Study case humans resources.

1. What do you think are the reasons for the decision of Mr Schmidth? Does that sound Right to you?

Mr Schmidth sees a very important incapacity of adaptation in Isabel. He doesn’t want Isabel to do more than the rest but is necessary that Isabel obtains a very good productivity into company Schedule. The decision of leave the company is correct in our opinion if Isabel work philosophy is not according with the company “cultural values”. The Spanish and German work philosophy is very different and we can understand the decision making.

1. How would you describe, from a business point of view, the behavior of Isabel? Do you think that is consistent with her career?

 From a business point of view I think Isabel's behavior must be analyzed in terms of the objectives that she was designated and her productivity. Namely, even she spends more time than the rest of the workforce, if her work is different from others and she is willing to stay late, it shouldn’t be seen as a negative thing. But this is not the case, the fact that she needs more time than other colleagues, creating a surplus of 23 hours and 16 minutes, for the same work, is an indicator of low productivity. Therefore, it’s logical that the company understands that she doesn’t fit with the culture of work and find a different profile of someone else.

On the other hand, we can understand that given the career of Isabel, she is used to having this behavior. Firstly she comes from a different culture, where sometimes they look more times you are in the office rather than productivity. In addition, she is an enterprising woman who transformed a family business, which means that she was used to spend more hours than workers as she was the boss. Otherwise, to have carried out these changes in her own business, surely she had to spend many more hours than a normal workday.

1. In your opinion, has influenced the behavior of Isabel being a woman? A man would have acted the same way?

From our point of view a Spanish men with the same attitude and willingness to work than Isabel would have been the same. Here in Spain, if you stay more hours working than the expected timetable, it doesn’t mean that you are less productive or that you need more time than the rest to get the same job. It means that you are interested in your work and you want to improve as much as possible.

Therefore, we think that the problem is not to be a men or a woman, the problem is know the cultural values and traditions of the country where you are going to work to avoid complaints and criticism from the other employees.  

...