Explain the Key Issues of Management

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HR175 Formative Case Study Question

Please read the question at the end of the case study and prepare an answer of at least 500 words and no more than 750 words. You have been given time in your seminar classes to complete this work, although you can plan your own time in a way that suits you. Your answer should be typed and uploaded to the formative assessment case study question submission area for HR175 on student central.

 

Answers should draw on topic areas covered in the lectures and seminars this term, e.g. culture, leadership, EQ, organisation structures, motivation etc.. It may not be possible to cover all of the theories within the word count and so may need to be selective and/or concise.

Direct 2U is a courier company that operates from depots in Glasgow, Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds and Croydon. Each depot has a fleet of vans that make deliveries of office equipment and supplies to business premises across the UK. Over the last ten years the business has become very successful and is now regarded as one of the leading courier services for office equipment in the UK.  Each of the depots is headed up by a Regional Operations Manager who in turn reports to the CEO Amir Patel who is situated in the Croydon depot where the company’s head office and small HR team are also located.

 

Although the company have been very successful in the business to business sector Amir Patel is keen to extend his courier service to the general public. With this in mind the company has recently acquired an online greeting card business that offers both personalised cards and special celebration merchandise (flowers, chocolates, wine, hampers etc.) to the general public. This new operation has continued to work independently from its former offices in Brighton with its existing staff and original Office Manager.

 

The greeting card part of their operation currently generates a reasonable profit and uses the Royal Mail for its delivery service. However, the celebration merchandise has been less successful and has yet to show any return on investment. In the last 12 months alone it has received a barrage of complaints with angry customers taking to social media to vent their frustration with images of dead flowers, crushed boxes of chocolates and broken gifts being banded around the Internet. This has been highly embarrassing & potentially very damaging to the company’s reputation. On deeper investigation it appears that these problems lie mainly with the distribution service used to deliver the flowers and gifts. This is currently run by a fleet of self-employed drivers on zero hours’ contracts who have no direct accountability or connection to the company.

 

Up until now the Brighton office has largely been left to its own devices with little or no direct intervention from the parent company Direct 2U. However, to address the current issues Amir has decided that things need to change and that Brighton needs to be integrate directly into the core business. He intends to promote Jamie Taylor who is currently the deputy Regional Operations Manager at the Croydon office to take control at Brighton. Jamie has a BA in Business Management from Brighton Business School so knows the area well and is keen to put his management ideas into practice.

 

Following extensive meetings at Head Office between Jamie and Amir, a plan has been developed to help provide solutions to the issues faced in the Brighton location. A selected number of their existing self- employed drivers will be offered formal contracts making them Direct 2U employees. Where possible the existing Direct 2U depots will be used to help provide deliveries of the gifts and celebration merchandise. Both these strategies are not without their problems. Tighter controls will need to be kept on the Brighton office and in particular the drivers that are offered contracts. Cooperation and communication with the existing Direct 2U depots will also need to be established if they are to take on some of the deliveries. Staff in the Brighton office are used to working as an independent unit and are therefore unlikely to welcome the appointment of a new Regional Operations Manager from Head Office who wants to change the way they are working and tell them what to do!

Question: Drawing on your learning so far on this module, identify some key issues Jamie and Amir will need to address to ensure that their plan is successful.