Business Case Assignment Sample

Business Case Assignment

Introduction

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This report will be discussing the business case of the chosen company NEXT Plc. The role of an organisational leader is to interact with the HR strategies that can ensure both national and internal business growth of this company. At first, a brief discussion will be done on the reason for the business case, followed by the analysis, evaluation, discussion, and reflection of feasible approaches. The pros and cons of each of these approaches will be discussed to choose the best approach for this company in a national and international business context. In the end, some recommendations will be provided which will be measurable, sustainable and will ensure long-term strategic HR as well as business goals.

Reasons for business case

Employees are the backbone of any company and the role of HR (Human Resource) is to appoint eligible candidates, train them properly, plan and implement policies that fulfil the needs of the employees. The important roles of HRM (Human Resource Management) are to ensure equal opportunities, prevention of discrimination, create a safe work environment and employees' satisfaction by paying them satisfactorily (Guest, 2017). NEXT Plc has internationalised its business and is currently operating in more than 20 countries. In the UK, it owns all the retail shops and their targeted customers belong to the middle-class market. However, it operates its business online under NEXT online and supplies and manufacturers produced from many emerging countries like Bangladesh (Nextplc.co.uk, 2022). In this regard, the roles of HR strategies are to ensure health and safety, equal opportunities, and mitigation of any existing gap are necessary. Some common HR related issues are ineffective communication, fewer growth opportunities, and health and safety-related issues. Although the company has specific policies, the lack of proper execution leads to barriers to long-term company success (Kianto et al. 2017). Here, the role of a leader is to guide and interact with the HR manager to deliver both the national and internal markets successfully.

Analysis of the situation

STEEPLE analysis will be helpful to understand the macro-environmental factors affecting the decisions of the company. An evaluation and discussion will be done to identify HR-related issues in this regard.

Factors	Information	Analysis of NEXT Plc
Social	Variability in cultures, ethics, and beliefs are taken into consideration before taking company decisions.  Externally the company needs to take strategies to target its customers that have the most growth of opportunities (Van Buren et al. 2020).  The roles of the employees are to identify this market segment to ensure long-term success.	NEXT Plc has its target customers belonging to the middle. The HRM team of NEXT Plc has taken CSR (Corporate Social responsibility) strategies to ensure a good work culture for its employees.
Technological	It is one of the most crucial factors because advancement in technological aspects helps to accelerate the operations and offers new job opportunities at the same time (Haseeb et al. 2019).  Moreover, the role of HR is to provide technical training to employees so that these technical skills stay updated among employees.	Providing technical knowledge is very crucial to improve technical skills in employees of NEXT Plc.
Economic	Economic conditions such as GDP, inflation rate, rate of unemployment, etc. of a country are considered before implementing company policies (Tran and Nguyen, 2019).  Internal policies of the companies are changed according to the condition.	The GDP of the UK was 563,070m Euro and the inflation rate is 2.19% in 2021. In addition, the government has implemented a 19% tax on the profit of the company (Statista.com, 2022).  Therefore, the company needs to take policies in such a way so that it can make a satisfactory profit and not compromise on paying its employees.
Environmental	The policies that the company takes that can positively or negatively impact the company is considered in this case (Diamantidis and Chatzoglou, 2019).	The HR of NEXT Plc needs to make and implement policies so that manufacturing practices do not affect the environment negatively.
Political	Political factors like the implementation of new tax policies or higher rates of interest, government regulations for organisations, employee legislations, etc. affect the decisions of the company (Tran and Nguyen, 2019).	NEXT Plc needs to abide by all specific corporate policies of the operational country.
Legal	The company needs to understand employee-related laws and regulations such as health and safety-related regulations of the country.	In this regard, the company needs to understand employee-related policies that can affect its business
Ethical	This factor must be considered to provide equal opportunities to the employees (Quoquab et al. 2017).	Strong legal steps against those employees who discriminate based on race or gender.

Table 1: STEEPLE Analysis

Potential solutions

Communicating in a common language

In international business, language gaps and communication-related issues are quite common. Language barriers can create the misunderstanding that can lead to conflicts among employees. In this regard, HR needs to take initiatives to make employees understand the disadvantages of communication in different languages. HR can take initiatives to understand the preferred medium and language of communication and make a policy that can ensure communication in a common language such as English. Another solution for mitigating this issue can be engaging a team leader who can communicate in multiple languages or a native language is spoken by team members. 

Pros

This can remove communication-related barriers among employees and significantly avoid situations that can interrupt the ongoing activities of a company. It can create a sense of belongingness, as it does not encourage employees to speak in their native language that cannot be understood by employees who speak a different language.

Cons

Not all the employees may communicate in English and they are more comfortable speaking their native language. 

Teamwork

Teamwork is important for any project of a company as it creates better opportunities for problem solving because it improves the creative thinking of the team. It helps to improve personal growth and at the same time create more growth opportunities. In this regard, the role of HR is to mitigate any issue or conflict in the team (Ogbonnaya et al. 2018). In addition, it can provide training to the employees on how to approach any problem and think creatively to make solutions.

Pros

This strategy is useful in finding unique solutions to any problem as it encourages creative thinking among employees.

Cons

Sometimes, despite trying, conflicts occur among employees due to differences in opinion and it cannot be mitigated with training or implementing strategies.

Findings

Mitigation of language or communication-related gaps is very necessary when dealing in national and international markets. NEXT Plc is already doing its operations in more than 20 countries and it has more than 550 stores in total (Nextplc.co.uk, 2022). Therefore, communication or language differences can be a potential barrier in the business if considering expansion. Technology is evolving every day and to have competitive advantages in the market the company needs to provide regular training to its employees so that these technical skills can get incorporated into them for individual and organisational growth.

Recommendations

These are some recommendations for HRM of NEXT Plc that can be executed by the leaders of the organisation to ensure long-term and sustainable national and international business.

• NEXT Plc has to consider technological factors for providing training to its employees. The employees can get online training and even the pace of learning is determined by technologies for providing personalised learning experiences (Laing, 2021). In addition, they can take initiatives to provide job-specific technical training to the employees to ensure individual satisfaction and organisational satisfaction.
• Leaders need to upgrade their skills according to the environment they are operating to assist their team members. In addition, they must abide by the rules and regulations of the policies critical for employee rights and guide HR to modify strategies accordingly to ensure sustainable national and international success (Wang et al. 2019).

References

Diamantidis, A.D. and Chatzoglou, P., 2019. Factors affecting employee performance: an empirical approach. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shiwei-Sun-7/publication/308955269_Understanding_the_Factors_Affecting_the_Organizational_Adoption_of_Big_Data/links/5b1859dc0f7e9b68b424a351/Understanding-the-Factors-Affecting-the-Organizational-Adoption-of-Big-Data.pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Guest, D.E., 2017. Human resource management and employee well?being: Towards a new analytic framework. Human resource management journal, 27(1), pp.22-38. Available at: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/69409826/Human_resource_management_and_GUEST_17November2016_GREEN_AAM.pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Haseeb, M., Hussain, H.I., ?lusarczyk, B. and Jermsittiparsert, K., 2019. Industry 4.0: A solution towards technology challenges of sustainable business performance. Social Sciences, 8(5), p.154. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/5/154/pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Kianto, A., Sáenz, J. and Aramburu, N., 2017. Knowledge-based human resource management practices, intellectual capital and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 81, pp.11-20. Available at: https://iris.unito.it/bitstream/2318/1662413/2/PDF_Proof_JKM.pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Laing, I.F., 2021. The impact of training and development on worker performance and productivity in public sector organizations: A case study of Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority. International Research Journal of Business and Strategic Management, 2(2). Available at: https://irjp.org/index.php/rirjbsm/article/viewFile/52/64 [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Nextplc.co.uk, 2022. OUR HISTORY. Available at: https://www.nextplc.co.uk/about-next/our-history [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Ogbonnaya, C., Tillman, C.J. and Gonzalez, K., 2018. Perceived organizational support in health care: The importance of teamwork and training for employee well-being and patient satisfaction. Group & Organization Management, 43(3), pp.475-503. Available at: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/66364/1/Accepted_manuscript.pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Quoquab, F., Pahlevan, S., Mohammad, J. and Thurasamy, R., 2017. Factors affecting consumers’ intention to purchase counterfeit product: empirical study in the Malaysian market. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jihad-Mohammad/publication/318885077_Factors_affecting_consumers%27_intention_to_purchase_counterfeit_product_Empirical_study_in_the_Malaysian_market/links/5a899727458515b8af94b52f/Factors-affecting-consumers-intention-to-purchase-counterfeit-product-Empirical-study-in-the-Malaysian-market.pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Statista.com, 2022. United Kingdom: Inflation rate from 1986 to 2026. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270384/inflation-rate-in-the-united-kingdom/ [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Tran, T. and Nguyen, N., 2019. Identify factors affecting business efficiency of small and medium enterprises (SMEs): Evidence from Vietnam. Management Science Letters, 9(12), pp.1987-1998. Available at: http://m.growingscience.com/msl/Vol9/msl_2019_181.pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Van Buren III, H.J., Syed, J. and Mir, R., 2020. Religion as a macro social force affecting business: Concepts, questions, and future research. Business & Society, 59(5), pp.799-822. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0007650319845097 [Accessed on 7th March 2022]

Wang, D., Du, F. and Marquis, C., 2019. Defending Mao’s dream: How politicians’ ideological imprinting affects firms’ political appointment in China. Academy of Management Journal, 62(4), pp.1111-1136. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shiwei-Sun-7/publication/308955269_Understanding_the_Factors_Affecting_the_Organizational_Adoption_of_Big_Data/links/5b1859dc0f7e9b68b424a351/Understanding-the-Factors-Affecting-the-Organizational-Adoption-of-Big-Data.pdf [Accessed on 7th March 2022]r