This case discusses the challenges that appear in the company Aramex. The management considers that students in the Arab countries should demonstrate the initiative in creating solutions to the problems. The same approach is used toward the employees in the organization, where people are expected to be innovators and follow a certain benchmark. Thus, it is necessary to identify the challenges and suggest solutions to them from the HR perspective.
The first challenge to appear is connected with the behavioral competency of the workers. There seems to be a lack of it in the Aramex that stops employees from getting a promotion. Those individuals who, from the beginning, do not have the initiative or willingness to be creative and perform more than is required will never succeed in their position.
Since Aramex has a decentralized model of management, this may lead to some misunderstandings and misconceptions in the workplace. Each region has the ability to make its own decisions and evaluate the employees’ performance on their terms. Moreover, managers have the freedom to implement different methods for the development of their subordinates, and particular rules or qualities might be neglected.
The second challenge portrays the weakness in the company’s balanced scorecard. Aramex puts too many responsibilities on the employees and pressures them to do the job they do not have to do. The boundaries between the healthy initiative and shifting in duties are becoming less recognizable. This may be a decent part of the succession plan, but it is hard to apply to everyone and every situation regarding the additional work and unfamiliar tasks.
Aramex management, represented by Corporate HR Manager Andrea Kassisieh, Manager of CEO Operations Reem Khouri, HR Consultant Musa Anz, and Chief Operating Officer Iyad Kamal- believes that if the problem exists, the people have to think of a solution. They believe that in the Arab world, in order to deal with the issue, it is enough to see the question from a different perspective and adapt it to the needs.
The last challenge is the inadequate expectations from the employee and misconception of the management’s work. When the issue occurs in the workplace in the first place, the HR and managers should be the ones to deal with it depending on its characteristics. However, employees are the ones who are expected to use the available resources and make changes.
Regarding the Arab countries, the management of Aramex believes that the employees are those who need to work on the solutions if they are dissatisfied with something. That approach is rather questionable because this is not a strict company rule or requirement, and the issue might be out of their professional abilities to solve.
The solution to the problem is to change the approach to the hiring and development process and improve the newcomers’ onboarding period. The company already has training programs and education for the employees to improve their qualifications, but this may have a certain disadvantage. Concentrating on the workers’ autonomy and desire to push them forward to try new roles and tasks might overshadow the existing advantages. Therefore, when new people come to the corporation, the training team must focus individually on each one of them and develop their initial skills in the first place. Ensuring that workers are comfortable with the assigned duties will allow them to freely choose whether to stay in the same position and work to gain more solid experience or try another perspective in the company.
The solution to the issue would be the redistribution of power among the management and employees. Aramex chose an innovative and productive approach when it decided to create a space for its employees to be creative and show themselves. Demonstrating the abilities and additional professional skills is beneficial for developing and promoting the career ladder. However, the management team started to replace the opportunities for activism with the unnecessary responsibilities that employees feel obligated to perform. Undoubtedly if they want to try, they can, but they do not have to deal with any inconvenience in the workplace. Aramex should work on building a problem-solving team for the company that would be in charge of the problem-solving in the organization. Eventually, employees will not feel pressured and will perform their duties without the additional stress and focus on the task. Simultaneously, workers will still have an opportunity to demonstrate their best qualities and go further in their careers if they want.
The managers should first think about how to fix the situation and get invested in the problems in the workplace. At the same time, they can leave space for the employees to suggest their ideas if they demonstrate a creative mindset and let them show leadership qualities. Therefore, in any case, the workers will always have support in dealing with any kind of inconvenience. However, when they are expected to deal with the issues on their own, there is no solid foundation or help to solve them, especially when the employee lacks the required skills or has no interest in it.
Overall, Aramex needs certain renovations from the HR perspective that aims to provide the employee with more comfortable working conditions and optimize the process of performing their duties. Employees may feel less pressure and stress if they focus on developing their initial qualities. In addition, redistributing the responsibilities and eliminating some higher expectations will be significantly beneficial for the company and its employees.