Case study: Report on R&R LTD

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Aim:     To analyze the arguments that relate to a range of issues in contemporary HRM

Learning Outcomes:

To be able to

1. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding around key and contemporary debates about theory and practice in the fields of HRM and how these are met in practice whilst assessing its contribution to the organisation.
2. Evaluate and analyse workplace scenarios relating to relevant strategies for effective HRM within the current organisational context.

CASE STUDY

Note: It is permissible to make assumptions by adding to the case study details given below provided the essence of the case study is neither changed nor undermined in any way by what is added.

R&R Limited is a chain of warehouse-type, out-of-town stores with branches throughout the UK. A typical R&R store would set out to supply all their customers’ requirements in areas such as: holiday and leisure wear; camping equipment and tents; sports kit including running shoes; fishing rods and other fishing tackle; gardening tools; golf clubs, cricket bats, tennis rackets, and so on.

 

More recent events have forced R&R to retreat from its strategic and competitive aspirations.  The economy has experienced a severe recession; overall unemployment was increasing until recently; levels of disposable income have dropped; and although life expectancies have increased, more people seem to devote their leisure time to shopping or to inactive (and inexpensive) activities like watching TV or multi-tasking on-line.

In addition, R&R has to cope with ruthless competition from more specialised retailers in such fields as sportswear. The popularity of electronic games with exercise functions and applications for mobile technology means people can exercise in their own homes, and will often prefer to do so. As a result of all these pressures, R&R is in difficulties, losing market share to the point where it is now unprofitable.

Some strategic choices have already been made.  A new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has been appointed, other directors have left and some senior managers have resigned. He has therefore recruited a former colleague from his previous company, Joanna Perkins, as the new HR Director. Joanna has a strong orientation to business and a recognition that although she is employed as the Human Resources (HR) Director, she needs to focus on the business first and its people second. Without any business there will not be any people.  She also admits that without any people there will not be any business.

 

Joanna’s initial investigation into the characteristics of the R&R workforce reveals the following:

• More than 80% of the employees have worked at R&R for at least 15 years;
• High labour turnover in some stores with the average staff member staying only a few months;
• Management style is ‘command and control’;
• 10 hierarchical levels between the CEO at the top and trainee shelf-stackers at the bottom of R&R;
• Comprehensive rules govern every aspect of R&R’s operations and constrain decision-making. For example, when a customer complains to a frontline employee, the complaint has to be passed up through a supervisor to the store manager before it can be resolved. This may take up to a week.
• Recruiting and selecting a new member of staff may take 12 weeks from the moment a staff requisition request is made, to when the new recruit is inducted. Inadequate staff numbers may also be one of the causes for the company’s poor relationships with its customers.

Customer feedback questionnaires are not analysed reliably because many are “lost” without ever finding their way to the HR department where they should be analysed. When received, they indicate at best that customers are “satisfied”. They are seldom “very satisfied” and the majority are either “mildly” or “strongly dissatisfied” with: the products, the service, the prices, the retail environment, the treatment they receive when they complain, the attitude of the staff, and a culture which seems to them to be old-fashioned, bureaucratic, intimidating, unhelpful and unfriendly.

The employees in each store seem more concerned with talking to each other, texting their friends or hiding in stockrooms. Managers too, spend a good deal of their time in their offices, completing forms for Head Office. Supervisors see their jobs as largely concerned with correcting any behavioural deviations, negotiating shift changes, and “interviewing” subordinates who arrive late or who have been absent without any identifiable cause. In effect, supervisors and store managers in the R&R hierarchy are the company’s corporate policemen.

Joanna Perkins has concluded that a major part of the solution for R&R is to create a workforce that is truly “engaged”. You have been brought in by Joanna as her HR Adviser to help prepare the ground for the kind of transformation which she believes to be essential.

Key Tasks:

Joanna Perkins in which you offer reasoned responses to the following:

1. Identify and explain which HR practices need to be examined further to improve the workforce at R&R.

Discuss what kind of training and development activities (and for whom) might be helpful to assist with this improvement