Project manager in the human resource department

Case Study

Assume that you are a project manager in the human resource department for a large manufacturing business. All told, your firm’s human resource department employs about 120 people. As part of a strategy calling for related diversification, the firm has recently announced a merger with one of its largest competitors. That firm has about one hundred people in its human resource department. Your firm will be the dominant partner in the merger, controlling 56 percent of the new enterprise.

Your boss just informed you that you will be responsible for developing plans to integrate the two human resource departments during the merger. The boss estimates that the new, combined department will need about 160 people, necessitating a layoff of about 60 people. Your most critical task, therefore, will be to decide who stays and who has to leave. Your boss has given you clear and unambiguous written instructions that you are to select the best people possible from the two current departments, regardless of current affiliation. However, after giving you these instructions, your boss also said softly, “Of course, we should try to take care of as many as of our own people as we can.”

Questions:

1. What criteria might you find it necessary to use in making decisions?2. What are your personal feelings about how to prioritize individual employees in a situation like this?