Cases for Speaking Situations (Batch 1, Division C)
Case 1: Redeploying employees in other locations
You are the head of a manufacturing unit in the outskirts of Mumbai at Xylo Tyres, a well-
known tyre manufacturing company. It has made the difficult decision to shut down its
operations due to various reasons such as high labour costs, high taxes, and market changes
that demanded newer technology. It is extremely expensive to roll out such hi-tech operations
in an old existing location. As a result, the organization needs to redeploy its workforce to
other locations where the company continues to operate.
The organization understands the impact of the closure on its employees and aims to support
them through the transition. As an organisation, Xylo is actively working on redeploying its
workforce to other locations where the company continues to operate. A significant number
of employees will have the opportunity to join the company’s other production unit in Halol,
Gujarat. This latest greenfield facility is experiencing growth and requires skilled individuals
to meet the increasing demand for your products. The company is also expanding its
distribution network in both Coimbatore and Patna to optimize its supply chain and improve
customer service. There are openings for roles such as warehouse supervisors and logistics
coordinators. Your corporate headquarters in Gurugram has several departments that may
have positions suitable for employees with transferable skills. These departments include
sales, marketing, finance, human resources, and IT. You are responsible for communicating
the closure, explaining the reasons behind it, and providing assistance to the affected
employees in finding new employment opportunities within the organization.
Address the employees and encourage them to explore these possibilities and apply for roles
that align with their expertise and interests.
Case 2: Disregard for Company Resources
You are a Senior Manager in a strategy consulting division of Arrow, a leading consulting
firm headquartered in Hyderabad. It has been drawn to your attention by the admin team that
there has been a steep jump in overhead costs. After looking at the data furnished, you realise
that excessive use of company resources by your team can be detrimental to the
organization’s efficiency, productivity, and financial health in the long run. Several of the
team members are incurring unnecessary travel expenses by choosing costly
accommodations, transportation, or dining options. You also receive complaints from other
teams regarding some members reserving meeting rooms unnecessarily, resulting in the
unavailability of rooms when needed by other teams. There has been an excessive increase in
the organisation’s energy bill and you need to sensitize team members. You have observed
that many of them leave lights, computers, or other electronic devices on when not in use,
leading to unnecessary energy consumption. You need to establish that the organisation has
clear travel and expense policies that outline acceptable limits and guidelines. Encourage
team members to only reserve rooms when they are genuinely required. Remind them to
cancel bookings if they are no longer needed. Encourage team members to power off devices
when not in use and make energy-saving practices part of the office culture. You are upset
that they need reminders for what is considered to good organisational citizenship, especially
when none of them are new joiners.
You have decided to express your displeasure while addressing your team.
Case 3: Non-conformity of Rules
You are a project lead in Pinnacle, a leading IT company. During the past few weeks, it has
come to your attention that some team members have been deviating from the established
rules and regulations that govern your project. As the team lead, it is your responsibility to
ensure that all members of your team adhere to these guidelines for the successful completion
of the project and to maintain a positive working environment. You have noticed that certain
team members have installed software applications on company computers without proper
approval, potentially compromising security, licensing, and compatibility. Some team
members have not followed the established data backup protocols, leading to the loss of
important project files and delays in recovering the information. Instances have been
observed where team members have shared confidential project-related information through
insecure channels or failed to use encrypted communication methods as mandated by the
company’s security policies. There have been reports of team members discussing sensitive
project information with individuals outside the team who are not authorized to access such
information, violating non-disclosure agreements.
You are extremely concerned about non-conformity of rules and regulations and how it is
going to impact the project and the overall satisfaction of the stakeholders. You have decided
to address the team after much deliberations.
Case 4: Restructuring in an Automobile Company
You are the factory manager in a manufacturing company, Spencer Motors. The automotive
industry has faced various challenges such as shifts in consumer preferences, advancements
in electric and autonomous vehicles, and changes in global trade policies. These factors have
led to market changes, including decreased demand for certain types of vehicles and
increased competition from new players in the industry.
As a result, your organisation has been forced to restructure their operations by streamlining
it to align with the changing market dynamics, closing production facilities and downsizing
its workforce. The downsizing has affected various departments within these companies,
including manufacturing, research and development, and administrative functions.
You have been asked to communicate the decision to the 56 people affected in your factory.
You want to ensure that they do not take this as a reflection on their performance and want to
extend support in as many ways as you can.
Case 5:
You are the former editor of a highly regarded print magazine, Insightful Perspectives, that
has been a staple in the publishing industry for over two decades, captivating readers with its
thought-provoking content and beautiful designs. With the changing landscape of media
consumption and the growing prevalence of digital platforms, the company has made the
strategic decision to embark on an exciting new chapter by transitioning the magazine to an
online format. As part of this transformation, a new editor, renowned for her expertise in
digital media, has been appointed to lead the digital version of the magazine. This shift in
focus will require the reassignment of some employees to the digital division, where they will
have the opportunity to work closely with the new editor and play a pivotal role in shaping
the magazine’s online presence. In light of these developments, it is natural for employees to
have concerns and reservations about the transition. As the former editor, your role is pivotal
in communicating this change effectively to the team.
Deliver a clear and empathetic speech, providing support, and fostering a sense of unity,
helping ease the employees’ resistance and creating a positive mindset towards the
magazine's transition to the digital platform.
Case 6: Navigating a Reputation Crisis and Restoring Brand Image
You are the CEO of Elysian Cosmetics, a prominent makeup brand known for its innovative
and trend-setting products. Currently, you are preparing for the highly anticipated launch of
an organic range of makeup products, which holds the potential to regain your company’s
position as the industry leader after eight months of struggling. However, a recent incident
has thrown a major wrench into your plans.
One of your employees from the social media team, during a live stream on Instagram,
inadvertently offended a well-established beauty and fashion influencer. This incident
quickly escalated, triggering a strong reaction from the influencer’s devoted fan base. As a
result, your company is facing severe backlash and being subjected to an online cancellation
campaign.
Understanding the gravity of the situation and the potential damage to your brand’s
reputation, you have been called to address the board regarding this crisis. In your speech,
you will emphasize the importance of taking responsibility, swift action, and open
communication. You will outline a comprehensive plan to rectify the situation, including
issuing a public apology, engaging in constructive dialogue with the influencer and their
followers, and implementing sensitivity training programs for all employees. Your goal is to
regain the trust of your customers, restore the company’s reputation, and ensure a successful
launch of the organic product line. Address the board now.
Case 7:
You are the Head of the Sales team for Snackables Inc., a manufacturer of packaged snacks
such as chips and biscuits. The snack industry is heavily saturated with competition from
other brands who all produce very similar products. You are tasked with leading a team of
250 sales executives to increase the sales for Snackables and drum up more business despite
these competitive pressures. With a saturated market, you are faced with the challenge of
finding innovative ways to motivate the sales executives to increase Snackables’ sales under
these conditions. You know that the team requires workshops for upskilling and a robust
incentivization scheme to keep them motivated and help them succeed.
You address the team telling them about this two-pronged approach of upskilling and
incentivization. You tell them about a series of training workshops for the team focusing on
sales techniques that would be effective in the current market. The workshops will provide a
comprehensive overview of the skills that the sales executives need to maximize their
performance. At the end of each session, they will be given additional information to take
back to the office and further develop their skills. You also appraise them of the incentives
such as cash rewards, public appreciation, awards within the organization, time off, vacations
(domestic and foreign) etc. that will be given to the best performing sales executives each
month.
Case 8:
Your company, Arya Motors, has been witnessing a steady decline in its clientele. The top
order had hoped that the post-Covid scenario will bring with it some positive tidings for Arya
Motors, but things are far from this supposition. As a team, you resorted to several measures
to up your game – lucrative offers, best deals, excellent client servicing – but all to no avail.
It is becoming difficult for the company to get the salaries of its employees going. In a
desperate cost-cutting measure, the company has decided to cancel the mid-year bonus to the
employees.
You have to be the bearer of this news to the employees of your Andheri branch. You know
that it is a negative news to contend with, but you have to come up with good reasons so as to
keep the morale of the employees high. You fear that if the employees get demotivated, it
will further affect work, which may lead to cancellation of a year-end bonus as well, or
worse, lay-offs. You have to come up with a good plan in order to address your employees in
a meeting you have just called.
Case 9:
You are the Head of a small section in a creative advertising agency, ‘The Script.’ Last year,
after noticing the lack of diversity in your talent team, you had decided to launch a targeted
recruitment drive to include the LGBTQIA+ community. You were driven by two factors:
first, you did believe that a diverse team will help you tap the niche segments of the market
and second, you wanted to provide a platform for people who found it difficult to gain
acceptance in society.
You were very happy with the success of the drive. Today you have a diverse team of twenty
members of which 4 belong to the LGBTQIA+ community. You feel that you have found the
right talent mix which will help you to deliver content a cut above the rest. This happiness
was short-lived, however. In the past few weeks, you have been noticing that this group of 4
is increasingly being excluded by the other 16 members of your team. This exclusion is
glaring not only during lunch hours and coffee outings, but also in official tasks. There is a
lack of communication and co-ordination between both the groups, resulting in delays and
misinterpretation of facts. The situation has worsened to the extent that the majority group
point blank refuses to share any prior piece of learning experience with the new entrants.
Worried about these new developments, you decide to meet your team to gravely point out
the issue. You want to drive home the point that diversity is crucial for organizational goals.
You also want the team to be sensitive to the new members, who are feeling ostracized in
your company.
Case 10:
For almost three years, your company had a remote working policy following the dreadful
pandemic. Even when things started easing a bit, your management did not enforce work
from office until this month. This month there was a directive issued asking everyone to
resume work next month onward. Since this was on the cards for quite some time, thankfully
it was not shocking for your division. Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before
the official announcement would be made. This was duly made last week during the
company’s monthly meeting for all the employees covering various divisions.
Post this announcement, while you were happy that the news was handled well by your
division, you were in for a little surprise when you met with requests by some of your
members. Several of your managers reported to you that their employees have requested for
permission to get their pets along to work. While this is not a regular scenario at the work
places, this is not unusual either. You know that some offices in your vicinity are pet friendly
workspaces, where the employees can get their pets along every day. You feel that engaging
with the same move in your office will have a positive impact on the employees’ well-being
as well as their productivity. You know that it will not be easy to convince the management
about letting employees get their pets to work, yet you decide to make a strong case
advocating for the same. You have a meeting with them tomorrow wherein you will bring up
this topic and persuade them to make this office a pet friendly workspace.
Case 11:
You are the VP of Sales and Marketing for a large insurance company. Once a year your
company rewards and recognizes the top 100 sales agents by taking them to a luxury resort
for a four-day conference. Business presentation meetings are held during the morning.
Afternoons are free time. Agents and spouses can choose from an assortment of activities
including golf, tennis, boating, fishing, shopping, swimming, etc. During one of the annual
conferences, while you were at the gym working out on the treadmill on day 2, your assistant
comes to you with a request to speak to you urgently. She informs you of frantic calls from
the head office in Mumbai. On returning the calls, you understand that there is a grave
situation back home with regards to the new project the company has undertaken. The crisis
needs to be addressed and the team has to report to the office ASAP to prepare for a high-
level meeting. You decide to take the plunge and get the team back to the office.
Address the team about the situation now.
Case 12:
You are the team lead in the competitive IT industry, working with Oracle. Recently you
have been getting complaints about regionalism and bigotry in the team against people from
certain states. Your team mates from North east are terrified because of this bullying and
have expressed the desire to be moved to another team. You fear that this intolerant behavior
will seriously rupture the famed team synergy which has helped you to become one of the
most desired teams in the company. You decide to address the team to come out of regional
bias and work towards organizational benefit.
Case 13:
Your senior management has decided to promote a junior to a superior position. This has
come as a shock for those who spent 5-6 years in the company. As the manager you are
bound to follow the instructions of the higher ups, though you cannot let the morale of your
team go down. You sense the resentment of the seniors in the team and decide to address
them separately. The company has informed you that the actions were taken in the best of
interests and after a lot of deliberation.
Case 14:
You are the CEO of a small software start-up called TechConnect. Your company has been
rapidly growing over the past year, and you have recently secured a significant investment
from a venture capital firm. With this new funding, you are planning to expand your team and
launch a new product within the next six months. However, you have noticed a lack of clear
communication and collaboration between your development and marketing departments.
This has resulted in missed deadlines, misaligned messaging, and decreased customer
satisfaction. You decide to call a joint meeting with the heads of both departments to address
the issue and find a solution.
Case 15:
You are the marketing director of a fashion retail company, TrendSetter. Your company has
recently launched a new line of sustainable and eco-friendly clothing, but the sales have been
disappointing. You suspect that the lack of customer awareness and understanding of the
product’s sustainability features is the main reason behind the low sales figures. You call a
meeting with your marketing team to introduce some ideas on how to effectively
communicate the eco-friendly aspects of the product to the target audience and increase sales.
Case 16:
You are the operations manager at a chain of restaurants called FoodHub. Recently, there
have been instances of food safety violations and customer complaints related to hygiene and
cleanliness at one of your flagship locations. As a result, the restaurant’s reputation has been
tarnished, and there is a noticeable decline in customer footfall and revenue. You call a
meeting with the restaurant’s staff, including the head chef, front-of-house manager, and
cleaning crew, to address the issues, reinforce the importance of maintaining high hygiene
standards, and implement new protocols to prevent future incidents.
Case 17:
Your organization has a generous tuition reimbursement program, but currently employees
must take classes outside of regular business hours. You’ve noticed that many classes you
want or need at the local university are offered infrequently during evenings and weekends. If
a class is already full or you have another commitment, you often have to wait months before
a seat is available. Your co-workers are similarly affected.
As the HR Head, your solution: flex-time for full-time employees going to school. Your
solution would allow employees to reschedule up to five hours each week to take classes
during work hours. Employees could make up hours in the mornings, evenings, or weekends
and could only reschedule hours if meetings and other work-related duties don’t conflict. You
have requested the upper management to listen to your views. Walk into the conference room
and address them.
Case 18:
You are an entrepreneur with a couple of bakeries in Mumbai. For Heaven’s Cake! has
gained immense popularity ever since you started the business with your family savings three
years ago. You are a trained patisserie chef from Le Cordon Bleu, London. With the first
outlet in downtown Mumbai, you had appealed to the senses of the SoBo crowd and people
from all over the city started flocking to your café. You worked hard to take your work closer
to the suburban customers and started another outlet in Bandra recently. The financial world
too has closely followed your success. Last month a private equity investor ICICI Ventures
has approached you to pick up a stake in your company, an investment that will motor your
dreams of becoming a large patisserie chain with outlets not just across Mumbai but also in
other cities. Talks are in the final stages and you are getting ready to make a public
announcement of the deal. Day before yesterday an irate customer posted on Instagram a
picture of one of your hottest selling products, the Blueberry Danish, with a tiny insect in it.
The caption read: “For Heaven’s sake there is a termite in my Bite.” Soon, the picture
circulated across all social media platforms and your pages were flooded with customer
queries. You are shocked as quality control has been at the heart of your success. Even a
small lapse can ruin the reputation built over time and at this juncture, more so. With just one
person in charge of your social media accounts, you do not have the bandwidth to tackle the
storm. As if that was not enough, your potential investors have asked you to address them and
share your plan of action to tide over this situation.
Address the team from your potential investors in a meeting.
Case 19:
You manage a group of 20 people. The previous manager had the reputation of being a
“micromanager”, obsessing over such trivia as the number of pencils and pens used by
employees and the length of fifteen-minute coffee breaks down to the minute. You have a
very different management style, which has been welcomed by your employees and rewarded
by their increased productivity. But in this more relaxed, trusting environment, you have also
become aware that company communications are being abused. Some employees openly
spend their computer time on ebay or game sites. Others don’t hide the fact that they are
making and receiving personal phone calls. You imagine that email is being similarly
abused. Address this issue in your group meeting and communicate your thoughts without
giving them the impression that you will be falling into the negative role of the previous
manager.
Case 20:
Your company has decided to eliminate dress-down Fridays. Although popular, dressing
casually has spilled over to other days, and several departments have noted that absenteeism
has risen while productivity has fallen. Some guests and customers have also complained of
seeing employees “clowning around” on the job. Though it is possible other factors account
for the change in employee behaviour, the increase in problems correlates closely with the
implementation of dress-down Fridays, nearly two years ago. Frustrated, management wants
to see if eliminating casual dress on Fridays leads to improvement. Office employees are
now to wear formal business attire on all workdays. Suits and blazers are appropriate for
men and women, although women may also wear dresses and skirts appropriate for the office.
Both are to wear business tops, and men are to wear ties. Shoes and hosiery should match the
attire. The next two dress-down Fridays will be the last for the company. After that,
employees who ignore the change in dress code are subject to disciplinary action, including
being dismissed without pay for the day. Announce the change in policy to the employees.
