Retention Program: The Case of Jacobs Engineering

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III/ The Issue Faced by the Company:

- Background information of the issue:

The main reason of the joint venture between OCP and Jacobs was Jorf phosphate hub. It is a slurry pipeline that was supposed to transport phosphate from the mines of Khouribga to the harbour of Jorf Lasfar. JESA was also accountable for the construction of refineries where the phosphate was transformed and used as chemicals and fertilizers. The company was also supposed to deliver a plug and play station and a big complex of warehouses. After that, they took care of the green city project globing houses, schools, and sport complex. When all of these projects were finished, top management did not communicate about the upcoming construction projects in El Jadida and other cities. People from the support job positions were not aware of the fact that the company was working in the whole kingdom of Morocco. Its activities spread from Khouribga and El Jadida to the south and the east of the country. The human resources people should have been the first ones to understand it since the recruitment was focused core business employees (engineers and construction).

- The Issue:

At least 150 employees recruited by JESA left in 3 years. The majority of the people who resigned were Moroccans from the support job positions. Subsequently, the efficiency of the work in the departments diminished. It caused a bad work environment because people from each department were accusing others for not meeting the deadlines. The drop in the workplace had its repercussions since the loyal and experienced employees had to work more for the same pay in order to keep things going and to satisfy the clients of JESA. The profiles of the employees who were quitting are the following: High skilled Moroccans who studied and worked abroad, middle managers coming from OCP, and local line managers. The years of experience that Moroccans had abroad were not taken into account by the recruiters and these talented new hires were accepting small salaries and felt under employed. It was a big problem to retain these profiles that were more interested by the extrinsic benefits and incentives of the job. Finally, we might say that the main issue is the fact that recruited employees in the support job positions keep leaving the agency.

3- The causes:

During the meetings with top management, employees were not empowered to make any suggestions unless they were asked to. The same was applicable at the departmental level where the workforce was not allowed to take initiatives or be creative. They simply had to follow the plan and meet the deadlines as programmed by top management. After a while, this way of working became boring and repetitive since everyone was specialized in a specific field. Moreover, there is a huge difference in salaries between expats and locals “The use of expatriates commonly involves high pay inequalities between local staff and assignees, which are likely to reduce locals’ perceived distributive justice and thus the retention capacity of compensation practices” (Reiche, 2008). It became a big problem since it was not linked to the know-how or special competencies and skills of the foreigners. Hence, the locals felt this as a discriminatory measure since a lot of them more talented and earning half of the pay of their expatriate counterparts. Last but not least, locals were also performing better since they knew the market and were able to have a better interpersonal communication with the stakeholders than the expatriates. There was also a discrepancy in the salaries of the locals hired in the first two years of the company and those who joined afterwards. The end result was a drop in the performance of the new employees and the start of a bad word of mouth between professionals since the base pay of JESA was the highest in the market and its best bargaining tool to attract talent. Another problem was the eligibility to the training programs provided by the HR department. Only top and middle managers were able to have access to rich and diversified training programs. Regular employees had only the opportunity to do language training (French and English), and one performed by the IT people concerning the use of the intranet. It was a display of unfairness and conveyed a bad image within the regular employees. It definitely didn’t help the new hires to have a feeling of belonging to JESA. A lot of things were missing in the recruitment offers to motivate people. There was no dearness allowance that will help employees keep their salaries aligned with the inflation of the Moroccan market, which is growing at a fast pace. Bonuses were only given to the core business employees in order to meet the delivery deadlines of the projects. Nothing similar was done for the support positions employees. Fringe benefits were only provided to top management and it could have been used differently since a lot of the new hires are aged around 30. Gifts like those given (tickets for concerts, a weekend for two in a hotel…) would have been more useful as motivators for young employees and would have enhanced the feeling of belonging. Expat managers had problems dealing with their teams, lot of clashes occurred with the local line managers concerning the methods used to perform the job and the lack of understanding of the foreigners. Local line managers were giving insights and feedbacks to their foreign supervisors in order to make the adjustments necessary to get the most of their team. Unfortunately, foreigners refused to adapt or did it reluctantly. Some of the clashes were so complicated and huge that the line managers did not want to work with their supervisors anymore and wanted to be relocated to other projects. New hires were not promoted even after spending two years in the company. The majority of the promoted people are those coming from OCP and those who were hired during the first two years of the company. It conveyed a very bad message to the remaining employees considering that these people were already having a better salary and package. The new hires knew that it was not linked to their performance and started complaining about the fact that they had no career planning. Generally speaking, employees get promoted every 5 years in Morocco. It is something that cannot be accepted by locals with previous experience abroad, especially since they couldn’t bargain when they sign their contracts and relied on the fact that they will get advancements quickly at JESA. All these changes in the business culture impacted negatively the appealing image of JESA. The main reason behind the negative changes that occurred was the second (see appendix 1) of JESA (expat). He was not knowledgeable