Case Study Of The Body Shop Management Essay

Human resource is the main asset of an organization through which it achieves its objective. Selection or right person for right job needs to follow the human resource process. Any flaw in this procedure may cause the worst loss to an organization creating it a challenge for the organization.

Training,

In simple terms training refers to the imparting of specific skills, abilities and knowledge to an employee. A formal definition of training is an attempt to improve current or future employee performance by increasing an employee’s ability to perform through learning, usually by changing the employee’s attitude or by increasing his/ her skills and knowledge. The need for training is determined by the employee’s performance deficiency.

Training need = standard performance=actual performance

We can make distinction among, training, education and development. Such distinction enables us to acquire a better perspective about the meaning of the term, training as it has mentioned earlier, refers to the process of imparting specific skill. Where education on the other hand is confined to theoretical learning in classrooms.

Differentiation of training and education

Training

Education

Application

Theoretical orientation

Job experience

Class room learning

Specific tasks

General concepts

Narrow / perspective

Broad perspective

Though there is huge difference in training and development in nature and orientation. An employee for example, who undergoes training is presumed to have had some formal education. Furthermore, no training programme is complete without an element of education. Infact the distinction between training and education is getting increasingly blurred now a days. As more and more employees called upon to exercise judgements and to choose alternative solution to the job problem, training program seeks to broaden and develop the individual through education, for instance employees in well paid jobs / or those who are working in the service industry may be required to make independent decision regarding their work and their relationships with clients (costumers). Hence organisations must consider element of both education and training while planning training programmes.

Training requires covering essential work-related skills, techniques and knowledge, much of this section deals with taking a positive progressive approach to this sort of traditional ‘training’.

However, the most effective way to trained people is quite different to conventional skills training, which let’s face it most employees regard as a pain in the neck. They’ll do it of course, but they won’t enjoy it much because it’s about work, not about themselves as normally people think.

Training and discrimination

Organisation’s are facing great pressure to change these days , The UK (consistent with Europe) Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, effective from 1st October 2006, make it unlawful to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of age. This has several implications for training, documents used, and the training of trainers and facilitators.

Most of the organisations might not immediately be able to put great new emphasis on ‘whole-person development’. Being realistic, corporate attitudes and expectations about what ‘training’ is and does cannot be changed overnight, and most organisations still see ‘training’ as being limited to work skills.

Organisation’s background

The Body shop

The Body Shop International plc, known as The Body Shop, has 2,400 stores in 61countries, and is the second largest cosmetic franchise in the world.

History page

The very first The Body Shop® store was opened on 26th March 1976 in Brighton, In 1978 a kiosk in Brussels became the first overseas franchise, and by 1982 new shops were open @ of two per month.

In 1985, in its first year as a public company, The Body Shop sponsor posters for Greenpeace. A year later, it creates an Environmental Projects Department of its own, while the first major window campaign for The Body Shop is “Save the Whale” with Greenpeace, in 1986.The first Community Trade product for The Body Shop, a Footsie Roller, is produced in 1986 by a supplier in southern India. This trade in Footsie Rollers has evolved into the current trade with Teddy Exports in India, one of the key Community Trade suppliers.

With the passage of time The Body shop ® become a global player. In 1990, just one year after launching in the USA, there are 2,500 applications for a franchise, with demand for The Body Shop® products ever-growing, driven by expansion which saw the company trading in 39 countries within just fourteen years after the opening of the very first shop!

In 1990 The Body Shop Foundation is established, a charity which funds human rights and environmental protection groups.

Supporting Homeless people

The Big Issue paper for homeless people, which began as a The Body Shop Foundation project, is launched in 1991. By 1998 its success saw The Body Shop Foundation part-funding the launch of The Big Issue stateside, in Los Angeles.

The New Academy of Business was established in 1995, as an initiative by late Anita Roddick. This innovative management degree, addressing social, environmental and moral issues, is run at The University of Bath, in England.

The Body Shop At Homeâ„¢, the direct-selling arm, was launched in the UK in 1994, Canada in 1995, Australia in 1997, and USA in 2001. It has now rolled out in 48 states in the USA and is set to grow even bigger.

The Body Shop continues to increase its positive environmental practices. In 2001, The Body Shop UK region and service-centre head offices in Watersmead, switch to Ecotricity, providing them with energy from renewable sources. In addition, a number of The Body Shop® stores have now converted to green electricity.

The Body Shop International plc is a global manufacturer and retailer of naturally inspired, ethically produced beauty and cosmetics products. Founded in the UK in 1976 by Dame Anita Roddick, now having over 2,400 stores in 61 countries, with a range of over 1,200 products.

Against animal testing

Every product of body shop is free of animal testing. In fact body shop is the first international cosmetics brand to be recognized under the Humane Cosmetics Standard for their Animal Testing policy.

Fair trading.

Body shops believe in fair trade to such an extent, that over 20 years ago they set up their own fair trade programme, called Community Trade. Their believe on this level of commitment to trading fairly is unique in the cosmetics industry. Community Trade now works with over 30 suppliers in more than 20 countries, providing over 25,000 people across the globe with essential income to build their futures. Most of their products contain Community Trade ingredients.

Five basic values

The Body Shop is a leader in promoting greater corporate transparency, and they have been a force for positive social and environmental change through their campaigns around five core Values: Support Community Trade, Defend Human Rights, Against Animal Testing, Activate Self-Esteem, and Protect Our Planet.

Charitable foundation

The Body Shop also has their own charity, The Body Shop Foundation. Launched in 1990 (registered charity no. 802757) where they provide financial support to pioneering, frontline organisations that otherwise have little hope of conventional funding. The Foundation’s focus is to assist those working to achieve progress in the areas of human and civil rights, environmental and animal protection.

Source (http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/_en/_gb/services/aboutus.aspx).

Rationale for the chosen topic

Training and development is a planned effort to facilitate employee learning skills of job-relating behaviour in order to improve employee performance. It denotes effort to increase employee skills on present jobs, and also refers towards improvement relevant to future jobs in organisation’s the time of need so they can save time and money by hiring some one’s skill with in the organisation’s desired/required place within the organisation.

Research aims/objectives

The researcher’s fundamental aim of research of training is to help the organisation to achieve its purpose by adding value to its key resources, the people it employs. Training means investing in the people to enable them to perform better and to empower them to make best use of their natural abilities.

The particular objectives of training are to:

Develop the competences of employees and improve their performance.

Help people to grow within the organisation in order that, as far as possible, its future needs for human resource can be met from within.

Reduce the learning time for employees starting their new jobs on appointment, transfers, promotion, and ensure that they key become fully competent as quickly and economically as possible.

Research questions

Training is an important aspect of a

What training can do for multinational organisations around the world?

What knowledge and skills an employee should have or need for the betterment of an organisation?

If there is something further you’d want but aren’t getting? What is stopping you from getting what you want from your sales training? From your sales people?

How you are currently set up to fix this problem with the current resources you’ve got in place (i.e. internal trainers/ Current vendors)?

What employees need to know in order to consider doing something different from what they are currently doing in the area of sales training?

What is missing?

Literature review

There are many different training methods. On-the-job training, informal training, classroom training, internal training courses, external training courses, on-the-job coaching, life-coaching, mentoring, training assignments and tasks, skills training, product training, technical training, behavioural development training, role-playing and role-play games and exercises, attitudinal training and development, accredited training and learning, distance learning – all part of the training menu, available to use and apply according to individual training needs and organisational training needs. More importantly, training – or learning, if we look at it from the trainee’s view – is anything offering learning and developmental experience about specific skills. Training and learning development includes aspects such as: ethics and morality; attitude and behaviour; leadership and determination, as well as skills and knowledge.

Development isn’t restricted to training – it helps a person to grow, in ability, skills, confidence, tolerance, commitment, initiative, inter-personal skills, understanding, self-control, motivation. Attitude includes qualities that require different training and learning methods. Attitude stems from a person’s mind-set, belief system, emotional maturity, self-confidence, and experience. These are the greatest training and development challenges faced, and there are better ways of achieving this sort of change and development than putting people in a classroom, or indeed by delivering most sorts of conventional business or skills training.

This is why training and learning must extend far beyond conventional classroom training courses. Be creative, innovative, and open-minded, and trainees will discover learning in virtually new experience, whether for yourself, your team, or your organization. Early developments in management theory also featured the training components.

An independent literature on training was emerged during 1920’s. The skills of the workforce and their ability to adapt the rapidly changing economic environment are a key source of competitive advantage. Employees’ training is key to achieve a flexible work force. At work, training has been defined as, “the range of activities that are provided by agreement between employers and employees, either at the workplace or financed by or through the workplace” (National Economic and Social Forum (NESF), (2003)

England skills & EU market.

The Single European Market was introduced in 1993, which has increased the competition between EU Member States. Countries throughout Europe are engaged in up skilling and retraining their workforces. Since the start of the 1990s researchers have identified the need for England to participate in this up skilling race in order to remain competitive. (Roche & Tansey, 1992, p.134).

In order to remain competitive, the level of skills in England firms must also be comparable to, or better than, skill levels in competitor countries beyond the Single Market.

In 1993, the Culliton Report revealed a distinct skills gap, between England’s and other countries, in production skills, multi-skilling and management skills.

(Forfás, 1996, p.158) suggested that, by 2011, it was likely that the entire developed world and a significant proportion of the developing world would pass England in terms of skills, education and training if appropriate measures were not taken. International research indicates that England’s adults currently have low participation rates in continuing education and training in relation to other countries (Hannon, Mc, 2003, p.1, 43). Therefore researchers have evaluated that education and training of the workforce has been identified as critical point.

Various research reports have indicated the importance of skills in the areas of literacy, numeracy, communications, problem solving, basic computer training, interpersonal training and other skills that are not specific to particular occupations. Various reports have recognized that these skills are crucial to maintaining a flexible and adaptable workforce furthermore, those individuals with the lowest skill levels were found to be the least likely to participate in further education and training. It is critical that basic skills are ensured in order to increase the probability that individuals will further develop and enhance their skills at a later stage. Basic Skills are a prerequisite for all further learning (Taskforce on Lifelong Learning, 2002, p.23). Adult employee participation in education and training throughout the ’90s has been, and still is, significantly below the EU average (O’Connell & Lyons, 1995). The prospect of an economic slowdown makes it imperative that many of those with low skills and low qualifications in the working population should be retrained and up skilled in order to ensure they can remain in employment.

“The importances of workplace learning as a means of enhancing both work performance and the quality of working life” (Ashton & Sung, 2002, p. 1). But perhaps what distinguishes UK most from other countries, is the explicit link that is being made in policy documents between the economic and the social. The concept of skills is, of course, still difficult to define

According to (O, Sullivan, 1976) noted that training is no longer confined by narrow definition and that the profession of discipline and approaches should all focused on the central goal of developing human capital.

For (McNab and Whitfield, 2001) a high performance system is “a generic term covering a wide range of disparate approaches to organize employment, including high commitment workplaces, flexible specialization and high involvement organizations”.

Security, employee involvement & training

(Brown, et al 1992) designed a model of a high-performance work for organisation that successfully combined employee job security, employee involvement and employee training, which they called the SET (Security, Employee Involvement and Training) model. They did so as part of a research survey on US firms and on how they were coping with the need to become “more competitive in world markets”

(Brown et al, 1992). They held that the SET model derived not only from the practices of large Japanese firms but also from successful European firms.

(Ashton and Sung,2002), however, argue that it was Japan that first introduced the new working practices that now comprise the core of high performance working system. In the 1980s’ and 1990’s manufactures in the USA and the UK sought to incorporate them or to develop comparable systems of their own.

Employee autonomy.

This is about the “structuring of opportunities for the exercise of employee skills” Examples include self-managed work teams and multi skilling.

Support for employee performance.

Under this rubric they include all practices designed to support continuous learning acquisition of skills, such as appraisal systems and mentoring and coaching.

Rewards for performance.

This they see as being about the use of systems designed to reward performance and motivate the employee, such as individual and group based performance pay.

Sharing information/knowledge.

By this they refer to organisations designing systems to communicate with employees and to encourage feedback from them (and the means of ensuring that this feedback reaches the organisation’s strategists) as part of a drive to promote employee participation in the management of the work process. (Source: Ashton & Sung, 2002).

Employer/managerial gains

According to (Ashton and Sung, 2002), investment in these practices and the skills associated with them pays off on the bottom line’. They concluded from a review of data provided in studies from the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Their viewpoint is supported by the results of studies showing that employers stand to gain from higher productivity, better quality production and ultimately enhanced profitability and competitiveness.

Training and Skills

It is the employer/management that carries the responsibility of providing a suitably supportive learning/training environment for the employees working within the high performance working system framework. Employees in high performance working system need more skills. Such as learning how to carry out a wider range of tasks, better interpersonal skills, and how to deal with supervisory and coordinating functions (Bailey et al., 2001). “Practices aimed at the development of employee skills” are an essential part of high performance working system (Ramsay et al., 2000) and skills associated with problem-solving and contributing to workplace innovation are amongst those that the literature has identified as significant(Lee et al, 2004). Firms need to consider both how to develop a wider range of skills amongst their employees and also whether they provide opportunities for the employees to up skill in a high performance working system environment, for example, from data-entry clerks to skilled computer programmers (Wisconsin, 1999). The ability of employees to acquire new skills on the job is a key in determining the success at workplaces (Hutt & Read, 2003). Extensive employee training (and/or retraining) must be seen as an integral part of a successful high performance working system approach.

This also applies to management who must learn/be trained how to operate in a new environment: “standardised tasks and hierarchical ‘tayloristic’ organisations seem increasingly to have been replaced by multi-tasking and flatter structures”. Employees and unions must learn how to work within that framework, but managers also have to learn how to manage within it. They have to adapt to a situation in which they are operating at workplace knowledge and also cede some of their day to day decision making powers to the workforce (Ashton & Sung, 2002, (Guthrie, 2001).

(Oeij and Noortje ,2002) have noted a number of steps that firms in the EU have taken to improve training and promote skills. These include widening the scope of training to all employees, and broadening the focus of training. The emphasis has been shifted from training people in the vocational skills needed for their existing jobs to widening workers’ technical and business skills to carry out larger jobs and developing social and psychological skills relevant to tasks such as problem solving, team working and interacting with other workers and managers. The focus is more on learning potential than on present skill levels. Employees are also becoming more involved in determining their own training needs.

Job Security

Nowhere in the literature reviewed is there any suggestion that high performance working system are a magic bullet that will guarantee the eternal success of a firm and the jobs of its employees. Nevertheless, employees are concerned about job security. In the EU, concern about job security rose “sharply” in the 1996-2000 periods (Oeij & Noortje, 2002, p. 52).

If employees do not trust management over job security, then they are unlikely to commit themselves to supporting HPWS (Stuart & Lucio, 2001). “In the absence of security, workers will fear that they may innovate themselves out of a job” (ILO, 2004).

The more high performance working system address job security issues, the more trust is built up between management and employees and the more likely employees are to be willing to adopt new ways of working.

Conclusion

This review has been an attempt to summarise some of the points in a rapidly expanding field of employee training. From our evaluation of that material it is reasonable to conclude that the majority verdict, although a conditional one, is that high performance working system provides net gains to both employers and employees.

This review has dealt only briefly with aspects of the workplace learning literature. In particular, it has noted views that challenge an instrumentalist approach to the introduction and implementation of high performance working system. It has also introduced research that underscores the collective dimension of workplace culture and the learning that takes place at work.

Research methodology

Research approach

Qualitative approach

Qualitative research is more subjective rather than quantitative approach. It focuses on analysing and reflecting on the tangible aspects of research subject such as value, attitude, perception, emotion, and feelings. In this research qualitative approach is selected. Qualitative approach to data that cannot be subjected to quantitative or numerical analysis in order to examine these value, belief, attitude, and feeling. It is associated with phenomena that cannot be, or is difficult to quantify. (Lancastar, 2005)

Research methods

Conducting the qualitative research, it requires the following data collecting tools which are suitable for the research.

Secondary research

Secondary data has two major advantages which are time saving and cost saving. Secondary data used as source of addressing the key subjective of of the research and providing essential back ground to existing practice. Secondary data of this research proposal is used to be as literature review and about employee better training and high performance working system which is better for firm and also for employee learning skills.

In depth interview

In this part respondents will be asked in some detail and often for the protracted period in order to for the researcher to explore topics, issue’s and responses in some depth.(walker, 1985). There will be less structured than in the semi- structured interview with the questioning reflecting the responses given by format. In this dissertation research, the qualitative approach will be taken by form of in-depth interview with the body shops human resource managers about the employee’s training and expenses.

Questionnaire

It is widely used and valuable means of data collection. Questionnaire facilitate the collection of data by asking all, or a sample of people to respond the same question. There are five types of questionnaires such as on-line, postal, delivery and collection, telephone and interview. In this dissertation research the qualitative and quantitative both will be obtained by formulating survey questionnaire with mixed of open and closed question in order to collect data from the employee’s.

Data analysis and interpretation

Analysing the data is the process of turning the data into information that can serve to develop the concept theories, explanations or understanding (Lancaster, 2005). Present the qualitative data findings can be appropriate for using the direct quotations to indicate the way in which individual respondents express their opinion and views. Maybe some computer programs can be used for interpreting the quantitative data findings.

Time scale

Activity

June

July

August

September

October

November

Week Commencing

Read Literature

Finalize Objectives

Draft Literature Review

Read Methodology Literature

Devise Research Approach

Draft Research Strategy and Method

Proposal

Feedback on Proposal

Develop Schedule of Question for Interview

In-depth Interview with Company

Documentation

Gather Data

Analyze Data

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