Gap Analysis: Global Communications

This paper will examine three critical problems that were presented in the Global Communication scenario. The scenario states; communication between the management team, the union and the employees at Global communication; there was a lack of research put into the proposed outsourcing plan; and the lack of consideration to the impact of the employees’ contingency plans and layoffs.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

The biggest issue that Global Communication is currently facing maybe the fact that the Executive team members is trying to jump into an outsourcing expansion too quickly without enough research and consideration to the resources they currently possess. Global Communication is a telecommunication company currently feeling the economic push from the industry to expand into international markets in order to maintain their market value and demands for services to their customers. Global Communications senior leadership team wants to put into affect two aggressive plans; to expand the services they currently offer to their customers and cost-cutting throughout the company starting with outsourcing some employee jobs overseas.

First off, Global communication wants to outsource their technical call centers to India and Ireland. On the surface outsourcing to India or Ireland can be a good idea given the fact that the US dollar translate to a higher value. However, after some investigation studies shows outsourcing even the simplest jobs can prove to have a huge range of obstacles like language and culture barriers, as well as the ability to determine the exact cost of moving and erecting a brand new facility in a foreign country. A company can put out a plan and estimation on how much it may cost in order to operate in a country, but local policy, different country laws, economic turmoil, and people training cannot be fully calculable until plans is implemented (Del Franco p. 2).

The second issue the company is coming up against is the illusion that they can replace years of experience with a foreigner at lower cost in order to afford new services to their customers. Many of these employees at Global Communication have dedicated their lives to build what the company is today. If and when the company decides to lay these employees off many of them will be taking with them years of experience and that other words may not be able to be replaced. Another thing to consider is the lack of consideration to the impact the lay-offs will have on the employees and their contingency plans.

The senior leadership team did not seem to put much effort in their communication between themselves and the Union in the matter of cuts. This shows a real lack of coordination and consideration to the Union. The Union had previously accepted a 20 percent reduction in education and health benefits to help the company in their current economic situation and in hopes to increase jobs in the future. However, the news of the layoff was not personally delivered by the CEO, Katrina Heinz but seems to be through a rumor. This is a great example of poor leadership and communication (Global Communication Scenario p. 3).

The last problem that is very apparent is the fact that Katrina Heinz, CEO is such a new employee herself. Due to her lack of experience at the company and the obvious lack of communication she possess one cannot help but to speculate when she put together this plan for outsourcing and presentation to the board members how much of her presentation and views were adolescently over hyped.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

The first stakeholder in this plan would be the Executive Team Members; the board members, the players – Katrina Heinz, Sy Rodriguez, Nancy Everhardt, and Joel Thompson; their goal is to increase the company profits by increase services and reducing cost. This groups’ job is to increase company profit and in turn increase their own salaries and value to the company. The second group of stakeholders would be the employees within the company. This groups’ goal would be to be able to keep their jobs and