Enron Case Study

Enron case tells about unsuccessful attempts of the company to introduce a recruiting plan that sounded effective in theory but did not turn out as productive in practice. The company’s collapse was provoked by many factors, and in spite of their success in implementing the potentially promising recruiting plan, everything went wrong. The company had to face sullied reputation and bankruptcy along with multiple lawsuits and charges, downsizing and other serious problems. There was nothing talented to-managers could do about it.

The recruiting strategy of Enron implied complete empowerment of the employees. The organizational hierarchy was transformed into a matrix organization where everyone had authority and access to the required information to improve the productivity of the entire company. The employees did not hold back on moving anywhere they would like to move, and a lot of space for creativity and thinking out-of-the-box was provided (Craig & Amernic, 2004). It seemed like perfect conditions were offered to those who would like to continue self-perfection and gaining valuable experience or skills for future achievements. The most of the attention was paid to the top-performers that were gathered and recruited for the new upcoming project. It was also essential to conduct internal recruitment in Enron’s strategy. The company was a platform for attracting, bringing up and training talented employees who are interested in entrepreneurship (Furaso & Miller, 2002).

In my view, Enron’s EVP recruiting strategy did play its role in the company’s collapse because the recruitment managers concentrated mainly on the top-performers instead of paying enough attention to the middle and low performers who generally form a larger group of workers inside the company (Furaso & Miller, 2002). The idea of empowerment was great but it should have been provided for all employees but not merely top-performers. Besides, each authority requires control and responsibility, and obviously, there were not enough mechanisms for checking on the top-performers and providing them with valuable feedback – that is why so many charges were pressed down on them. The idea of being talented and worthy was insufficient to ensure that the same productivity levels remain, and that is why the recruitment message was not effective enough. The middle performers inside the company must have lost self-confidence and gave up on their usual activities while top performers relaxed too much and did not pay attention to important outside factors of influence.

It is essential to create a recruiting message that is attractive without overselling the company in order to keep the potential employees both inspired and focused on their tasks. The motivation inside the message should have been set to stimulate them to work harder for the future result but not to merely enjoy the success of the former experience. Too much self-confidence and too much of uncontrolled freedom resulted in illegal activities and related cases that left their spots on the company’s reputation.

If Enron ever takes a decision to reconstruct itself, the recruiting message should be modified compared to the original version. The target group is the average employee who is not very talented but interested in effective cooperation with the environment, managers and colleagues. The message should include the motivation based on individual performance but not on the generalized company outcomes that are usually out of the reach for a regular employee (Thomas, 2002). The employees should feel that they are all trusted to access all required tools and information in order to satisfy the company’s customers. No exceptions should be made as tools and empowerments should unite all the organizational levels instead of separating them like the previous Enron’s message did (Furaso & Miller, 2002). Surely, putting more responsibility on the subordinates, the managers have to take care of the bonuses and compensations that will follow as the best motivation to improve one’s performance. The top-managers need to conduct a social survey asking employees whether they are more interested in monetary bonuses like salary add-ons, social/family bonuses like more free time and days off, or career bonuses expressed in giving more responsibility, assigning challenging tasks and promotion.