A number of years ago, the European Environmental Agency (EEA) based in Copenhagen, Denmark created the Subsidy
Management Program (SMP) within the Water Department. The main functions of the program are to review requests for
government financial support for community projects and engineering design reports. Also, they need to perform operation
and maintenance inspections of waste-water treatment facilities. Paul Wagner, head of the SMP, supervised four engineers,
one technician, and one secretary. Three of the engineers were quite new to the agency within the last four months and had
arrived from a variety of European cities. The senior engineer, Winona Burrell, had approximately three years’ experience in
the SMP. She had gone through a robust selection process lasting a couple of weeks to ensure that as a leader of a team
of engineers she had the qualities required of her role. The rest of the SMP were recruited and selected in a less rigorous
manner but this had served the department well over the last few years and the department had managed to remain within
their yearly budget for hiring and training.
Winona Burrell’s experience meant that Paul Wagner assigned her the areas with the most complicated projects within the
department. The other three engineers were assigned areas with less complex projects but worked closely with Burrell to
learn all they could about the program from her over the next two months. These sessions varied between simple, routine
tasks that all the engineers needed to know to specific, specialists tasks that required in-depth, individual learning. Despite
being an engineer, Winona had spent time within the human resources department of another European agency, whilst
doing job rotation during a one-year internship. Here she learned to appreciate the value of developing people and was able
to transfer her methods and ideas on training to the engineers on her team at the SMP.
At the beginning of 2020, Paul Wagner decided the new engineers had enough experience to do more difficult tasks;
therefore, the SMP work could be shared on a more equal basis with each new engineer having responsibility for two or
three geographical areas. This arrangement seemed to work well as the whole Water Department succeeded in reaching its
objectives at the end of the first quarter. This was an excellent outcome as the whole team of SMP engineers had only been
fully together for about six months. However, at the same time as these results appeared, Paul Wagner was offered a job
with a consulting engineering company and he decided to leave the EEA. He gave two months’ notice to top management.
During those two months top management did not advertise for a new SMP head. However, on the Monday of Wagner’s
final week, senior management of the EEA met with staff of the Water Department. They announced that, until a permanent
SMP head could be found, they had appointed a temporary head of the SMP Samuel Kutzman, a senior engineer from
another EEA department – the whole SMP team were very surprised.
Q1. Compare and contrast the most likely differences in the recruitment and selection strategies (R&S) SMP
might use in hiring Winona compared to that of employees in the department. Justify your response using the
case, theories and concepts studied during the course. Moreover, evaluate the R&S actions of senior
management of the EEA in their appointment of a new SMP head.
Q2. Winona appears to have been able to develop her team of engineers quite successfully giving them the
training required and achieving department objectives. Discuss to what extent the EEA organisation might be
responsible for the success of this training? What training techniques might she have employed to address the
requirements of her team of engineers and the department.
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