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Case Study 1: A Unique Training Program at UPS

A UPS manager in California had to decide whether to grant a driver's request for two weeks off to help an ill family member, which would have violated company policy. The manager chose to grant the time off, keeping a valuable employee. He credits his decision to participating in UPS's Community Internship Program six months prior. Through the program, he spent a month in Texas assisting with housing, clothing, and drug rehabilitation. This experience helped him better empathize with employees' personal crises and see beyond financial metrics when managing. The program aims to expose UPS's predominantly white managers to poverty and inequality in cities where employees live, to bridge cultural divides between managers and frontline workers.

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150 views1 page

Case Study 1: A Unique Training Program at UPS

A UPS manager in California had to decide whether to grant a driver's request for two weeks off to help an ill family member, which would have violated company policy. The manager chose to grant the time off, keeping a valuable employee. He credits his decision to participating in UPS's Community Internship Program six months prior. Through the program, he spent a month in Texas assisting with housing, clothing, and drug rehabilitation. This experience helped him better empathize with employees' personal crises and see beyond financial metrics when managing. The program aims to expose UPS's predominantly white managers to poverty and inequality in cities where employees live, to bridge cultural divides between managers and frontline workers.

Uploaded by

noman-khan
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Case Study 1

A unique Training Program at UPS


Mark Colvard, a United Parcel Manager in San Ramon, California,
recently faced a difficult decision. One of his drivers asked for 2 week off to help an
ailing family member. But company rules said this driver wasn’t eligible. If Colvard
went by the book, the driver would probably take the days off anyway and be fired.
On the other hand, Colvard chose to give the driver the time off. Although he took
some heat for the decision, he also kept a valuable employee.

Had Colvard been faced with this decision 6 months earlier, he says he
would have gone the other way. What changed his thinking was a month he spent
living in McAllen, Texas. It was part of a UPS management training experience
called the Community Internship Program (CIP). During his month in McAllen,
Colvard built housing for the poor, collected clothing for the Salvation Army, and
worked in a drug rehab Center. Colvard gives the program credit for helping him
empathize with employees facing crises back home. And he says that CIP has made
him a better manager. “My goal was to make the numbers, and in some cases that
meant not looking at the individual but looking at the bottom line. After that one
month stay, I Immediately started reaching out to people in a different way.”

CIP was established by UPS in the late 1960s to help open the eyes of
the company’s predominantly white managers to the poverty and inequality in many
cities. Today, the program takes 50 of the company’s most promising executives
each summer and brings them to cities around the country. There they deal with a
variety of problems from transportation to housing, education, and health care. The
company’s goal is to awaken these managers to the challenges that many of their
employees face, bridging the cultural divide that separates a white manager from an
African American driver or an upper-income suburbanite from a worker raised in the
rural South.

1. Do you think individuals can learn empathy from something like a 1-month CIP
experience? Explain why or why not.
2. How could UPS’s CIP help the organization better manage work life conflicts?
3. How could UPS’s CIP help the Organization improve its response to diversity?
4. What negatives, if any can you envision resulting from CIP?
5. UPS has 2,400 managers. CIP includes only 50 each year. How can the program
make a difference if it include only 2 percent of all managers? Does this suggest
that the program is more public relations than management training?
6. How can UPS justify the cost of a program like CIP if competitors like FedEx,
DHL, and the U.S. Postal Service don’t offer such programs? Does the program
increase costs or reduce UPS profits?

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