The new Assessment Centre

Northern Oil Products Ltd (NOP) recently carried out a survey of their managers attitudes to their jobs. Questionnaires were sent to 500 middle and senior managers and completed anonymously. The responses to some of the questions are summarised in the following table.

NUMBER OF RESPONDIENTS: 500	Yes	No	Don’t know
Feel that they are satisfied with their jobs	250	210	40
Feel that their salary reflects the responsibility of their position	380	75	45
Feel that they could do a better job in another position within the company	180	255	65
Feel that their abilities and skills have not been fully used by the company	248	223	29
Feel that their job offers variety and challenge	272	202	26
Feel that they have been overlooked for promotion	334	155	11
Feel that the working conditions in the company are satisfactory	405	85	10
Feel that the company offers sufficient opportunities for staff development	178	280	42
Feel that they would take a job with another company if they had the opportunity	23	463	14
Feel that the company shows a caring attitude to its managers	52	300	148

Half the managers are satisfied with their job. Just over 60% think that they’ve been overlooked for promotion. The majority of the managers are satisfied with the company’s working conditions. Almost two-thirds of the managers feel they have been overlooked for promotion.

Instructions

Work in groups of two or three. First make comments about the survey’s results. When you have finished making comments about the survey discuss the following questions:

1. What conclusions can you draw about the company and its management from the results of the survey?

2. What proposals would you make if you were Director of Personnel to improve the attitudes of NOP’s managers towards their jobs?

Case study

General Plastics Pic is located in the north-east of England – an area of high unemployment. The company is a subsidiary of Northern Oil Products (NOP). Some years ago General Plastics was in financial difficulties but things changed when Sir Gerald Harper became Chairman. He introduced a tough non-nonsense style of management. Some people such as union officials didn’t like it but it paid off. The company is now profitable again.

Gina Marsden is Director of Personnel at General Plastics. About a year ago she got the results of a survey into managers’ attitudes to their jobs conducted by head office. The results confirmed what she had been thinking for some time. The company had to do something about its system of promoting staff. Far too often managers had complained to her that they had been forgotten when a position became vacant. More than once she had heard it suggested that X had been promoted because s/he was a favourite or protégé of Y.

Linked to this was another problem Gina Marsden knew from conversations she had had with staff that many managers were in the wrong job. They were unhappy because they felt they were “square pegs in round holes” – unsuited for the work they were doing. They thought they could be more effective in other departments or even in other subsidiaries within the group.