Letter To Boss, Essay Example

I write in regard to complaint of a recurrent problem our division, and on behalf of my staff with documented record pertaining to Jana Harzin’s persistent attempts to arbitrate decisions on company protocol without supervisory title.  As G-Tech is a large corporation, I cite this issue as an ongoing problem that includes misconduct related actions outside of the employee’s determined role.

Ms. Harzin shows value to the organization in terms of work, but her dominant style and tendency to opine regarding management decision will present a decisive challenge to a manager attempting to win over the group as a well functioning team. While she shows overt initiative and communicative intent regarding her opinion about a change in production – rather than indirect sabotage of work post implementation of the new system – the decision to coordinate an ad hoc meeting without management participation, will obviously be perceived as unprofessional and potentially destabilizing by other employees.

Reassertion of my role as her superior has been discussed directly.  Although her tenure as an employee may be of critical import to the current situation in terms of translation of knowledge on our system, and especially regarding errors that might affect the outcomes of the workflow, Ms. Harzen must also be reminded of ethical guidelines in the workplace. Regardless of how well our new system might benefit from the value added exchange of employee perspectives, Ms. Harzen’s style of interaction stands to undermine the situation; leading to the inducement of poor colleague morale. At this time, I am solely communicating the Ms. Harzen’s misconduct. The next step would obviously be to institute a review according to company policy – and up to consideration of fire if it continues.

Due to our location in the State of California where labor litigation is pervasive, any such action would require counsel, and must be supported by a clear cut decision regarding release from duties based upon stated company policy, and most specifically, according to labor law. While most employees work under “At Will” contract conditions, which have been agreed upon with signatory prior to commencement of employment, discrimination cases are widespread, and claimants often receive deep pockets, tortfeasor damages for negligence or other civil rights related complaints. I am of course concerned for position in all such matters, and am committed to taking the proper steps to ensure protection of the Company’s interests.

In follow-up I will be scheduling a meeting with Ms. Harzen at which I will remind her that the team is counting on her participation. Any further communicative interaction on the topic might be best retained for our immediate, forthcoming team meeting where we discuss changes to the division, with some attention to conflict management.  Conflict management activities will focus on the topic of ‘disagreements’ with directed discussion toward an opportunity to “build a better mousetrap’ based on employee consensus. Intended as a solution employee issues as the one aforementioned in this memo, the strategy is based on best practices recommendations with an eye on employee optimization of productivity.

Finally, utilization of a white board in the meeting will enable to be engage employees in a visualization task; asking them to reveal where the glitches in the proposed system would potentially occur. The communication aesthetic of a diagram enables a team to remove their ego from the discussion, and re-focus on the content within the meeting’s objectives. In danger of advocating groupthink, I still would argue that to a certain extent it is important that “great minds think alike” to come to general conclusions.  We want a ‘win-win’ situation, and I think that Ms. Harzen has provided us with appropriate basis for one.

References

Thill, John V. & Courtland L. Bovée. Excellence in Business Communications, 6^th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Harcourt & Brace, 2005.