Answer

Performance Development Plan

            This paper summarizes the case Missed Pickup Means a Missed Opportunity for 30 seeking a Fellowship and creates a performance development plan. It also outlines a set of instructions that managers should do to adopt the plan. Moreover, the paper conducts a gap analysis and identifies the key opportunities for improvement.

Summary of the Case

             Careless behavior of University of California Barkley and Federal Express made thirty students to miss the chance to take part in the Fulbright research grant. For one to be eligible for Fulbright research grant, he or she was required to mail their applications in a promptly fashion before the deadline, 20^th October (Murphy, 2004). Nonetheless, because of software hitch, Federal Express failed to collect grant applications from the university on the stipulated timeframe. Resultantly, Federal Express sent letters to the university notifying them about the situation and backdated the consignment’s air bill to reflect the initial date in which the applications were to be collected. As a fact, Federal Express accepted the fact that they failed to collect the applications on the required date. However, the university is equally blamed because their mail attendant ought to have moved with speed to the post office once it was evident that Federal Express would not arrive on the agreed date and that such situation would hinder the mailing on arriving on time (Murphy, 2004). Nonetheless, the situations became more complex when an administrative assistant sent an email to the Department of Education explaining to them what transpired hoping for some level of tolerance.

              After several weeks, the University received communication from the Department of Education informing them that the applications that were submitted past the deadline were ineligible for the Fulbright grant process. Lawyers standing in for the Department of Education posited that had it not been for the information that the university sent about the concerns of the matter, they would not have known what transpired, as well as, the change of the backdated air bill and thus would not have declined the applications.

Needs Assessment

             Two university workers are to be blamed for the situation that denied thirty students the opportunity to clinch Fulbright research grant. In particular, the administrative assistant and mailroom specialist need to work on their behaviors to effectively execute their roles and prevent such situations from occurring in the future.

Mail Specilist

              The job of a mail specialist is to post and deliver  parcels and mails to businesses and residences. Other roles encompass sorting mails for delivery and conveying such mails on defined route either through vehicle or any means possible. Their skills should encompass critical thinking, active listening, service orientation, social percetiveness,  complex problem solving, judgement and decisio making,as well as, time management. In the provided case scenario, the mail carrier conducted his job as required. As a fact, he complied to all the protocols and the inconviniences that occurred wer beyond his control. In particular, he followed his routed and the software error caused the problem experienced. Nonetheless, his communicatio skills would have been better in case he does a route on a daily basis as this would have helped to salvage the situation.

Administrative Assistant

            Drucker (2005) contended that the role of the administrative assistants is rooted on their ability to deal with details and complex situations. In a nutshel, their role entails looking into the daily running of the office while at the same time supporting the activities initiated by business owner, executive manager, or professional group. Normally, the skilled administrative assistants are often able to climb to higher positiojs, support government officials in higher ranks, or can move to other jobs within the industry or organization. Their appropriete skills would encompass communication skills, time management, technology skills, organizational ability, problem solving and management skills. Essentially, in the case study provided, the administrative assistant was competent and the problem that occurred wa just an omission from his end. She ought to have consulted with top leadership before sending the email because the severity of the case requires approval at almost every phase.

What Should Have Happened and What Did Happen

            Mail specialist was not aware that backdating the package would detrimentally influence her efforts to correct the situation. One thing that was not done is that once the university decided to mail off the application, the mail specialist assumed the role of sending such applications within the set deadline. Moreover, rather than sending an email, mail specialist ought to have notified the appropriate authority on the approaching deadline and sought for alternative solutions to the challenge. In case an institution such as university is conveying sensitive emails such as the one in the case study provided, it is prudent for the institution to hold a specific person responsible for ensuring that the information is sent at the set time and that alternative solutions are put in place to deal with any challenge that may occur.

            Undoubtedly, the FedEx courier cannot be blamed for the problem experienced in the case provided. Nonetheless, some blame should be apportioned to mail specialist. Intuitively, this is not a mere error. As fact, the mistake had a detrimental effects that would significantly influence interfere with people’s careers and consequently affect their lives. The need assessment that is evident in this scenario is the lack of being keen to details. The alleged software error should have been detected in time irrespective of whether the specialist knew how to fix it or not. Whether in the FedEx or US Post Office, mail specialists are supposed to work diligently and ensure that there is no mistake in their works. Nonetheless, this never happened in the case scenario provided since the letters were never dispatched on the stipulated timeframe.

Performance Improvement Plan

             Performance improvement plan is one of the most effective approaches that managers can use to inform workers who have failed to attain certain job requirements on things they need to do to execute their job responsibilities (Aguinis, 2013). To make the performance improvement work, Carter and Meridy (1996) suggested that the management must hold meetings severally with the employees. With that respect, the management in charge of building operations and mailroom department must provide their staff with the attached performance improvement plan to explain the situation, ways of improving, the expected outcomes and consequences of not meeting the required expectations. The management must hold a meeting with the staff maybe every one month to ensure that the measured described in the performance improvement plan are authenticated by members of the staff are performing their roles as stated in the document. In case the members of the staff fail to fulfil the standards stated in the document within the stipulated timeframe, necessary disciplinary actions such as written warning or termination will be taken against them.

            Robinson (2004) posited that the management must write down every suggestion or concern raised by the employees during meeting and act on those concerns or suggestions accordingly. In light of that, after every meeting that will be done every month, the management will write down the deliberations with the workers such as any necessary information and assure them of gathering essential signatures for the purposes of improving the formulated plan. At the end of the improvement plan timeline, the final report will be regarded as the workers’ contribution and thus will be subjected to numerous reviews in the future.

Appendix 1: Performance Improvement Plan

Mail Specialist

Employee’s Signature: _____________________________________________

Date: __________________________________________________________

Supervisor’s Signature:_____________________________________________

Date:__________________________________________________________

Appendix 2: Performance Improvement Plan

Administrative Assistant