The Role of the HR Department in Change Management Program
EdwigeWakuna
[Name of the Institution]
April 16, 2019
The Role of the HR Department in Change Management Program
Executive Summary
Amazon is the largest retailer company which consist of customers worldwide. The emerging trends in the globalized world require to adopt more strategic strategies to improve the performance of organizations. However, the most challenging platform is online businesses where companies constantly keep the record of their customers and make them satisfied. Thus, this requires high efficiency from the Human Resource Team to adopt this trend and make changes accordingly. Amazon has experienced the same challenges by responding to customer demands, the company increased its products wide range and thus required more employees for the tasks. The task was challenging for the HR team to make sure to recruit the right employees for the right job. The existing staff was not efficient to perform a wide range of tasks and neede training. Thus the company quickly respond to the challenges and expanded its range by recruiting more professional employees to better perform the job. Thus by incorporating new marketing strategies and implementing change, the company was able to achieve higher success.
Table of Contents
Contents
TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Executive Summary PAGEREF _Toc6298414 \h 2
Introduction PAGEREF _Toc6298415 \h 4
Background of the Organization PAGEREF _Toc6298416 \h 4
Main Discussion PAGEREF _Toc6298417 \h 5
SWOT Analysis PAGEREF _Toc6298418 \h 5
Strengths PAGEREF _Toc6298419 \h 6
Weaknesses PAGEREF _Toc6298420 \h 6
Opportunities PAGEREF _Toc6298421 \h 6
Threats PAGEREF _Toc6298422 \h 7
Intervention Design PAGEREF _Toc6298423 \h 7
Restructuring Amazon PAGEREF _Toc6298424 \h 7
Increase in Employees PAGEREF _Toc6298425 \h 8
Professional Training PAGEREF _Toc6298426 \h 8
Managing Power Politics PAGEREF _Toc6298427 \h 9
Encourage Teamwork and Reduce Conflicts PAGEREF _Toc6298428 \h 10
Leadership PAGEREF _Toc6298429 \h 10
Implementing Change Management PAGEREF _Toc6298430 \h 11
Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc6298431 \h 11
Introduction
In the competitive technological world, organizations are highly focusing on globalizing and improved technologies to reach out to maximum people around the world. Online businesses and trading have gained much importance due to a variety of products and quick service. The technological development has transformed the structure of organizational work performances and required to define new roles and responsibilities for employees. Companies are quickly responding to the changing dynamics of businesses and are frequently modifying their policies according to customers demands. The Human Resource Department is responsible for planning and controlling the majority of work in an organization that involves managing employees work prospects, maintaining networks and relationships, recruitment and training, keeping records, and resolving issues and concerns within organizations. The department is required to show efficient performance and innovative techniques in order to respond to the new emerging challenges. Thus, these studies highlight the role of the HR department in Amazon America for change management and what strategies were adopted by the managers to manage the change effectively.
Background of the Organization
Amazon is an American multinational company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 that centers on e-commerce, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. It is the largest market place for e-commerce, digital distribution and cloud computing contributing to the highest revenues and market capitalization. The company was primarily focusing on e-books, but due to increasing customer demands and interest in online retailing, they diverted their business into a chain of different products that include online videos and gaming, electronics, apparel, furniture, food items, and other accessories. This expansion was not an easy option and required market research, proper planning, and monitoring. The new development also required to increase the potential employees for such diverse roles in the growth dynamics of business. The HR department had high responsibility of recruiting professional and skilled employees for the job to immediately fulfill the daily transaction on online websites. The change management was also focused towards training and motivation of new employees to contribute maximum skills for the rising challenges. Due to high prospects from the managers, the company has transformed from a small digital business to the largest globally recognized retailer company ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"NNo3lfBL","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(O\\uc0\\u8217{}Connor, 2013)","plainCitation":"(O’Connor, 2013)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":"Q3gxQcFt/TqupYeYB","uris":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/CRY9FENL"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/CRY9FENL"],"itemData":{"id":"Q3gxQcFt/TqupYeYB","type":"article-journal","title":"Amazon unpacked","container-title":"Financial Times","page":"2013","volume":"8","author":[{"family":"O’Connor","given":"Sarah"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (O’Connor, 2013).
Main Discussion
Amazon was created to provide e-books to its customers, however, due to the increasing demand for online products and services, they expand their business towards several other items. It has provided online websites for small businesses through which they can sell their products throughout the world. In financial value, the company has invested a large amount in online business to better serve customer needs, they acquire different business such as Whole Foods Market as well as Kiva Systems. However, it required quick services to process the heavy rush on their website. The HR decided to recruit new employees for this market expansion who will be proficient in technological services and maintain their customer satisfaction ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"X7ptQ5RJ","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Petersen, Welch, & Liesch, 2002)","plainCitation":"(Petersen, Welch, & Liesch, 2002)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":42,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/II6UI8L3"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/II6UI8L3"],"itemData":{"id":42,"type":"article-journal","title":"The Internet and foreign market expansion by firms","container-title":"Management International Review","page":"2-22","volume":"42","issue":"2","author":[{"family":"Petersen","given":"Bent"},{"family":"Welch","given":"Lawrence S."},{"family":"Liesch","given":"Peter W."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2002"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Petersen, Welch, & Liesch, 2002).
SWOT Analysis
The most important task was to prepare a SWOT analysis for the market expansion and new business launch. The company required to analyze their competitors and gain a competitive advantage over them in all sectors.
Strengths
Amazon was highly famous among its customers and considered to be a reliable retail business. Thus, the increasing customer demand in online business required the company to expand towards other products as well. They analyzed the performance of eBay and other online websites and decided to provide a platform for sellers where they can easily sell their products. The company was well equipped with latest technologies and warehouse system which provided an edge to perform better.
Weaknesses
The new development in Amazon required skilled employees who will efficiently respond to customers needs. The company was expanded to different businesses, thus asked for professional employees who can better perform in their respective fields. It was noted that due to the new to the launch of other businesses, the existing employees were overburdened with their work which negatively impacted the companies performance, thus the HR decided to recruit more employees for better performance.
Opportunities
Amazon has evaluated the increasing customer demand for online businesses and decided to provide a platform where buyers can access all sort of products. It provided a medium for sellers where they can easily sell their products and gain global recognition for their products. Amazon was capable of capturing the world market with its efficiency and responsive technologies. It quickly captures maximum customers and succeeds largely comparatively to its customers.
Threats
The competitors of Amazon were providing free vouchers to customers, where they were offered to getting a free coupon by buying a specific amount of products. However, Amazon comes up with $59 subscription offers to get free deliveries for products. The strategies greatly worked for the transfer of customers from other websites to Amazon. It greatly increased the customers throughout the world because Amazon was providing a wide variety of products than its competitors. The recognized impact was known as “The Amazon Effect” which was quick in capturing markets worldwide.
Intervention Design
Restructuring Amazon
The changing trends required HR to quickly respond to customer needs. The sudden move from a small venture to the world largest retailer company was not an easy task for the company. However, it was the efficiency and hard work of HR which has made it achieve all the prescribed goals. Online business is based on quick response and easy access to all the products in the store, thus requires a speedy response to the orders. The HR made all the efforts to maintain smooth transactions between the sellers and the customers so that they will be able to receive the best offers. New products require new technologies and employees to efficiently utilize them, such as the invention of ‘Prime' which offers the customers to buy products with a single click and live to stream of Netflix and other transmissions. Thus, professional staff is required to make better use of software, which involves HR to employ the right people in the industry for the right jobs. This increase customers satisfaction and ultimately their trust in the company with a positive word of mouth (Beer & Nohria, 2000).
Increase in Employees
The products development required Amazon to increase the number of employees for immediate response to the website. There was a need to employ proficient personnel in each department who are skilled in their work. Online businesses are quite technical and ask for the full concentration of employees because the customers want quick delivery of products and professionalism from them. Thus, it is also very critical to maintain such a wide pool of customers and restrict them to stick to your website. Proper planning and execution are needed to be adopted by the managers and come up with the most influential business strategies. Customers today, are provided with million of choices online, thus it is very obvious that a single mishap can result in a negative image of the company. It was recorded that the employees of Amazon have to walk 15miles to pick up customer orders from the warehouse, which burdened them on daily basis. The maximum working hours and work stress have negatively impacted their work performance and image of the company. It's very important that the company increase the number of employees to perform the job efficiently. More employees mean more productivity and profit as well as maximum customer satisfaction due to quick response. The new recruitments helped in the share of workload as well as brought innovative technologies to the company. This increased the morale of employees and they better utilized their energies to achieve the company’s goal ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"iHpe8Wtg","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Petersen et al., 2002)","plainCitation":"(Petersen et al., 2002)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":42,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/II6UI8L3"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/II6UI8L3"],"itemData":{"id":42,"type":"article-journal","title":"The Internet and foreign market expansion by firms","container-title":"Management International Review","page":"2-22","volume":"42","issue":"2","author":[{"family":"Petersen","given":"Bent"},{"family":"Welch","given":"Lawrence S."},{"family":"Liesch","given":"Peter W."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2002"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Petersen et al., 2002)
Professional Training
The existing employees were not proficient in performing different tasks and using the technologies. Thus, the HR intervened and decided to provide training to the existing staff to make them more productive. Scanners were placed to check the performance of employees and they were rewarded bonuses and appraisals for better work. The efficiency of employees was increased in performing online tasks and was regularly monitored on the basis of their interaction with the customers. Each employee was assigned with specific targets and was warned for not completing their tasks. The professional training helped Amazon increased its customers and value, which ultimately increased the profit for the company. Amazon focused not only an increase in the number of employees and products but to improve the quality and efficiency of the employees. The employees were required to present quality work and encourage innovative ideas and techniques by constant change and improvement.
Managing Power Politics
Amazon prefers both internal and external performance evaluation of employees. The managers conduct an internal evaluation through analyzing their performance such as working hours, increase in a number of customers, and sales. However, they are also evaluated through a survey conducted by their customers. The users share their experience of online shopping and rate the employee which give them the insight to improve their performance (Nohria, 2017). The company makes sure that the employees built effective communication with the customers and provide them with timely response, the HR constantly work to improve the work conditions of employees to make them better perform their work. They keep a record of each employee and encourage strong communication network in organizations. The performance evaluation tends to increase employee trust in the system due to fair analysis which is wholly based on their performance. Amazon strongly discourages discrimination against its employees and regularly check their performance and work hard to improve the loopholes ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"HO0D4DbB","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Thompson, Anderson, Au, Ratzlaff, & Zada, 2010)","plainCitation":"(Thompson, Anderson, Au, Ratzlaff, & Zada, 2010)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":46,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/66ATSR7N"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/66ATSR7N"],"itemData":{"id":46,"type":"paper-conference","title":"Managing user experience: managing change","container-title":"CHI'10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems","publisher":"ACM","page":"3143-3146","ISBN":"1-60558-930-6","author":[{"family":"Thompson","given":"Carola Fellenz"},{"family":"Anderson","given":"Richard I."},{"family":"Au","given":"Irene"},{"family":"Ratzlaff","given":"Cordell"},{"family":"Zada","given":"Nida"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Thompson, Anderson, Au, Ratzlaff, & Zada, 2010).
Encourage Teamwork and Reduce Conflicts
The organization performs better when their employees work in teams. The managers keep a strong relationship with their subordinates to achieve the task efficiently. Bottom-up and participatory approaches are adopted by Amazon to make the employees take part in the planning of strategies which will positively impact the company. The online business shares the progress of each employee which is presented to them, thus there is no discrimination and hatred against them which reduces the chances of conflicts. Teamwork is the best strategy to divide the work and assign tasks to each employee. Every member works hard and helps each other in accomplishing those tasks. It maintains a positive relationship among employees, where they learning from each other and shows a better impact on their work ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"OoQsjemf","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Mehmood, Ramzan, & Akbar, 2013)","plainCitation":"(Mehmood, Ramzan, & Akbar, 2013)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":47,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/45WJ2TSS"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/45WJ2TSS"],"itemData":{"id":47,"type":"article-journal","title":"Managing performance through reward system","container-title":"Journal of Education & Research for Sustainable Development, Online","volume":"1","issue":"1","author":[{"family":"Mehmood","given":"Sufyan"},{"family":"Ramzan","given":"Muhammad"},{"family":"Akbar","given":"Md Tahir"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Mehmood, Ramzan, & Akbar, 2013).
Leadership
The HR is responsible for better leadership roles, where they need to keep the employee motivated and efficient to perform their tasks. Better leadership refers to eliminating the decision making the process and making everyone part of the policymaking. Amazon focused to make their employees efficient by making each one important part of the organization. They provided leadership skills to all employees so that they can perform the tasks in the absence of managers. The managers accommodated the supervisory roles in transferring knowledge to the lever levels as well as maintaining a positive code of conduct. The managers keep the team connected and strive to achieve organizational goals collectively ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"kInkzBwP","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Mehmood et al., 2013)","plainCitation":"(Mehmood et al., 2013)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":47,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/45WJ2TSS"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/5651625/items/45WJ2TSS"],"itemData":{"id":47,"type":"article-journal","title":"Managing performance through reward system","container-title":"Journal of Education & Research for Sustainable Development, Online","volume":"1","issue":"1","author":[{"family":"Mehmood","given":"Sufyan"},{"family":"Ramzan","given":"Muhammad"},{"family":"Akbar","given":"Md Tahir"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Mehmood et al., 2013). Performance appraisal is used to motivate employees where they are evaluated on the basis of their work monthly or quarterly. Performance appraisal is a technique used to evaluate employees performance which is conducted monthly or quarterly. It is necessary for larger companies to keep a check on employees and make the employees productive.
Implementing Change Management
As Amazon implemented the changing of expanding their business, sellers from different parts of the world joined in to sell their products. It was estimated that the company has contributed to 40 percent of the sales from the third party in 2008. It was a reliable platform for many individual sellers which provided them with representation. The sales contributed to 1.3 million in profits to Amazon. This is required for the employees to be more responsive to the daily transactions taking place. Amazon also serves an advertising source for many companies which requires the HR to build a strong connection to the outside world (Rothaermel, Kotha & Steensma, 2006). The HR adopted a multilevel strategy change strategy to build strong connections with its customers as well as the sellers. The managers believed that effective communication is the core of their business and they can achieve higher success through strong networks.
Conclusion
Due to the efficient team of Amazon, the company has achieved higher success in the past few years. The effective management skills of HR had contributed to make it the largest retailer company. With the increase in products, it has achieved market expansion as well as increased they're focused towards increasing their employees. They have developed strong relationships with the employees, understanding their priorities and the work pressure. HR has largely focused on shared values in their company for effective communication. They have also discouraged the politics, personal grudges and traditional cultures in the organization where everything is decided by the boss. The company has achieved remarkable success in a short span of time which reflects the hard work of its human capital. The managers and employees have predicted the changing trends and utilized different linguistic styles, technologies, and software to better perform the tasks. The increasing competition in the marked required to expand the business and make the employees proficient. Online businesses required technical skills to analyze the changing trends in customers behavior and taste and quickly respond by providing the services. The website provides information to the sellers about customer preferences and thus, they produce products which are more likely to be accepted by the people. This increases efficiency at all levels, an online survey is provided to the customers and the rate the products on websites. Due to increasing competition for online businesses, it is evident that customers keep switching to different websites for a better experience. However, due to the skilled and efficient team of Amazon, the companies have attracted customers from their competitors. The core value of Amazon is to keep its customers satisfied and for this purpose, they require to train their employees related to customer needs and demands. Thus, it is very important for HR to recruit the right kind of employees who can efficiently fulfill organizational goals. Employees are an essential asset of organizations, who decide the fate of companies. The HR team works devotedly, evaluate the market demands efficiently, keep their team together and constantly strive to achieve organizational goals. In such a global market, it is the evident role of its HR team that Amazon has achieved such recognizable success.
References
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ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Mehmood, S., Ramzan, M., & Akbar, M. T. (2013). Managing performance through a reward system. Journal of Education & Research for Sustainable Development, Online, 1(1).
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