Managing People and Organisations

Student Number: HAN20110028
Module: Managing People and Organisations
MBA Assessment: Everlane Case Study Analysis
Word Count: 3138

PART A
1. Introduction
In this Everlane Case Study, I will utilize my knowledge and references about
Recruitment & Selection and Workforce Planning to clarify major issues that Everlane has
been facing when intensifying its number of employees when transferring from an online
retail system to offline retail stores in both negative and positive aspects. Furthermore,
some limitations will be figured out and some long-term suggestions would be provided to
iron out these problems in the near future.
2. About
Everlane - the fashion retail company that has always promoted and supported a
solid vision about “radical transparency”. From the customers’ views, the products
processing, the supply chain seem to be sustainable and transparent and the other humane
conditions for every blue-collar worker has reach the standard. However, from other
workers' perspective, the transparency was not extended to their working conditions and
this complaint had persisted with the information missing of Everlane. In detail, ten retail
ambassadors in Everlane affiliation at New York now unionizing and reporting about the
“low pay, nonexistent benefits, unpredictable scheduling,” and the most serious one that
the management team thinks it is will violate both federal and state labor laws is the
discussion about wages with other colleagues.
In 2017, Everlane decided to open a flagship store on Prince Street in Soho, New
York, and since expanded to four other stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Palo Alto,
which had reserved the swear of “never open brick-and-mortar stores” since last year. The
reason behind this decision was published by Micheal Presyman – Everlane CEO: “We
realized we need to have stores if we’re going to grow on a national and global scale”
(Washington Post, 2017).

3. Problems
With the significant transformation from online to offline apparel retailers, the
company may not yet be adapted to the physical operating retail changes as Everlane had
attempted on the traditional functions and focused on raising brand awareness. However,
this transition had itself caused workforce planning and recruitment & selection problems.
3.1. Problem 1: Workforce Planning
Human Resources management has become crucial than ever in handling the first
problem of non-rational people allocation when Everlane has been recorded in transitting
from online to a series of “brick and mortal” stores. In the first two months, the second New
York store at Williamsburg was seriously understaffed and causing other employees to leave
their jobs. Confront with this issue, Everlane had started a mass of hiring new employees
and simultaneously pushed other existing employees into the state of cutting down the
working timeframe.
On the other hand, Everlane’s employees had faced a significant transformation
beyond their expectations, including working environment, working schedule, unfair
treatment, and non-qualified salary and wages. Due to the unreasonable workforce
planning of the management team, Everlane’s employees had facing up with the
undervalued between them and peers and high risk of losing their job. Moreover, unfair
treatment situations were now appearing because of the same value of wages between the
senior employee and new hires even though they had not been productive.
3.2. Problem 2: Recruitment and Selection
Next, the significant transformation of Everlane has been created a chance for
Everlane’s workers, part-time employees, or full-time ambassadors in experiencing
themselves in the new working environment, getting advancement prospects. Besides, new
mass hiring will allow Everlane to access larger talent pools and liberate valuable time for
other vital activities. However, this decision that time with the vast gap inside the Human
Resources departments’ recruitment process was also risky to Everlane.
A store manager is the one who conducts an interview, but they only hired the
“potential recruit” – an applicant that they “feel a connection” by examining their CV and
cover letter and then conducting only one interview. This process was applied for not only
non-previous experiences and both senior employees. Hence, several less qualified staff or
unfitting employees who had been hired for two years until now then held significant impact
on the unfair treatment between them and other ones.

Furthermore, with this recruitment and selection process, Everlane could be miss
several qualified candidates who are needed for the company and hired unqualified ones.
Lastly, with mass hiring, control over HR activities will become a great challenge for
recruitment managers.
At the moment, Everlane had responded that they made mistakes in the growth
even when the company still follow all the legal guidelines, especially in Recruitment &
Selection processes and Workforce Planning. Solutions had provided for addressing the
long-term problem but seemed not to work. Hence, the company should put the fast timely
changes into consideration, according to the needs and values that the company is aiming
for, solving outstanding problems in workforce planning and improving the recruitment and
selection process.
4. Discussion:
4.1. Workforce Planning
4.1.1. Theory and model
In every organization, to ensure that the future business plans are on track and
achieve thier goals, the people within the organization need to be managed and organized
in a proper way (Cotten, 2007). To clarify what is workforce planning, while Ripley (2000)
defines it as: “a systematic assessment of workforce content and composition issues and
determination of what actions must be taken to respond to future needs”, Curson and his
partner also suggests workforce planning as the important elements in the human
management strategy because of the process of analyzing, evaluating the workforce needs
and forecasting the supply and demand of the workforce in particular context (Curson et al.,
2010).
In short, based on the aforementiond definiton, the aim of this process is concluded
into 4 main points:
i. Identifying the organization’s strategic (in both present and future).
ii. Obtaining the clear organization workforce in present and human capital needed
in the future.
iii. Developing a comprehensive plan of aligning appropriate people to ensure the
success and to have contigency plan for changes in future.
iv. Marshalling people to implement the plan, evaluating the strategies or programs
to ensure the human capital available in future.
In reality, in order to support every changes in management policies, the workforce
planner needs to have a strong conviction and strategy as well as a clear basis for human

resources and specific plans for reallocate the workforce to suit the future business strategy
(Emmerichs, Marcum & Robbert, 2004). Figure 1 – The workforce planning process
describes below can be utilized for every organization in order to accomplish the
aforementioned four main points.
Figure 1: Workforce planning process in changing business strategic intent
(Emmerichs, Marcum & Robbert, 2004)
This model describes the process of planning the human resources to achieve the
goals and strategies of the organization that the leader had already set for the future.
Strategic intentions are created based on such factors including its vision, purpose, goals,
mission, guiding principles, strategic plan, and strategies. Also, policies and practices as
mentioned in this model as the tools for ensuring the workforce characteristics desire and
also creating a practical impact on the organization's recruitment and human resource
development processes. To create a solid foundation in the application of policies to all
human capital in the agency, the process must be disciplined, replicable, reliable, consistent,
and flexible.

4.1.2. Recommendation
According to Reilly (1996) in his research, workforce planning adoption brings
practical effects to businesses in general and for smooth business planning in particular. In
particular, the fundamental reasons for businesses to adopt this tool are:
i. To determine the number of employees needed (Pascale, 1991)
ii. To solve the previous problem of highly-skilled employee (Pascale, 1991)
iii. To manage an effective new program (Pascale, 1991)
iv. To establish a new management system for the future (Reilly, 1996)
Everlane now had struggled with significant issues, including the lack of staffs,
reduced productivity due to the unreasonable allocation of human resources into the
proper position and the unfair treatment inside the workforce environment.
On the other hand, applying the Workforce planning process in changing strategic
business intent (Figure 1) for the Everlane case study is reasonable because of:
i. Everlane's management team now has its own goal of becoming a
globalization fashion brand and under the wrong strategic intent.
ii. The workforce segmentation, in this case, has not enough effective in
building and setting management's policies and applying into Everlane's
employee.
Hence, in this section, from the guidance of this model, several recommendations for
Everlane's leader and Human Resource management team will be provided in order to iron
out the outstanding issues:
i. The line managers and every ambassador of each store should be gathered
together, build intense strategies based on:
 Everlane’s vision: Radical transparency
 Everlane’s mission: Grow on the national and global scale
 Everlane’s goal: The value of their employee and a healthy working
evironment
ii. Identify the external and internal factors that effecting the changing in
business case now in order to identify the Everlane’s workforce trend:
unhealthy workforce labour, unblanced-treatment between employee,
unqualified employees, outdated-information updating between employee
and Everlane’s management team or BOD.
iii. Focus on area where Everlane could achieved the most benefits then conduct
the policies that supporting on high-skill level employees and create a culture
that all employees can live up until their entire time with the most valuable.

iv. Develop a system/ or a tool in order to collect the key workforce indicators.
 Training courses need to be created for enhancing unqualified
employee.
 Every employee have to checked regulary for ensuring the right
position with the right job tasks doing.
 Clearly humance condition should be set out and apply for all worker.
 The working schedule and wages for each job positions need to be
updated and followed consistently by the manager.
v. Develop strategies in order to deal with other workforce planning problems
with an action plan that follow the Everlane’s vision, future mission and goal.
 Raise awareness into the workforce of Everlane’s commiting in getting
better in order to boost the employee’s trust.
 Supporting the remote employee for make sure taking timely actions.
4.1.3. Limitations
Besides all the benefits that the workforce planning model creates, several
limitations would be listed below to influence the company and their employee negatively.
Next, the policies and tools created based on the community managers' unification
and the process must be followed the “radical transparency” mission statement. If Everlane
has not guaranteed that reliable process, the incorporation between each department in
the company can become the second limitation, leading to the disconnection between them
and the lack of trust in workforce labor.
Because of the long-term workforce planning, the company has to allocate a large
budget into this. However, as for the Everlane case study, the company now faces up with
the new operation in the transformation from online to offline apparel retailers, which can
be a big issue in the financial cost limitation.
Furthermore, as for the employee, they have already been in the unfairer treatment.
Therefore, in long-term workforce planning, there would be sabotage inside workforce labor
is another limitation because of the unwilling corporation (Yogita & Shruti, 2017).

4.2. Recruitment and Selection
4.2.1. Theory and model
According to Kiessling & Harvey (2005), human capital is a crucial factor in every
organization. In addition, Recruitment and Selection processes have always played a crucial
role in Human Resources because of their influence in building organizations and forming
people (Ma & Allen, 2009; Taylor, 2006). Furthermore, as described as “tools and
techniques” in managing people in an organization, recruitment and selection have also
built the enacting strategy like evaluating human capital or estimating the essential skills
and ensuring socialization in the organization (Taylor, 2006).
In the recruitment and selection process, the managers have to inform other
employees about specific stages or techniques, including interviews, personal testing
(physical ability testing, performance testing), in order to ensure the rational calculation of
these methods and human capital (Jewson & Maison, 1986; Taylor, 2006).
Regarding Breaugh in his study, A model of the Employee Recruitment Process
covers four main stages below:
Figure 2: A model of the Employee Recruitment Process (Breaugh et al., 2008)
To develop a consistent strategy for opening recruitment activities, the employer
should considerately establish the recruitment objectives (number of applicants, time frame
for filling positions). After carefully considering the strategy consistent with the objectives,
the organization will carry out the recruitment activities, including the methods used,
recruiter used, and job information. In the final stage, the recruiter will evaluate the
recruitment results compared to its objectives. Besides, the intervening job applicant
variables are recorded as the decisive factors for recruitment when planning the process.
To categorize and select suitable candidates for each job position, the interview
process would be different based on many aspects of different jobs (Mohapatra & Sahu,

2017). However, the ultimate goal that employers are aiming for is to choose the candidate
with the knowledge and skills that best match the job description in particular and the
company in general (Rozario, Venkatraman & Abbas, 2019). The ability of the interview
group to improve is the deciding factor in whether the selection process is highly effective
and whether the interviewer can read and utilize the practical information from the
candidate or not (Graves & Karren, 1996). The summary (Figure 3) presented below is the
critical aspects that have been established for the selection area that has been summarized
by Rozario, Venkatraman & Abbas (2019).
Figure 3: Critical Aspects of the Selection process
(Rozario, Venkatraman & Abbas, 2019)
This figure indicates the critical aspects of the selection process by divided into 2
main parts including applicant and hiring member perspective and acts as a platform for
both two parties to get more information about each other. In term of applicant,
constructive feedback and the interview occupy thier interest. As for the hiring person, to be
able to select the most potential candidates, they need interview training, the supports in
the interview process such as machines and rating scale as well as draw feedback for their
candidates.

4.2.2. Recommendation
Due to the lack of staff and unreasonable workforce planning, Everlane had
struggled with the mass hiring and less function of the Human Resource recruitment team,
Everlane should apply the model of the Employee Recruitment Process and take
consideration into the Critical Aspects of the Selection process for this three main reasons:
i. There is no consensus between the recruitment department and Everlane about
the recruitment process.
ii. The process of selecting human resources to ensure transparency and
reasonableness is still a painful problem that the company has been facing for
more than two years.
iii. The Recruitment and selection process is still facing many difficulties after the
significant changes of Everlane due to its impact on previous unreasonable
workforce planning.
Hence, several suggestions for the Human Resource Management Department and
Recruitment team, particularly to address the issues mentioned above, would be listed
below.
i. Everlane needs to manage the recruitment operation by professional training
ii. Everlane management team and recruitment team should determine the
recruitment objectives: focus on the type of work and experiences, people who
have a high retention rate.
iii. The recruitment strategies are developed to fill in the job position based on the
store that lacks staff, the recruitment target (number of applicants, time for
recruitment), and the utilized budget.
iv. The tools or methods used have to be clear and consistent with the information
conveyed to the applicants about the recruitment activities.
v. After receiving the results from the recruitment process, Everlane employers
have to select the most suitable and optimal candidates to interview based on
the objectives established before.
vi. The final stage is to allocate new employees to vacant positions and can support
the company and the former employees.

4.2.3. Limitations
Applying according to the models will bring efficiency to the business, but some
disadvantages will also gradually form over time and business changes in the future.
For Everlane, due to the lack of transparency in the recruitment process for a long
time, the company will have difficulty filling the existing gaps to start in a new direction.
Second, Everlane needs to invest large amounts of time and money to achieve long-
term performance and best quality to avoid repeating problems like before because of the
importance of processes. Hence, time and budget are other limitations when the company
applies the above model.
One issue that cannot be ignored is the influence from external factors: candidates
(in the intervening job applicant variables that are indispensable when the employer plans
to recruit).
5. Conclusion
Several recommendations that can be considered as reasonable and suitable for the
Everlane Case Study, but the aforementioned recommendations are for reference only and
there are still many unclear points. Besides, in addition to matters of Workforce planning
and Recruitment as well as Selection, the management team is also facing many other
difficulties. In summary, the Everlane Case Study has brought the clear and proven fact that
the HR department is important in an enterprise.

PART B
When describing the term “organizational agility”, Gerow and his colleague have
tried to shed light on what is "agility" first - the way an individual responds and acts to
change (Gerow et al., 2014). While Dove (1999) defined that organizational agility as the
capacity to react, control, and respond to the change, other studies recorded it as “the
capability of firms to adjust/adapt their strategic direction or redeploy/redirect their
resources to create value” (Doz & Kosonen, 2008; Teece et al., 2016). Organization agility is
also utilized to plan new strategies to meet customer needs (McCarthy et al., 2010).
In the Everlane case study, the company has rapidly changed to achieve
achievements with the strategy of expanding to series of brick-and-mortar stores. However,
the ability of the company to respond to this change is still limited. Regardless of the
business strategy, HR management strategies still have many shortcomings leading to long-
term adverse effects.
In addition, previous studies have shown that it is difficult to achieve the
development of strategic alignment at the operational level without the social alignment at
the strategy formation stages for becoming agile (Reich & Benbasat, 2000).
Therefore, the company needs specific plans and includes a contingency plan when
deciding on a significant structural change of the business. Nevertheless, now, even small
changes will bring a confident positive for Everlane.
Regarding Shafer et al. (2001), the company's human resource strategy can foster
organizational agility; in other words, the company and the adaptability and flexibility of
small individuals also play an essential role (Sherehiy, 2008).
Assuming that the store management teams can adapt to Everlane's change on their
own.
 Advantages: the company was able to reduce burdens and reduce personnel issues
 Disadvantage: Lack of consistency in roles and functions and disconnection of
management with lower staff at different stores
In terms of “drive for results”, some arguments support this action as the potential
measures in managing organizations and human capital with a firm’s objectives when
changes (Beer, 2011). In Beer’s research, he had shown that for the organization’s top-down
change, the leader applies the “drive for results” theory for improving financial performance
and support the shareholder value but not for the sustained economic value (Beer, 2011).

Besides, one limitation in applying this theory can be psychological contract breaking as the
key employee will be quit (Beer, 2011).
As for the Everlane case study, the leader should establish a new direction in
strategy but still follow the value and mission of the company instead of only identifying
problems and draw solutions for addressing the problem.

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