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Managing People and Organisations

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Added on  2021-08-11

Managing People and Organisations

   Added on 2021-08-11

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Student Number: HAN20110028
Module: Managing People and Organisations
MBA Assessment: Everlane Case Study Analysis
Word Count: 3138
Managing People and Organisations_1
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).
Managing People and Organisations_2
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.
Managing People and Organisations_3
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
Managing People and Organisations_4

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