Discussion

 
You’re a vice president with a nationally recognized accounting firm.  A few months ago, you hired Judy to serve as the director of the company’s Auditing Department.  During the interview process you were very impressed by her technical skills, drive for perfection, and work ethic.  Judy has been assigned responsibility for supervising 30 employees, all of whom have either undergraduate or graduate college degrees and have been with the company between six months and 20 years.  Prior to hiring Judy, you checked her references. Her former supervisors and colleagues said that she is extremely talented, although she tends to exemplify a workaholic.

After a few weeks on the job, and numerous conversations with Judy, it becomes clear to you that she has no other interests outside of her job and that she spends a great deal of time in her office – after normal working hours and on weekends.  Recently, you have been informed by the director of human resources that Judy’s employees are complaining about her.  It seems that when she finds errors in their work, she frequently calls the respective employee at home and berates him/her over the telephone for what she describes as “gross negligence.”  As a matter of fact, she has even told some of them to come back to the office after normal working hours to make corrections to work which she considers to be substandard.

Since your discussion with the director of HR you have had casual conversations with Judy’s team members in the hallways or the cafeteria and it has become obvious that morale is down – even though no one in the Audit Department has approached you about Judy.  Requests for time-off have become more frequent, three employees asked to be transferred to a different department within the company, and two have resigned.  You mentioned this situation to a fellow vice president who has seen the quality of Judy’s work and her response was, “we should consider ourselves lucky to have such a talented and motivated leader in our organization.”  You’ve decided to think about the situation for a couple of days and consider your options.

In two or three paragraphs explain what you will do.