Business Report on Boots: Challenges, CSR, and Teamwork Reflection

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments. This report analyzes Boots' business, CSR, and teamwork.

BUSINESS REPORT
ON “BOOTS” AND
REFLECTION ON
TEAMWORK
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3
ANALYSIS OF BOOTS AND KEY ISSUES AT BOOTS WITH RECOMMENDATIONS.............................4
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR)...................................................................................6
IMPACT OF BREXIT ON BOOTS.......................................................................................................8
OWN EXPERIENCE OF WORKING AS A TEAM.................................................................................9
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................... 10
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................11
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INTRODUCTION
This report will be focusing on health and beauty care organisation BOOTS. Boots is a UK based
company which works as a health, beauty and pharmacy company which have its business in
the UK, Ireland and other territories. The report will include the key issues of boots, solutions or
suggestions to solve these issues, the challenges that boots will be facing because of BREXIT
and what are the CSR activities that boots do for the society.
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ANALYSIS OF BOOTS AND KEY ISSUES AT BOOTS WITH
RECOMMENDATIONS
Boots is a UK based company that has 2500 health and beauty stores with 618 boots opticians’
practices and 503 hearing care locations in the UK and Ireland. They have been providing
pharmaceutical services to local communities from 170 years now. The company value its
employees and chose only those people to work with them who truly care about the
customers. The 56000 people working at boots are passionate and talented towards their work.
Boots is the UK's largest pharmacy-led and health care company that has expertise in providing
exclusive services to customers for being everyone's first choice for healthcare and pharmacy.
Boots have its online business where 40% of its customers come from online websites of boots,
so for this boots have its mobile apps for the customers and this online connectivity through
VLC is helping boots to explore and penetrate in the other countries.
Figure - Online Website of BOOT
Source- (BOOTS, 2019)
Issues faced by boots – boots is UK’s one of the most popular sites for online shopping which
provides beauty and baby products as well as gift sets. The main problem at boots is that its
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website goes down for maintenance or due to any other issue. And when the site of beauty
retailing is down there is a message that says boots will be back soon, as the site is down the
problem occurs while placing the order and another problem relating to online shopping in
boots is that due to slow working of the website the logging off and logging into account is
difficult .
Figure - boots website going down
Source - downtoday.co.uk, 2019
Recommendations to solve the problems-
The company should focus on the technical errors that are creating the problem of websites
going down and the customers are facing so many problems due to this. The human resource
department needs to hire technicians that can ensure the smooth working of the website and
simultaneously ensuring the security and privacy of the users.
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CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR)
Figure- CSR at boots
Source- (BOOTS, 2019)
CSR is a broad term that describes the activities of a company towards the wellbeing and
sustainability of its environment. These activities range from providing donations to Non-profit
organisations to implementing policies within the organisation that are environmentally
friendly. CSR activities help the companies in many ways as it builds a positive image of
company in the eyes of its customers also CSR activities boots employee engagement as when
the companies are dedicated towards increasing sustainable development and welfare of
society than the employees are attracted towards these type of organisation and also helps in
sustaining the employees in the organisation (Carroll and Shabana, 2010).
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CSR activities of BOOTS -
Boots to be the UK's most socially responsible retailer in health and beauty market works on
 Improving the health of customers as well as of communities
 Protecting the environment by reducing the impact boots have on the environment.
 Providing sustainable products
 Valuing customers and employees by placing them at the heart of the company's
business.
Boots have its CSR scorecard where it focuses on four major areas of:
Community -This area includes patient led cancer care, volunteering, health communities,
fundraising and boots charitable trust
Environment - This area focuses on waste recycling, sustainable materials, energy and carbon
and transportation.
Market place - In this area includes product sustainability, retail partnerships, healthier living
Workplace – At the internal environment of Boots workplace the focus is on health and safety,
workplace health of employees, learning and development of employees with supporting
diversity in employees at the workplace.
The above areas within the scorecard have a long-term plan and strategies with the core
actions, individual and company wise targets and these are compared with the actual
performance. The strategies of the scorecard are regularly reviewed according to the current
status and scenario in order to satisfy the stakeholders and a line these strategies with the core
business strategy simultaneously meeting with the Walgreens Boots alliance’s overall
strategies.
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IMPACT OF BREXIT ON BOOTS
The Euro monitor International’s Industry forecast that UK sales will be £205 million less in the
years 2015-2020 due to the BREXIT scenario. This will affect the sales and revenues of the
company and also the effects will be on its productivity as boots have diversity within its
employees so it may be possible that its best employees have to leave the organisation.
The UK will not impose additional tariffs on import and export of cosmetics which is very good
for boots as the company exports to its customers outside the country and will be able to
smoothly work without any increment in cost.
There will be a change in currency exchange rates and it may be possible that the British pound
will drop against the dollar which affects the cost and profits of the Boots as the company is
into exports and imports (Livermore and Clarkson, 2017).
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OWN EXPERIENCE OF WORKING AS A TEAM
It was a very nice experience of working in a team where the members have guided each other
on the topic and with them we learned how to broaden up our thinking related to this topic.
We have learned so much while working in team relating to problem-solving, new ideas,
creativity etc.
Benefits of working in a team-
 Problem-solving ability increases when there are your team members supporting you.
 Motivation increases when all team members work together.
 Guidance, creativity and innovation are also the benefits of working in a team.
Challenges of working in a team –
Difference in Opinion- every team member has a different point of view on every topic so it was
difficult to accept everybody’s recommendation into the report and due to this difference in
opinions the decision-making process was delayed every time and the discussions took so long
to come to conclude.
Social loafing- as all the members had different opinions and only one was taken into
consideration so the other team members lost their interest at some point and their
involvement in various activities become so low.
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CONCLUSION
The report gives us the idea that every company have the goal to achieve profit but it faces so
many problems in the functioning of its main business activities and these can be solved by
teamwork and innovative actions. The CSR activities are necessary for every organisation to
build up its image simultaneously providing benefits to the society, environment and increases
the profitability and customer base of the organisation.
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REFERENCES
Boots, 2019. Employees and stores of Boots. (Online) Available at: http://www.boots-
uk.com/about-boots-uk/about-boots/boots-in-numbers/ (Accessed on 8 March 2019).
Boots, 2019. About boots. (Online) Available at:
http://www.boots-uk.com/about-boots-uk/about-boots/(Accessed on 8 March 2019).
Boots, 2019. Corporate social responsibility. (Online) Available at:
http://www.boots-uk.com/corporate-social-responsibility/our-approach/ (Accessed on 8 March
2019).
Carroll, A.B. and Shabana, K.M., 2010. The business case for corporate social responsibility: A
review of concepts, research and practice. International journal of management reviews, 12(1),
pp.85-105.
DT, 2019. Problems faced by Boots. (Online) Available at: https://downtoday.co.uk/boots/
(Accessed on 8 March 2019).
Fastly, 2019. About boots. (Online) Available at: https://www.fastly.com/customers/boots-uk
(Accessed on 8 March 2019).
FB, 2019. Impact of BREXIT. (Online) Available at: https://formulabotanica.com/impact-brexit-
cosmetics-business/(Accessed on 8 March 2019).
Livermore, S. and Clarkson, T., 2017. The Brexit Diaries: engaging with the public in Brexit
Britain. London: Britain Thinks.
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