Growing Pains: Employee Development and Operational Procedures in a Small Expanding Firm

This decision-based critical incident describes how Operations Vice President Cody of Bigfoot Heating and Air should deal with Nate, his competent but overstepping customer service specialist. While Nate was well liked and performed the scheduling and IT aspects of his job quite well, he tended to inaccurately diagnose customer issues over the phone, costing the firm significant time and money. While Cody would normally have fired such an employee, a tight job market, scheduling disruptions, and worries about a lack of standard operating procedures at Bigfoot were causing him to consider a more developmental fix to the Nate mess.