COVID 19 DILEMMA – Analysis of Business Problem.

COVID 19 was a pandemic that hit the world in 2020. The world has since been adversely affected by the impact of the pandemic on the people especially the work-force of an entire world population. Companies have been saddled with the way and manner to manage their staff and ensure they are not infected with the disease while making effort to assist those infected recover completely.

Government of different countries had to create isolation centers at a particular point in time. These centers got filled up with patients when this pandemic was at its peak. People had to start self-isolating when the government approved isolation centers were already filled up.

Intex limited, a manufacturing company at a time had most of its staff members coming with a report for refund on COVID 19 treatment. Doyin, the HR manager got disturbed about the possibility of an increase in such request from member of staff if nothing is done about it. This is a company that has 400 staff strength, 12 of which are expatriates. The expatriates already have embedded in their medical insurance a coverage for this pandemic. Each expatriate who was infected got the company to pay for them. Average cost for each expatriate was N1,200,000 while the local staff members were asking for N200,000 refund.

Aside the dilemma faced by Doyin, the HR manager, the Nigeria staff were beginning to feel marginalized. They felt that they have been ill treated and more importantly their health concerns were becoming a thing they will question the management about. The union was also beginning to get interested in the case as the majority of the workers are ageing and semi-literate. They were factory workers and had worked for the company for several years.

This case became something the class was interested in as majority could relate with this incident in intex limited. The way and manner expatriates were given serious attention for top-notch health care compared to the local staff.

The Lecturer, Dr. Yetunde had to warn us about making a case look complex than it is. A situation where we begin to add to a case unnecessary to give it such complexity that it dies not warrant. Especially, how she was able to address the issue, when I made the case look like an ethical issue. She warned us of system 1 tendency in analyzing any case. This led her to discussing with us some psychological traps in decision making. Traps like:

1. Being drawn to your own idea when the facts are clear you are threading the wrong path.
2. Cognitive Miserliness – the ability and tendency of the human brain to solve problems in a simple and straight-forward ways rather than utilizing more sophisticated and effort-intensive ways.
3. Motivated reasoning. Beware of making decisions based on your emotions. Emotional biases lead to justifications or decisions based on their desirability rather than an accurate reflection of the evidence.
4. Anchoring Traps – Anchoring trap can cause alternatives to be clustered around the “anchor,”
5. Framing Traps
6. Confirmation trap
7. Cognitive Loading – Information overload.

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