CASE:Dependable Cleaners Expands Its Business Marie Luna was human... 1. CASE: Dependable Cleaners Expands Its Business Marie Luna was human resource management major who graduated from the University of the Philippines Iloilo City. After going through a job search, she decided that she would really like to work in the family business and see if she could learn the business and contribute to its success. Her family owns a neighborhood laundry service to a major provided for the Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, Parañaque, and Cavite areas. It provides a laundry and dry cleaning services not only to residents and restaurants in the areas but most of the casinos in Parañaque. Marie's father told her that if she wanted to join the family business, he would consider expanding their services to the hospitals in Las Piñas, Parañaque, and Muntinlupa. Marie was quite excited with this idea and decided to join the firm in January last year. In seven months, Dependable Cleaners was able to obtain laundry contracts with the major health-care facilities in the three cities and put up a laundry service in Laguna. The company now has a staff of 420 employees located in five branches (Las Piñas, Parañaque, and Muntinlupa, Bacoor, Cavite, and Sta. Rosa Laguna). Among the service employees in the company are laundry service employees, seamstress (mostly women), and clean-up crew. The staff included receptionists, accounting clerks (accounts receivable, accounts payable, cashiers, payroll), and secretaries. There are supervisors and one manager for each of the branches. There are also two shifts for the service employees and the supervisors. The shifts are from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight. Marie acts as the human resources manager. She has one assistant who helps her in performing her major tasks- recruitment, training, benefits administration, and payroll. Marie's father, Mr. Luna pays employees what he considers "market rates." Mr. Luna would meet with his friends who owns business in the area and based on what they pay their employees, he would decide on the salaries of DC's employees. When both men and women perform similar tasks, Mr. Luna pays the men more since he believes that they have families to support. He thinks women have spouses who contribute to the family income and they do not need to be paid as much as the men. This practice worries Marie and she has discussed changing this practice with her father. Marie also observes that the workers seem to spend a lot of time socializing and smoking outside of the building. Mr. Luna does not have a consistent performance management policy. If he believes that an employee has done an extraordinary job, he would give this employee a cash bonus at the end of the year. At one point, he has told employee that he wants them to maintain excellent attendance record and make sure that they complete their tasks well each day. However, employees still do not really understand how their performance is measured, what constitutes good performance, and how the bonuses are decided.