Case Study: Juniorization Strategy Analysis for MGT602 at Torrens Uni

This case study, prepared for Torrens University's MGT602 Business Decision Analytics course, examines the implementation of a 'juniorization' strategy within a multinational financial-banking organization. The study explores the shift from senior to junior staff, analyzing the impacts on productivity, employee engagement, and turnover. The report utilizes decision-making tools like SWOT analysis and reviews relevant literature on team dynamics and decision-making theories. The case investigates challenges such as increasing productivity, managing attrition, and developing skills within a younger workforce. The analysis provides recommendations for a balanced approach to juniorization, emphasizing talent management, learning and development initiatives, and employee engagement to enhance overall corporate performance. The study emphasizes the importance of strategic planning and adaptation to ensure successful outcomes in a changing business environment. This assignment, contributed by a student, is available on Desklib.

TORRENS UNIVERSITY AUSTRALIA
MGT602 - Business Decision Analytics
Assessment 2: Case Study
Lecturer: Dr. Fleur Fallon
CASE STUDY ON JUNIORIZATION
Alexandra - Daniela Tabolcea( Student No. 00262183T)
Arman F. Carlos (Student No. 00222146T)
Julia Pasik - Maciejewska
Luiz Bispo (Student No. 00260174T)
19 April 2019
I. TABLE OF CONTENTS (by Arman)

II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The paper shows that juniorization strategy though a welcoming proposition in the corporate
scenario but it need to be undertaken to strike a balance regarding diversification of the
employees rather than simply a cost cutting initiative. The corporate attitude towards
juniorization has been limited to a cost cutting measure only but it affects the overall
performance of the company. This is because the junior members need proper guidance in
execution of the jobs and simply giving them a leadership position does not solve the purpose.
They tend to underperform owing to the corporate pressure which ultimately leads to a poor
performance of the overall corporate scenario.
In this context the elements of talent management, learning and development initiatives and
employee engagement need to be considered for training the employees and make them
proficient with the organizational scenario for delivering an expected corporate performance.
The aspect of learning and development initiatives seems to be the most important element as it
provides a proper guidance to the junior team members to approach their task and contemplate
the job purposefully. But the most effective strategy would be the combination of various
elements like talent management, learning and development initiatives and employee
engagement to have a superior level of corporate performance off the junior personnel.

III. INTRODUCTION
The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a few decision making tools through the exploration
and analysis of a case - the process of juniorization, in this case. Furthermore, to think about our decision-
making style (rational and intuition) and figure out whether it could be suitable towards the
implementation of the juniorisation process within a company. The focus on this report shall be on how to
develop a strategy that is suitable for staff “juniorization” implementation and that can prevent risks and
be able to overcome challenges. Through data analysis, literature review and evaluation of systems and
methods, it is approached facts about the implementation of the process and recommendations for further
improvement.
A. The Case
In many businesses today, the practice of “juniorization” is being implemented where the older
workers are being swiftly replaced by youngers workers. This diversification in the workplace is causing
fundamental shifts in just every perspective of a business and considering modern phenomenon, it is one
of the greatest evolutions that has taken place in the corporate culture. In other words, juniorization is the
reason that the median age at the organization might be lowering at a staggering pace (Fournier &
Srinivasan, 2018). It is also much more than a way to cut off high salaries.
Juniorization potentially shift wider aspects of organisation functions in extent with corporate
culture, talent management and technology. Due to increase in diversity inside the workplace, the culture

of company is changing rapidly where many corporations are reducing their structure hierarchies to raise
productivity and engagement (Beechler & Woodward, 2009). It is necessary for the leader to leverage
their respective talents with engaging all individuals of team and optimize contribution. Considering
technology, many organisations adopt juniorization as a strategy even in a complex industry. These
organisations are learning that they are not bound to pay senior executive an astounding salary for 15
years of experience and market knowledge if they can seek for the technology that provides access to the
junior colleagues.
On the other hand, there are some disadvantages also in case of juniorization. For instance,
recruiting young people to do the work of experienced people in order to save money simply does not
solve the issue. The organisation may save few dollars at front end but will mostly lose money when they
factor in employee engagement and high turnover that is most common amid junior employees. Along
with this, young employees often bring more drama to the workplace as their leaders mostly do not vetted
properly. Considering diversity, often in organisation, the policies develop in terms of race and gender,
however, it ignores the approach of age diversity. Sometimes an organisation need someone who can pull
them back before they go over the edge and that someone will surely some experienced employee, who
already been on the edge himself before.
In addition, before approaching to juniorization approach, an organisation also need to consider
stability. In other words, before setting the experienced employees out to sea, organisation need to think
upon several aspects. Unlike mature workers, young individuals change their jobs in the same way they
are changing their socks. Sometimes they are true as there are so many opportunities available in the
market like being a kid in the toy store. Hence, mature workers are less inclined to jump shift the moment
a bigger boat comes calling. Hence, this needs to be considered by the organisation before setting mature
workers out to sea.
Although Juniorization may be perceived negatively by some individuals, however, it is
significant for executives (of all ages) to recognise the trend and frame strategies to meet it head-on.
Businesses that are able to embrace the change can easily attain strategic advantage with new
diversification that will directly foster creativity, raise productivity and retaining top talent. It is just
linked with - “Naturalistic decision making”, which is an attempt to understand how humans actually
make decisions in complex real-world settings which include dynamic and changing conditions, time
pressure and experienced decision makers (Klein, 2008).
1. Definition of Junior and Senior Member (Employee)
According to the Oxford Dictionaries (n.d), junior refers to a young individual. Therefore, junior
member is a young individual who belongs to an entity. In addition, the United Nations (n.d) considers
humans between the age of 15 and 24 as young people.
Nonetheless, each nation has its own definition of “junior”. For example, in Australia, a junior is
any person with less than 21 years old (Australian Government Fair Work Ombudsman, n.d).
A senior member, through another perspective, is an older and experienced individual, perhaps
with higher status within entities (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d).
2. Comparison between Junior and Senior Employees

The World Economic Forum (2018) indicated that 42% of the global population is composed by
young people, and basically most of them are within Sub-Saharan region.
Figure 1: Youth population (15-24 years old) change between 1990 and 2014 in different continents. Source: World
Bank Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals (n.d), cited in World Economic Forum, 2018.
The youth unemployment rate across all countries in the world in 2015 was of 13.5% (The World
Bank, n.d).
Figure 2: Youth unemployment rate between 1996 and 2018. Source: ILO Trends Econometric Models (n.d), cited
in The World Bank, n.d).
Extracted data from PayScale (2019) indicates that among three different professions, seniors
salary is higher than junior salaries (Table 1). In addition, it is possible to observe that among the three
randomly chosen professions (accountant, mechanical engineering, and business analyst), senior
employee own almost double value than juniors or youth.
These may be evidences of why companies are preferring to implement a “juniorization system”.

Table 1: Comparison between Junior and Senior Wages within three different professions - Accountant, Mechanical
Engineering, and Business Analyst
ACCOUNTANT
Figure: Average Junior Accountant Wage. Source: PayScale, 2019.
Figure: Average Senior Accountant Wage. Source: PayScale, 2019.
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Figure: Average Junior Mechanical Engineering Wage. Source: PayScale, 2019

Figure:Average Senior Mechanical Engineering Wage. Source: PayScale, 2019
BUSINESS ANALYST
Figure: Average Junior Business Analyst Wage. Source: PayScale, 2019
Figure: Average Senior Business Analyst Wage. Source: PayScale, 2019
IV. METHODOLOGY (Alexandra)
The case study will be (FUTURE TENSE? - OR PAST TENSE? - I think it is better as past tense)
based on data collected from a variety of resources, such as books, academic articles and business
reports. Literature review will support the research undertaken in order to address the research question
and aim. Provided the diversity of resources available and the high risk of bias associated, we intend to
evaluate the credibility, reliability and worth of sources by verifying the authors, the notoriety of
business journals and representativeness of a sample in the case of studies based on surveys. The data
extracted from business reports generated by the company will be questioned for validity against the
formulas and the elements taken into account. Throughout our decision-making process, acting as
consultants for the company in question, we will make use of comparisons and decision-making tools
whenever necessary. The team meetings are a central element for the decision-making process and
these will be documented in appendices as meetings’ minutes.
V. TEAM INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF DIVERSITY (by Arman)

VI. LITERATURE REVIEW ON TEAMS AND DECISION-MAKING (by Alexandra and
Arman)
A. Decision making theories
B. Decision making tools
VII. CONTEXT AND SITUATION (by Alexandra)
A. Context
“The company” is a multinational organisation headquartered in Europe, activating in the
financial-banking industry. With offices all over the world and more than 100.000 employees worldwide,
“The Company” is a leading financial group with more than 2000 trillion AUD in assets and over 38.000
billion AUD annual revenues. The main services provided are investment banking, financing and asset
management. The organisational structure is horizontal, regional emphasized and customer-focused.
Two years ago, “The Company” decided to focus on hiring mainly young people, as part of their
new strategy. They called it headcount “juniorization” and it involved replacing the mature employees by
younger talent. It was expected to bring a breath of fresh air for the corporate culture, to create added
value for all stakeholders and to contribute to the innovative culture, besides saving “The Company” a
great deal of money. In reality, it did exactly the opposite, except cost cutting which was an implicit

consequence of such an approach. Five months after landing junior employees in almost all the teams, the
side effects started to show up: low productivity, performance issues, high turnover and confusion. The
new hirees were disoriented, particularly about what was expected from their side. Except induction
training that only provided new employees with an idea about the organisational structure and workplace
safety, no other training was developed to guide or to help junior workers understand what and how to
perform. By the end of the year, some junior team members shifted into new roles, acting as team leaders
for the teams they once were part of. It was their first time managing a team and the lack of experience
revealed serious consequences: team members started to feel demotivated, teams were underperforming
and team leaders started to resign after only a few months. “The Company” was focused mainly on cost
cutting and productivity gains, although concerns were raised about poor performance and attrition issues.
Retention was more challenging than ever and “The Company” didn’t know what went wrong.
B. The Challenges of juniorization:
 Increasing productivity
 Decreasing turnover
 Managing attrition
 Improving retention
 Dealing with teams (age) diversity
 Developing skill
 Recruiting top talent
C. Data analysis and interpretation
One of the most useful strategic and decision-making tools is represented by the SWOT analysis,
which our team of consultants find it appropriate to be conducted in the current situation of the company.
The environment is not static, but dynamic and in continuous change, and this is particularly true for the
financial-banking industry, where the rate of change is high. Therefore, it is suggested to perform SWOT
analysis not only once, but on a regular basis. This will enable “The Company” to develop heightened
awareness through better understanding of the internal and external environment.
As it can be observed from below SWOT analysis, one of the weaknesses faced by the company
is represented by the high turnover of employees. This is fuelled especially by the junior staff of “The
Company” and the “juniorization” strategy implementation played an important role. Despite the
complexity of such strategy and its implications, knowing the weaknesses can turn out into one of the
main strengths if managed properly, which can further lead to future growth.
Table – The company’s SWOT analysis
STRENGTHS OPPORTUNITIES
- Top banking group in Europe
- Global recognised as a top equity
derivatives player
- Worldwide spread network
- Positive long-term credit rating
confirmed by all rating agencies
- Technological advancement and digital transformation
of the group
- Specialised in advisory and wealth management markets
- A very good brand recognition that can facilitate the
penetration of new developed products
WEAKNESSES THREATS

- High market liquidity
- Decreasing trend of profits
- Low penetration rate in Eastern Europe
- Increasing staff turnover
- Highly dependent on their home market (France)
- Fintech developments
- Increased competition from non-banking companies
Over time workplaces have become more diverse from all perspectives, including age and
seniority, and will continue to change as more factors exercise their influence, such as decreasing birth
rate, increasing retirement age or increased life expectancy. Such demographic changes transform
organizations, making them more age diverse (Rabl, Triana, 2014). Age diversity is represented by the
differences and their distribution in terms of age, seen as separation, variation and disparity (Harrison,
Klein, 2007).
Given the challenges “The Company” is facing, our team of consultants has a particular interest
in the age structure at group and headquarter level and the years of service for each age range. Taking into
account the relevancy of this type of data for our research and that the only source providing it is “The
Company” itself, we carefully verified the provenience of the data. Thus, provided the headcount figures
rely on counting staff and that this type of information is audited prior to disclosure, we consider it to be
reliable for our research going forward.
The company’s worldwide headcount was 149.022 people at the end of 2018 compared to
147.125 at the end of 2017, which reflects an increase by 1.2% (Société Générale, 2019). Below table
highlights the staff evolution over three years from 2016 to 2018 which had an ascending trend.
Indicator (FTE) 2018 2017 2016
Group headcount at EOY 149.022 147.125 145.672
The following charts reflect the distribution of the workforce at a global level (67 countries) by
age range for 2018 and 2017, as well as the staff distribution by length of service (Société Générale,
2018; Société Générale, 2019). As observed from the charts, the percentage of women is fairly higher in
both 2017 and 2018 and most of the employees are between 30 and 40 years old. Even though major
changes cannot be easily observed using these charts, the reports published by the company highlight a
slight increase in both the average length of service (from 9.7 years in 2017 to 9.8 years in 2018) and the
average age of the employees (from 37.8 years in 2017 to 38 years in 2018).
2017

Although the exact figures are not available, we can easily observe from these charts that in 2018 there
were more juniors compared to 2017, which reflects the “juniorization” strategy implemented by the
company.
2018
At headquarter level (41.754 employees), the headcount evolution over three years is presented in
below table, as extracted from the annual social report of the organisation (Société Générale, 2017).
Given that the data for 2018 will become available in the second half of 2019, we were able to collect
data until 2017, which will not allow us to make relevant comparisons between headquarter and global
evolution. The ascending trend of the headcount is however maintained at headquarter level as well.
Headcount at
EOY
2017 2016 2015
Professionals 18.621 19.33
4
19.835
Professional staff 25.975 25.12
8
24.446
Total 44.596 44.46
2
44.281
The distribution of the staff at headquarter level by age range is presented in below table, along
with the graph representation. Out of 41.754 employees, more than 14.000 are under 34 age, which means
34% of the total staff. The average age is 40.5, while the average salary is 2.307 Euro. Things are
however different at global level compared to the headquarter, particularly in terms of human resource
management. The percentage of experts and managers is higher, which has a direct influence on the
average age, as these roles mostly fit mature people. As a consequence, the average level will also be
higher, as expertise is usually expensive. By contrast, the situation looks different in other locations,
where the group opened new sites and moved part of their operations. The purpose of this geographic

expansion was not to maintain the headquarter levels in terms of wages, but to hire more juniors able to
do the same work for less money.
Where: Effectifs = Headcount, Techniciens = Professionals, Cadres = Professional staff
Poor implementation of the “juniorization” strategy led to an increased turnover rate, particularly
among junior staff. Below table presents the evolution at headquarter level over the three years period and
it can be easily observed an ascending trend of departures (Société Générale, 2017). Although similar data
is not disclosed for the other locations of the group, we do know that the trend is more pronounced.
Leaves 2017 2016 2015
Professionals 3.898 3.728 3.315
Professional
staff
2.134 2.117 1.967
Total 6.032 5.845 5.282
Taking into account the distribution of staff by age range as presented above, we highlight below
the distribution by annual salary range for each year at headquarter level (in staff %), as extracted from
the annual social report of the company (Société Générale, 2017). We notice that the remuneration for
more than 50% of the staff is above 36.000 Euro and under 100.000 Euro and that both corresponding
salary ranges have ascending trends over the three years. Similar data is not disclosed for 2018, as not yet
available, nor for the other locations of the group, which makes comparison impossible. We do know,
however, that there are significant differences in terms of wages from one location to another and,
particularly, compared to headquarter, which is above all.
Salary range 2017 2016 2015
in Euro in % of staff for the corresponding year