Green Wave Landscape Management

You are the operations manager for Green Wave Landscape Management, a provider of residential and commercial landscape maintenance. You have a substantial number of customers in your metropolitan area. Due to the increase of business in the summer, you must hire additional employees. This year, you hired six new employees.

Henry Stewart is your most valued customer because he is a prominent real estate agent and refers many of his clients to your company. He recently had his home’s trees and shrubs sprayed for insects by your company. 

Yesterday you received the following letter from Mr. Stewart:

August 18, 2014

Dear Green Wave,

I have been a customer of yours for five years and have sent you innumerable customers. And you have the nerve to send over two bozos to spray my yard. Those two idiots have killed over $2,000 in prize fish. Additionally, they were rude. As you may or may not know, I raise expensive koi in my fishpond. Whenever your people spray my shrubs and trees, they have been asked to cover the pond. I assumed people in your profession would know how to do that without being told. Obviously, I was wrong.

I am terminating my service with Green Wave, effective today. I demand immediate restitution for my dead fish. If payment is not forthcoming, I will see you in court.

Sincerely,

Henry Stewart

In addition to the letter, you also discover that Mr. Stewart has posted scathing commentary on your blog. He has posted the same complaint and request for remuneration publicly. Now you have a public relations crisis.

During your investigation, you discover that Tom Harrelson, field manager in charge of assigning workers to the various job sites, sent two new workers to the Stewart residence. The accident at the Stewart residence probably occurred because these new workers were sent alone. Your company policy is to pair new and experienced employees on work assignments.

Please write an analytical report in memo format for internal circulation to your company’s president, Ms. Sarah Robinson. 

Your report should provide any necessary narrative background on the situation, explain what went wrong, and provide recommendations to prevent it from happening again. Was this an isolated incident attributable to a field manager who failed to follow company policy? Alternatively, are there deeper causes related to your company’s communication processes, training and hiring policies?

In constructing this report, you can get creative and construct possible problems that may not be apparent in the scenario described above. For example, you can construct communication problems for the company, even though the scenario above does not specifically mention communication problems in the company. Or you can construct hiring problems and weaknesses if you would like to.