (PMS) in Quick Heal, an Indian cybersecurity company came about because of Ms. Reetu Raina, the CHRO’s revelation about loopholes in the existing PMS that needed to be addressed. The old PMS had a rigid top-to-bottom approach without any mechanism for frequent feedback. Moreover, not every individual goal was tangible or aligned with the organizational strategy. As a result, it had become challenging to differentiate between high and low performers, and Quick Heal was missing out on a chance to grow as a company. The organization faced several challenges during the implementation process of the new OKR-based PMS, such as employees’ resistance to change, slow transformation of the traditional goal-setting process to a more agile approach and other barriers towards the new system’s adoption. Employees questioned the need and relevance of the new PMS amidst the uncertainties of the post-pandemic work norms and strongly resisted the transition. Mixed reviews from the department heads left Raina puzzled and wondering about the pitfalls of the transition, the implementation process and overall the potential of the new OKR-based PMS as a tool to create a performance-based culture at Quick Heal.

The biggest headache that global businesses confront today-not to mention their most considerable cost-is figuring out how to secure talent. To address this problem, many individual managers are quietly circumventing their organizations' standard hiring processes and are turning to digital talent platforms to find skilled help on an as-needed basis. There are now more than 800 digital talent platforms, offering companies the services of millions of highly skilled freelance professionals from around the world. And those freelancers often can get jobs done more quickly and cheaply than full-time workers. The problem is, most of the managers making this move are doing it privately, simply as a tactical expedient for solving discrete problems or getting through a crunch. That's a mistake, say the authors. Companies themselves need to develop an open-talent strategy-a fundamentally new approach to hiring that involves thinking of all talent as part of a global network that they can rely on to meet their needs. In this article, the authors describe the new open-talent landscape and explain how companies can take advantage of it by creating an external talent cloud.

Workplace burnout has become a global concern. In a recent survey, 77 per cent of working people said they had experienced burnout at their current job, while a whopping 91 per cent said unmanageable stress or frustration impacts the quality of their work. Not surprisingly, this has negative implications for employee effectiveness. The author describes his recent research, which reveals that emotional exhaustion usually increases throughout the workday and that these trajectories are influenced by a variety of factors, including previous-night detachment from work and socialization with colleagues. The good news is this: by understanding the variables that relate to growth curves in emotional exhaustion, organizations can design interventions targeting the design of work, social and structural aspects of the environment, and the training of employees on adaptive coping behaviours.

Executive Director Nicole Fuhsel faced a difficult decision: Was she going to take a more resource-light approach and do the bare minimum to simply meet legal requirements for health and safety at the company, or take a more resource-heavy approach to develop a program that truly supported the health and safety of staff and satisfied her personal drive to 'go above and beyond'. With limited resources available (time, people, money) and negative implications inherent in both options, the decision will be difficult to make. The case provides an outline of LINX business operations - a not for profit disability service organization that is heavily reliant on government grants, Nicole Fuhsel's background, and the current state of the safety program and staff-focused safety issues. There is no direct timeline or due date pressing upon Fuhsel. The Government of Alberta has already suggested that LINX' program is minimally sufficient and therefore there is not a legal compliance rationale to further develop the program. The question is whether Fuhsel decides to invest scarce resources to making improvements to the program to better support the safety of her staff and satisfy her personal drive for program excellence, or leaves the program as it is.

Natalie Wilson, a human resources administrator at League Plastics, a manufacturer of parts for the recreational vehicle industry, was worried that she would be blamed by her supervisor for an increasing number of workers’ compensation claims. After gathering data on the ever-worsening safety record in the facility and taking notes about where injuries were occurring, Wilson knew she would need to act before the company’s workers’ compensation policy came due for renewal. She needed to put together a plan that would start reducing injuries for the rest of the year, and she needed to persuade her supervisor to implement it.

The Closet was founded as a subscription-based model in 2015. By 2022, it had almost 2,500 members and 8 stores, which the founder, Louise K. Liokouras, ran in collaboration with two franchisees and a diverse group of around 180 volunteers. The members had access to all eight stores, which were located across Denmark, and they could swap as much second-hand clothing in the stores as they wished. The vision was to reduce clothing-related waste, a vision that most of the volunteers felt very passionate about and were dedicated to. Despite the volunteers' engagement, it was difficult to ensure that they handled the daily tasks at the stores in the right way and were committed to completing their assigned shifts. As the numberof volunteers increased, so did the organizational-control issues. The informal and personal management style was becoming difficult to maintain. The founder therefore asked the volunteers about their motivation and wanted to integrate that information into potential solutions to the various issues.

This case focuses on Maersk Tankers' efforts to achieve a better gender balance in an industry that struggles to attract and retain female talent. The case begins in 2021 with Annelise Goldstein, the Chief People Officer, and Christian M. Ingerslev, CEO, discussing the gender imbalance in the industry and the company, and wondering what additional steps could be taken to address the gender gap. The case then describes the global shipping industry and the Danish shipping industry, and provides relevant data on gender based on a Women In Shipping report published in 2021. Thereafter, the case describes Maersk Tankers' efforts to transform the organization's culture into one that is inclusive of diverse talent. The case ends with a description of the opportunities and challenges the company faces as it moves towards greater gender parity.

Nora is an intelligent, hard-working employee in her first managerial role. As she attempts to move from a role as a contributor to that of a leader, she struggles to effectively manage her workload, her boss, and her team. While she is prepared to do what it takes to be successful, the characteristics that got her to her current level are not those that are needed in her new position. In other words, while she is technically adept, motivated, and customer-focused, this is no longer enough. Nora needs to identify what she can do—and what resources and support she should ask for—to fulfill her potential in this new role.

For this exercise, students are asked to assume the place of the two founders and owners of a web-based company called Good Authority. The venture was launched one year earlier and has been successful, although the two owners are finding it difficult to continue operating the company during their spare time while working full-time hours at their day jobs. Recently, an investor offered to fund the salary and payroll expenses for one employee, allowing the two owners more time to grow and expand the business. The students are tasked with effectively designing a job for the new employee to allow the two owners time and energy to focus on the future and success of the business.