The departments provide service to the independent insurance brokers that sell your company’s policies to the customers.

Discussion

You are the senior manager at a major insurance company and have 2 departments under your control. The departments provide service to the independent insurance brokers that sell your company’s policies to the customers. Each department has 15 unionized employees. Reporting directly to you are the 2 department managers and your executive assistant. The 30 unionized employees reporting through the department managers.

Three weeks ago you asked your managers to involve employees in a project aimed at developing a new work process for dealing with the insurance brokers. You have not involved yourself directly in the discussions with staff to this point as you had other priorities. Also, you wanted your managers to handle the project as a development opportunity for them. The brief discussions you have had with your managers seemed to indicate that the project is progressing well.

This morning your executive assistant came to you with some disturbing news she had heard from one of the union job stewards. According to your assistant, the job steward said your managers have chosen only certain employees to participate in the project with others being excluded. The union job steward was annoyed by this and suggested that the union may take a position against any changes introduced as a result of this approach to the project. If this happened, it would be a problem.

As far as you know, your boss hasn’t heard about this yet so you are thinking over how to deal with this matter.

How will you deal with this issue in order to ensure things are on track?

Note: please do this discussion based on union cooperation