Case Study on Peer Conflict

Case Background:

The case study shows an experience of an employee who was chosen among his peers to be
promoted and was asked to lead the same peer group of employees. This is a real-life incident and it
happened in a Telecom MNC. The case will focus on how this sudden promotion of that particular
employee changed the total work environment and actions that could have been taken by Line
Management to avoid the conflict.

Case Description:

Biswajit was ecstatic today. His one year dedicated effort in Mumbai for successful deployment of
3G network for Vodafone has paid off finally. The Vodafone Project was managed by a Telecom MNC
and Biswajit was a third-Party employee for the Telecom MNC. Still working as a third-party
employee for the same telecom firm when his Manager called him and gave the good news. He has
been selected for permanent position and will be joining in Guwahati as Senior Engineer for Telecom
Network Integration. Biswajit had moved to Guwahati two months back after completing his
assignment in Mumbai. He liked the city and was bonding well with the existing employees in the
project. But there was a striking difference in work culture in Guwahati. While the Project Team in
Mumbai judged and rated people only on their performance and there was no bias related to
favouritism, Guwahati was a bit different. Here the project Team was a bit biased to people from
from the state. Biswajit could sense this quite early while working on the Project.

Few moments later his phone beeped and here it was, the Big Thing, offer letter from the
Organisation. He immediately went through the email carefully and noticed that he has been
assigned to lead the same project he was working on. Finally, his dream to join this Big league of
telecom firms has turned into reality. He immediately rang his parents and well-wishers and gave the
good news. He is supposed to join as Full-time employee within the next couple of days.

He still had to work for the couple of days as a third-party employee and needed to have a proper
handover from the present project lead before he starts his new assignment.

Next day when he moved in to office, his Project Lead congratulated him for his achievement. But he
could see a striking difference in the attitude of his fellow peer employees. He gauged that his
induction into the organisation has not gone down well with the other third-party employees who
had been working for almost 2 years in the same project. He could sense that they felt how an
outsider from a different region has been preferred to be inducted. On the face they were good to
Biswajit but something hadn’t gone down well with his other team members and that was very
much visible. Biswajit tried to keep things as much as normal and tried to send a message that he
was their same peer just that his role has changed.

Next day he formally joined the Organisation and after his induction was over he was welcomed on
Board by his Line manager Arijit Banerjee who worked from Kolkata. Biswajit was then asked to
report to Divesh Saikia the Project Manager. Divesh was an experienced professional and was
handling this project for five years. He was an able manager and meant business. Biswajit in his new
role was supposed to look into the deployment of 3G network for Assam and ensure that
requirement from Project Team is met. He will have his team which comprised with his ex-
colleagues from the third-Party company.
Immediately after joining he sent an email to his team asking for cooperation and commitment to
meet the project targets, He was now leading a team of 10 people all of them had worked with him
as third-party employees in Guwahati. Among them Mihir, Deepak and Swarup were in that project
for almost 4 years and due to long term engagement were close to the Project Manager Divesh.

The First few weeks for Biswajit went well. Even being a Project Lead he used to take part in regular
integration activities along with other team members. He thought he has managed to make his
presence comfortable with in the team and his team has accepted him as a New Project Lead. But
now with new targets coming in, he had to withdraw himself from integration activities and had to
play actual role of a Lead, that is assigning Task, supporting the team on field technically and getting
things done. He now had to assign task to Mihir, Deepak and Swarup and make them meet the
delivery timelines. That is when conflicts started happening. Although the rest team members
coordinated to meet the Delivery timelines but these three created un necessary delays in their
activities. Things didn’t go unnoticed and escalations from Project Management started happening.
The whole delivery depended on coordination between the team members and since the network
deployment was taking in on field, conversations mostly happened over phones.

Biswajit tried to speak with the three explaining to them the difficult questions he had to face from
Project Management but they came up with varied excused for delays. There were instances when
they took ad hoc leaves and kept their phones switched off without giving proper brief of their
activities. Initially Biswajit tried to keep up with the patience. Sometimes he himself went the extra
mile to compensate the pending work to meet the deadlines, but it was not possible for a single
individual to compensate for three people. Biswajit discussed the same with his Line Manager Arijit
and briefed him about the entire situation. Arijit asked Biswajit to speak with them and make them
understand the priorities. He further iterated that these people were performing well before and
may be needed to be briefed properly. Biswajit tried to coordinate and motivate them and asked if
they faced any challenges but didn’t quite get a response. They explained that they were giving their
best and reminded him that few weeks back he was also in their same position and should be aware
of difficulties faced on field.

Then one day a severe escalation happened. A network upgrade activity being done by Mihir and
Deepak got delayed which resulted in overshooting of Network Downtime. This resulted in severe
loss of revenues for the client and escalation reached to the Project Manager Divesh who in turn
asked for RCA ( Root Cause Analysis ) to Biswajit and marked his manager Arijit in CC.

Deep diving into the issue it was found that there has been gross negligence that happened in field
at the time of activity and the activity was jointly performed by Mihir and Deepak. Biswajit reported
the RCA to Arijit.

Arijit already aware of the previous complaints thought of taking a stern action. But he was in
dilemma. Why these people had a sudden change in attitude. Under pressure of management to
make sure such negligence was not repeated, he had to remove those people from contract. The
whole incident didn’t go down well with the three guys. They felt that they have been measured
down heavily and firmly believed Biswajit was instrumental in getting them removed from work.

Biswajit whole team was restructured after the incident and he was given a new set of people to
build his team. With older team members reshuffled Biswajit was now happy with his new team as
he was now confident of leading them in his own terms and didn’t carry the baggage of leading a
peer.
But then the most unforeseen incident happened. While returning from office Biswajit was
physically assaulted by Mihir , Deepak and Swarup. Biswajit immediately reported the incident to
Arijit. This being a high-risk incident, Arijit immediately reported it to HR. The MNC being very
particular about employee safety, immediately moved Biswajit from Guwahati to Kolkata. Actions
were registered against their names and the three people were blacklisted in the company’s record.

Recommendation based on MPMO Course :

Based on our course study I think this is a classic case where communication was not done properly
and expectation was not set in place.

As a Line Manager before handling over the leadership of the team to Biswajit he could have briefed
the whole team about the change of the Project Lead. A proper brief about Biswajit’ s achievements
could have instilled faith and confidence among the team members. More over Arijit could have also
communicated that if others perform at the same proficiency they would also be considered for
permanent hiring and given higher roles and responsibilities to showcase their skills.

Added to that instead of an immediate handover may be shadowing Biswajit for few months could
have made his acceptance more. The first time when Biswajit escalated about the concern to his
manager , instead of just ignoring it as a petty matter , Arijit could have got into a team meeting to
understand where is the gap.