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In 2002

Katriona Roeder was promoted to district manager for UPS in Buffalo, New York in 2002. She faced high turnover rates of 50% annually for part-time employees, who made up half the workforce. Roeder developed a comprehensive plan to reduce turnover by improving hiring practices, communication, workplace conditions, and supervisor training. Her strategies included screening out applicants seeking full-time work, tailoring communication to different employee groups, improving facilities, and teaching supervisors to show individual interest in employees. By 2006, Roeder's program reduced the attrition rate to 6% and saved an estimated $1 million annually in lower hiring costs.

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Pradeep Gautam
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114 views2 pages

In 2002

Katriona Roeder was promoted to district manager for UPS in Buffalo, New York in 2002. She faced high turnover rates of 50% annually for part-time employees, who made up half the workforce. Roeder developed a comprehensive plan to reduce turnover by improving hiring practices, communication, workplace conditions, and supervisor training. Her strategies included screening out applicants seeking full-time work, tailoring communication to different employee groups, improving facilities, and teaching supervisors to show individual interest in employees. By 2006, Roeder's program reduced the attrition rate to 6% and saved an estimated $1 million annually in lower hiring costs.

Uploaded by

Pradeep Gautam
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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In 2002, Katriona Roeder was promoted to district manager

for UPS’s operation in Buffalo, New York. She was responsible


for $225 million in revenue, 2300 employees, and the
processing of some 45 000 packages an hour. When she
took over in Buffalo, she faced a serious problem: turnover
was out of control. Part-time employees—who load, unload,
and sort packages, and who account for half of Buffalo’s
workforce—were leaving at the rate of 50 percent a year.
Cutting this turnover rate became her highest priority.
The entire UPS organization relies heavily on part-time
employees. In fact, it has historically been the primary inroad
to becoming a full-time employee. Most of UPS’s current
executives, for instance, began as part-timers while attending
college or university, then moved into full-time positions.
In addition, UPS has always treated its part-timers
well. They are given high pay, flexible work hours, full benefits,
and substantial financial aid to go back to school. Yet
these pluses did not seem to be enough to keep employees
at UPS in Buffalo.
Roeder developed a comprehensive plan to reduce
turnover. It focused on improving hiring, communication,
the workplace, and supervisory training.
Roeder began by modifying the hiring process to screen
out people who essentially wanted full-time jobs. She reasoned
that unfulfilled expectations were frustrating the hires
whose preferences were for full-time work. Given that it
typically took new part-timers six years to work up to a fulltime
job, it made sense to try to identify people who actually
preferred part-time work.
Next, Roeder analyzed the large database of information
that UPS had on her district’s employees. The data led her to
the conclusion that she had five distinct groups working for
her—differentiated by ages and stages in their careers. In
addition, these groups had different needs and interests. In
response, Roeder modified the communication style and motivation
techniques she used with each employee to reflect the
group to which he or she belonged. For instance, Roederf

found that college students are most interested in building


skills that they can apply later in their careers. As long as these
employees saw that they were learning new skills, they were
content to keep working at UPS. So Roeder began offering
them Saturday classes for computer-skill development and
career-planning discussions.
Many new UPS employees in Buffalo were intimidated
by the huge warehouse in which they had to work. To lessen
that intimidation, Roeder improved lighting throughout the
building and upgraded break rooms to make them more
user-friendly. To further help new employees adjust, she
turned some of her best shift supervisors into trainers who
provided specific guidance during new hires’ first week. She
also installed more personal computers on the floor, which
gave new employees easier access to training materials and
human-resource information on UPS’s internal network.
Finally, Roeder expanded training so supervisors had the
skills to handle increased empowerment. Recognizing that
her supervisors—most of whom were part-timers themselves—
were the ones best equipped to understand the
needs of part-time employees, supervisors learned how to
assess difficult management situations, how to communicate
in different ways, and how to identify the needs of different
people. Supervisors learned to demonstrate interest in
their employees as individuals. For instance, they were taught
to inquire about employees’ hobbies, where they went to
school, and the like.
By 2006, Roeder’s program was showing impressive results.
Her district’s attrition rate had dropped from 50 percent to 6
percent. During the first quarter of 2006, not one part-timer
left a night shift. Annual savings attributed to reduced turnover,
based largely on lower hiring costs, are estimated to be around
$1 million. Additional benefits that the Buffalo district has gained
from a more stable workforce include a 20 percent reduction in
lost workdays due to work-related injuries and a drop from 4 percent
to 1 percent in packages delivered on the wrong day or
at the wrong time.

Questions
1. In dollars-and-cents’ terms, why did Katriona Roeder
want to reduce turnover?
2. What are the implications from this case for motivating
part-time employees?
3. What are the implications from this case for managing
in future years when there may be a severe labour
shortage?
4. Is it unethical to teach supervisors “to demonstrate
interest in their employees as individuals”? Explain.
5. What facts in this case support the argument that
OB should be approached from a contingency
perspective?
Source: Based on K. H. Hammonds, “Handle With Care,” Fast
Company, August 2002, pp. 103–107.

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