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Assignment: Case study Billy's Building Supplies Inc. Billy's Building Supplies Inc is a local building supplies store established by Billy Green in 2005. Prior to 2005, Billy was working as a building contractor for a large building and construction company in Brisbane. After an unfortunate incident at the building site, Billy and Ted, a co-worker of Billy, were injured. Billy suffered severe injuries and received workers compensation to the value of five million dollars. Ted only suffered minor injuries and no compensation was awarded to him he was declared fit to continue with the duties of his job as contractor. Billy's injuries made it impossible for him to continue his job as building contractor and he invested his compensation funds in establishing his own building supplies business. From the start, Billy loved having his own business and offered his customers with quality building products. He took pride in serving his customers with excellent advice based on his years of experience as a building contractor. Since 2005 his business expanded and four years later, Billy had five employees working full-time as sales assistants. Following the incident at the building site in 2004, Ted was unhappy about the outcome of his case. blamed the company for the incident and resigned. After being unemployed for two months, Ted phoned Billy late one night asking for a job at Billy's company. Ted complained to Billy about how unfairly he was treated in the workplace injury case and indicated that he desperately needed a job as he was financially strained. Ted's wife was also unemployed and with a young family, their money had run out. Billy, being a kind-hearted fellow, agreed that Ted could join his team of sales assistants, starting the next day.
On Ted's first day of work, Billy arranged that the other employees came in to work thirty minutes earlier to meet Ted. Billy wanted his group of sales assistants to work together as a team and felt it was important that they accepted Ted as part of the team from the start. He arranged for plates of sandwiches and muffins to be delivered to enjoy with their morning coffee. Billy introduced Ted to the rest of the team and they warmly welcomed the new employee to their team. Because Ted had no experience in working as sales assistant, Billy asked Ned, the senior sales assistant to show him around and to explain to him how things were done. Ted found Ned to be approachable and helpful and Ted soon understood what was expected from him. Ted settled in quickly and for the first few months everything seemed to go very well. Ted's background in the building industry provided him with the expertise to serve their customers with excellent advice and help on their building projects. Billy received very positive feedback from his customers about Ted and his sales increased. Although Ted enjoyed the challenge of the new job during the early months, the monotony of the job started to affect him and he became restless. He felt that every day was the same - a stream of customers asking the same questions over and over... Three months into his new job, Ted invited Billy for a drink after work one Friday afternoon. After ordering drinks at the bar, Ted told Billy that he was now ready to move forward and take part- ownership of the business. He said that he now had a good understanding of the business and was getting bored with only serving the customers - he could now get involved with the management of the business. He also said that they both knew that Billy 'got lucky with the work compensation case and that he, Ted, was the unlucky one and deserved
the business. He also said that they both knew that Billy 'got lucky'with the work compensation case and that he, Ted, was the unlucky one and deserved to share in the compensation payout by taking part- ownership of the business. Billy was astounded by Ted's attitude because he appointed Ted to help him out of his financial dilemma and never considered that he was obliged to share ownership with Ted! When Billy said to Ted that he had no intentions of even considering part-ownership with Ted, Ted abruptly got up. He left with the words "you may regret this, Billy.... During the following weeks, things started changing at Billy's Building Supplies. First, Ted did not show up for work one morning and when Billy called his mobile telephone, Ted said that he was taking a sick day. Billy had to cancel one of the other sales assistants' day off because they were short of staff for the day. The next day Ted arrived late for work and instead of serving the customers, he went to the office and accessed the list of building materials suppliers on the computer system. When Billy came into the office and asked what Ted was looking for, he brushed him off by saying that he was just checking something. Then there was the incident where Ted interrupted a discussion that Charles, one of the other sales assistants, had with a customer about the use of a specific type of concrete. Ted overheard the instructions that Charles provided the customer about how to use the product and interfered by saying "No, no, no... that will never solve your problem. What you need to do is...' and he took the customer away from Charles and showed him other products. Charles felt humiliated and angry because he had been serving that particular customer for a number of years and the customer trusted his advice. Because Charles did not want to make fuss, he
Charles felt humiliated and angry because he had been serving that particular customer for a number of years and the customer trusted his advice. Because Charles did not want to make fuss, he decided to let it go. When Gordon, another sales assistant, complained to Charles about a similar incident, they decided that they needed to talk to Billy about Ted's behavior. Gordon also told Charles that while he was fetching something from an isle the previous day, he saw Ted, on the other side of the aisle, handing over a card with a telephone number to a customer saying 'I can give you these supplies at a much better price - ring me tonight and we can arrange that'. The customer then left the shop without any purchases. During a lunch hour when Ted was out, Charles and Gordon spoke to Billy about how they detested the way in which Ted treated them, taking their customers away. Gordon did not tell Billy about the telephone numbers that Ted gave to the customers because he did not want to be seen as a whistle- blower - he had no evidence and thought that he might have misunderstood the situation. Billy promised that he would talk to Ted about that and asked Charles and Gordon to try their best to get along with Ted and not take his actions so personally. Because Billy was installing a new computer system and transferring to a new stock taking system, he completely forgot to talk to Ted. The relationship between Ted and the other sales assistants continued to deteriorate. Ted continued to be late for work, taking sick leave on short notice and extended lunch hours and the other sales assistants had to cover his work during those times. When he was at work, he acted as if he was the other sales assistants' supervisor, interfering with how they served their customers and taking over customers from the sales assistants. Many of the regular customers did not return after being served
customers from the sales assistants. Many of the regular customers did not return after being served by Ted and slowly but significantly sales started to drop. Billy noted the month by month drop in sales and became very concerned. In the five years that he had the business, he never had such poor results and there were no obvious reasons for the drop in sales. Some days they would get only three or four customers in and some would insist on being served by Ted. Quite often they would leave without any purchases. One morning Billy received a SMS from Ted that read: 'I'm resigning - not coming back. Don't bother about my last pay cheque'. Although Billy was stunned about receiving a text message instead of a letter of resignation, he was actually relieved about Ted's resignation. With all the complaints that Bill received about Ted's behavior from his fellow sales assistants and also the drop in sales, it was better to have a resignation than having to make sales assistant position redundant. With all that has been happening with the business and the employees, Bill knew it was time for him to make some serious decisions about the business. Shortly after Ted's resignation, a pamphlet was distributed in the neighborhood. The pamphlet read: "SAVE BIG $$$!! Don't pay too much for building supplies - place your orders online and save! Lowest prices guaranteed. Phone Ted at