Vicky was an employee of a large insurance company located in Kingston. She arrived at work at 8:00 a.m. in a foul mood, having slept very little the night before. Two things were on her mind. First, she had serious concerns about the memorandum she and her co-workers had received from their boss two days earlier, telling them to reduce the number of claims they approved so that the company could improve its profitability. The memorandum also announced a new policy whereby those who failed to reduce claims approved by at least 40 percent would be terminated. Being told to deny claims whether or not they were justified bothered Vicky. Being threatened about it made her angry. Second, on the previous day, Vicky had received a call from a job placement agency about a vacancy at another company in which she might be interested. The job would pay slightly less than her current job, but it might have long-term potential provided that the small company survived. It was a small start-up firm that had been in existence only nine months. Taking the job would require Vicky to move to Falmouth, a prospect Vicky did not relish.

Naturally, the first people Vicky saw as she entered the building were her union representative and the director of Human Resources (HR), having a friendly chat. Vicky was not particularly fond of either of them. She believed her union representative had done a poor job of helping her through the grievance she had filed against her boss four months earlier. She was also not pleased with the support she had received from the Human Resources director, who, in her opinion, was a "lackey" for the company and had no interest in employee concerns.

"Good morning, Vicky," the director said cheerily upon seeing her.

"Yeah, yeah," Vicky muttered in response, thinking to herself, "Moronic cheerleader; that’s all those HR people are good for – pretending everybody is happy."

The HR director’s shocked look caused Vicky to realize that, in her sleepless fog, she had actually said her thoughts aloud.

Slinking to her desk, Vicky logged onto her computer and checked her email. There were ten messages from co-workers. She read each message and found that they all said much the same thing: "We have to do something about our boss." Knowing that the company monitored email messages, Vicky visited each co-worker’s cubicle during the next 30 minutes, inviting everyone to meet in the break room at 9:30.

Everyone came to the meeting and for 30 minutes, almost everyone vented anger at the boss’s directive.

"We should all walk out," someone suggested.

"We should get the union to fight this thing," another worker argued.

"We should just shoot the tyrant," suggested Vicky, forgetting for a moment the security cameras placed in the break room.

Most of the suggestions were shot down. "If we walk out, they will fire us," someone observed.

"The union hasn’t done us any good up to now. How would they help?" asked another. "Let’s go to the employee ombudsperson."

All agreed, and at lunch, they met with Madeline, the company’s ombudsperson. Madeline listened to the group’s concerns and agreed she would take their issue to the boss in an effort to persuade him to change his thinking.

The conversation between Madeline and Vicky’s boss did not go well. During the conversation, some of the boss’s comments included: "This is none of your business. I am in charge of this department." "Your job is just to meddle in other people’s business. Why don’t you go do something that actually helps this company?" "You are a bleeding heart, just like all the other women around here." "The only reason you have your job is because you are from the constituency of a certain Minister of government." "If you don’t get out of here now, I am going to the president to get you fired."

When Vicky and her co-workers left work that evening, they did so not knowing the outcome of Madeline’s conversation with the "tyrant." They could still hear the voices of the boss and Madeline coming from the boss’s office as the two argued loudly.

1. Ombudsperson: An official appointed by the company to investigate employees’ complaints against management.

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**CASE STUDY QUESTIONS**

1. (a) Communication is a process. For each stage of the communication process, briefly identify the major element or event of the case study that represents the phase. (4 marks)

(b) Identify four (4) of the main goals of business communication. (2 marks)

(c) For one of the four main goals of business communication identified in (b) above, state how the actions of Vicky’s boss contributed or failed to contribute to its accomplishment. (2 marks)

(d) Identify one barrier that exists in this case and indicate the event that it is linked to. (2 marks)