1. You are a recent new hire at your company and have been given the responsibil
ID: 352866 • Letter: 1
Question
1. You are a recent new hire at your company and have been given the responsibility for soliciting the employees in your 10-person department for the company’s annual drive to support United Way (a national nonprofit organization that works with a coalition of volunteers, contributors, and local charities to help people in their own communities). Your company sets “giving goals” based on each employee’s annual salary. You have completed your initial solicitation of your coworkers, and several of them declined to contribute, while others have pledged amounts well under their “giving goal.” As a result, your department is a few thousand dollars short of its goal. You have a meeting this afternoon with the senior vice president responsible for the company’s United Way program. You are concerned that you may be pressured to re-solicit and encourage under contributors to pledge more. Do you think that this is a fair request? How would you respond if such pressure is applied to yo
Explanation / Answer
If Vice-President suggests that an attempt should be made at re-soliciting then the approach is probably not the right one. The issue is that the department is falling short at giving goals. Hence the focus should be at finding a solution that would encourage the employees to contribute their share. Re-soliciting may not be the only way to do it. Other ways like finding why the employees are reluctant to meet the goals or looking for causes where the employees would be interested in contributing to would be a better approach.
If I am convinced that my initial attempt at soliciting my colleagues were sufficient then I would propose alternate solutions like asking employees to suggest alternate causes to which they would be willing to contribute. Re-soliciting can be a back-up option but to find a sustainable solution it is essential that the underlying reasons which are keeping the employees from meeting the goals are identified. If it is found that employees feel the goals are too ambitious then the message should reach the top management for review.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.