Reinventing the Wheel at Apex Door Company

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This case is about Apex Door Company and its President Jim Delaney who has problems with his
employees. The problems that the company faces are as follows:

 The employees of the company do the work in their own way and their mistakes cost a lot of
money to the company.
 There is no formal training process for the new employees inducted
 The order processing department is chaotic as most of the order clerks don’t know how to
use a multipage order form.
 Job descriptions are out dated.
 Homogeneous training

Solutions

8-19 What do you think of Apex’s training process? Could it help to explain why employees “do
things their way” and if so, how?

The training process of Apex is not well designed and not well adhered to, which is very clear from
the attitude of its employees. It is very haphazard. It’s unstructured, and there is no training
documentation which further makes the entire training process weak. The Apex Door Company has
many flaws in delegating work and it also shows the employee’s lack of interest to work. This is due
to the incomplete and unorganized job descriptions. It shows that every employee is trained equally
across all departments and is not actually trained according to their job profile. There is a weak
accountability system as well. The person assigned to perform the training is likely to have very low
motivation as he is a departing employee. Without any formal description, the trainer will teach “his
own way” of accomplishing tasks. There are no outcome measures to determine if the training was
successful. The employees must be given effective training, so that the quality of work and efficiency
can be improved. The management has to introduce a training manual that would help the
employees in managing their roles and responsibilities accordingly.

8-20 What role should job description play in training at Apex?

Employee job descriptions are written statements that describe the duties, responsibilities, required
qualifications and reporting relationships of a particular job. Writing job descriptions is an important
step as it forms the foundation for many important processes such as job postings, recruitment,
selection, setting expectations, compensation, training and performance management. Job training
is an important step in getting a new employee up to speed on the roles and expectations. Hiring
employees without a well-defined job description can lead to reduced productivity as the new
employees would be unprepared for their duties and require extra training to fulfil their jobs. Job
descriptions play a vital role in employee training as well. In Apex, the training is same for all the
employees throughout the company. This is not feasible as different positions require different set
of skills that cannot be achieved without an effective training programme without a well-defined and
updated job description.
8-21 Explain in detail what you would do to improve the training process at Apex. Make sure to
provide specific suggestions, please.

From the case we can observe that there isn’t any form of formal or standardized training program
in Apex, no specific job and training manual or job description, absence of proper orientation
program, lack of proper orientation and training of new and existing employees. And these are the
reasons why Jim Delaney, president of Apex Door, has problems within his organization. A well-
defined job description would be a good start in improving the training process. When a job
description is in place, the roles, responsibilities and required skills are laid out. With this in mind,
the current position of the employees can be evaluated and compared with the job description
needs. This gives the objective of the training program. The training program should revolve around
this. The current process of employee orientation is not a standard one. A new employee is trained
by the departing employee who was on the same role during the overlap period. But when there is
no overlap period, then the new employee is trained by the existing employees who had
occasionally performed that role. The orientation can be conducted at two levels – at the
organisational level and at the job level. An overview of the company, its mission, vision, objectives,
culture, etc is to be explained to the employee. At the job level, the employee can be introduced to a
supervisor, who can explain the roles and requirements of the job. After which he can be sent for a
training program to familiarize him with the working of the company and his role.