Saab Scania Case

It can be inferred from the case that the work group design in engine assembly department has caused a high turnover ratio, has uninterested younger work force and absenteeism opted to re-design assembly jobs. The current dilemma for the Saab Automobile is whether they should go for product line design or continue with the group design to all the other assembly departments. Our objective is to decrease the turnover ratio, increase productivity and to improve motivation among young force which is currently prevalent in the work environment. The current productivity is 36 engine per hour which is much below the US counterparts.
Thus, there is a need to increase it to a comparable level. We think that rather than going with the group design approach, we intend to follow a modified group design across all departments. Firstly, we need to segregate all the activities across the four departments based on the nature/similarity of the job. Secondly, employee profiling need to be done which would categorize based on their willingness to work across similar jobs or the same specific jobs. Now people who are interested to work across similar jobs would be given periodically an option to switch between jobs which might be across departments also.
This would in turn increase employees’ job engagement, job belongingness and job rotation. Employees would now not get bored of their monotonous jobs and will find a point of motivation and interest. Employees who like doing the same job or are not so much interested in switching jobs would be allowed to do so. All these decision will trickle down to the long term hiring strategy of profiling employees based on their willingness to work across jobs at the very initial level of recruitment.

This should decrease the dissatisfaction and the boredom that was getting created among them. Once employees start to connect with the jobs then the 20% of absenteeism mentioned in the case would decrease drastically. Also, it will increase the number of young minds in the industry as a whole. On the flip side, people will find it difficult to accept the change instantly. After few rotations it may again become monotonous and cause boredom among employees. It may also cause resentment among employees in the initial stage.