WHEN YOU NEED TO KNOW, THERE IS TOO MUCH INFORMATION AND NEVER ENOUGH TIME
In this unit you will be working with case studies that require you to find and communicate information quickly. You will be given Case Studies-typical situations that occur in organizations; situations where becoming informed rapidly is critical to your successful performance. You will rarely have the leisure to research and write a term paper over a 10 week quarter. You may need to find facts, trends, statistics, estimates, experts, examples to follow and who is doing what. You will likely need to communicate what you find in a one page memo or in a short briefing, sometimes even a short converation or telephone call with the person who assigned the task. There is almost always a deadline and there is less time then you would like. This places a premium on aggressively exploring information resources (people, databases, web sites) and exploring them persistently. This means that looking at what you find first or looking at the first few documents or web sites you come across will not do the job. Rapid scanning is essential, using a network of contacts including people in your company may be important. Going to the minimum number of resources, picking the most likely sources and extracting and summarizing only the information essential to your task is one recipe for success. Waiting until the last minute to do the task and giving your supervisor whatever you find is a certain recipe for failure.
A SAMPLE CASE STUDY-ALCOHOL ABUSE
ON-THE-JOB
Janet Ruiz the VP for Human Resources has been hearing comments from supervisors about a subtle and embarrassing problem. Key employees, often among the best are taking an increasing number of sick days. There are reports of employees coming to work with obvious hangovers. After long lunch hours the afternoons are wasted time for employees. There have been anonymous complaints about employees drinking on the job. And occasionally there have been outbursts of seemingly uncaused anger and conflict between employees. Company statistics support the increasing number of sick days and other absences.
You are Ms. Ruiz’s Assistant for Benefit Program. She asks you to find out answers to specific questions she has in mind and give her the results in two days so she can begin to prepare a proposal for the company's Executive Team. Here are some specific questions she asks you to research.
Any other data, sources of information or suggestions for dealing with the problem that you can find quickly.
1. While you are rapidly taking notes on something that is completely new, you think of questions that will help you give Ms. Ruiz what she really wants but may not have thought to mention. Your question:About how much information does she need? Her Answer: no more than a page or two just to get her oriented to how common the problem might be and what some of the resources are and what the company might need to create to address it. Additional information she mentions: Tell me the source of any facts or data or statistics you come up with. "I want to know they are reliable and will impress top management."
2. You think about people you know in the company or among your professional acquaintances that might know something about on-the-job alcoholism. Occasionally there will be someone but often not. You probe your memory about alcoholism. Wasn't there an article in the the Wall Street Journal or in Human Relations Focus in the past 6 months on this topic. Make a note to check those sources if you have time.
3. Because you must produce a report by the day after tomorrow and you are already working on four other projects you decide to go to the company information center or the local public library and your own office computer to select two highly useful resources. You decide to explore the recent business literature in General Business File and to find out what reliable information there is on the World Wide Web. If you find you need more information or have the time you will go to Dow-Jones Interactive.
4. You realize that to use these sources effectively that you need to identify key words and phrases that will pull up useful results. You need to imagine different ways the topic might be described.
You already know two key phrases: Workplace alcoholism and employee alcoholism. As alternatives you write down "on-the-job alcoholism" or "on-the-job drinking" You also know that alcoholism is sometimes called "alcohol abuse"
Here is how you work with InfoTrac/General BusinessFile ASAP found on the CSUEB Home Page under the link [Electronic Resources]. PRINT OUT THIS PAGE AND FOLLOW ALONG WITH THE SEARCH AND SCAN THE SOURCES TO SEE HOW THEY HELP ANSWER THE INFORMATION MS. RUIZ ASKED FOR.
First you click on the [Keyword Search] feature (left side of the opening screen) then under Limit Current Search you click on [To Articles with Full Text] which puts a check in the box. Then you enter the words "workplace alcoholism" This produces a list of articles all of which are in full text. You can scan and read any article by clicking on the link [text and retrieval choices]. You quickly scan the TITLES of all 20 articles and mentally or physically check the ones that look promising. You mentally discard those that are older than 1996. You note any that are in publications such as HRMagazine, Supervision, HR Focus or Monthly Labor Report because they tend to deal with employee concerns and problems.
Keeping your questions in mind here are the articles you checked and read quickly. In some cases you just print the first page because that has a summary or gives you the key information you need.
1) “Problem Drinking in the Workplace.” In: American Family Physician, 1999
Cites a recent national report on the costs of employee alcoholism and gives you the
web site of the full report.
2) “Workplace Alcohol-testing Programs: prevalence and trends.” In: Monthly Labor Review 1998
Recent information from an authoritative source, the U.S. Department of Labor.
3) “High Price of addiction.” In: LI Business News. 1998.
Documents extent of problem (costs and number of employees) in just one city, New
York City.
4) “Alcohol in the Workplace: last call.” Supervision. 1998.
Reports how Employee Assistance Programs can and do handle alcoholism.
Put these articles in your report writing folder and go on to the World Wide Web.
Here is how you work with the World Wide Web using the Ixquik searcher found on the CSUEB Home Page under the link [Searching the Internet] under the "Metasearchers" column.
You do two searches first using the words "employee alcoholism" then using the words "workplace alcoholism". Each search gives you hundreds of WWW sites but you print out a listing of only the first 20 sites from each search. On the printout listing the "employee alcoholism" search you check off and then quickly look at the following WWW sites.
1) Alcoholism in the workplace.
Because it has a model Handbook for Supervisors produced by an agency of the U.S.
Government.
2) Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in the Workplace-Managing Care and Costs Through Employee Assistance Programs. A 1991 book.
You make a note to check a local library database to see if there is a later edition that
your company should buy.
3) HRNet: Re: Alcoholism on the job.
Looks like this is a discussion group for people in Human Resources and this site has an exchange of views on how to deal with an employee who has a suspected drug abuse problem.
4) AlcoholismIndex-Information .
This is a specialized search engine just on alcoholism and on the first page is has a specific link [Workplace] that takes you to about 10 sites that seem just what you want. As you check a few of the 10 links you find you have discovered A GOLDMINE SITE. YOU STOP AND EXPLORE THE SITES AND DECIDE THIS IS ALL YOU NEED FOR NOW AND MOVE ON TO WRITING YOUR REPORT.
Here is the report you give to Jane Ruiz that summarizes what you have found and makes a few thoughtful suggestions about steps the company might consider.
TO: Jane Ruiz, Vice-President, Human Resources
FROM: Robert Biseo, Benefit Programs Assistant
SUBJECT: Alcoholism in the Workplace
Here is what I found that responds to your questions about the problem of alcohol abuse on-the-job and what resources there are to help us create an effective program if we chose to do so.
The bad news is that workplace alcoholism appears to be widespread and expensive to business. The good news is that companies, government agencies and nonprofit organizations have been focusing on the problems for at least the passed 10 years. We are not alone and there are places to get help.
HOW MUCH OF A PROBLEM IS IT?
Studies show that employees who abuse alcohol are far less productive, use 3 times as many sick days, are more likely to injure themselves or someone else and are five times more likely to file worker's compensation claims. Sample statistic: the National Institute of Alcohol and Alcoholism (NIAA)estimates loss of productivity to alcohol cost business $119 billion in 1995 (American Family Physician 11/1/99 p. 2178). For more bad news numbers you may want to look at the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence web site page: http://www.ncadd.org/facts/workplac.html
WHAT ARE COMPANIES DOING TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM?
Many companies small and large are working with the Department of Labor's program Working Partners for an Alcohol- and Drug-free Workplace. (Question: Should we be thinking about drug problems in our company too?) Here's the distilled wisdom of the experience of many companies on establishing substance abuse programs. Five steps seem essential
(see http://www.dol.gov/asp/public/programs/drugs/steps.htm)
*One: Writing a Substance Abuse Policy
*Two: Training Supervisors
*Three: Educating Employees
*Four: Providing Employee Assistance
*Five: Alcohol and Drug Testing
Our industry trade association may be able to point us to examples of substance abuse policies and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has a supervisor's handbook that and I have a copy of the table of contents if you want to see it. Handbook topics include: Supervisors Role, Signs to Look For, Employee Assistance Program, Confronting the Employee, Intervention, Returning to Work and Alcohol Testing.
RESOURCES AND THINGS TO WATCH FOR
If we decide to move ahead we can draw on resources from the Department of Labor, maybe the state (I haven't looked into that), the nonprofit Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace (http://www.drugfreeworkplace.org) and we may want to contact HR people in companies similar to ours. We should also get a copy of the latest edition of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in the Workplace-Managing Care and Costs Through Employee Assistance Programs. We should also be aware that individuals with alcohol problems may be covered by the American with Disabilties Act and other laws. I would be glad to research that area in cooperation with our legal staff if this seems useful.
I have a file of material gained during this research and a good sense of where to go to get more if you would like me to pursue specific issues.