Human Resource Management Report: Cadbury, UK Labour Market, and VRIO

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Cadbury's Human Resource Management (HRM) strategy through the lens of the Resource-Based View. It delves into the company's tangible and intangible resources, such as cash, machinery, brand value, and patents, and assesses them using the VRIO framework (Value, Rarity, Imitability, and Organization). The report highlights how these resources contribute to Cadbury's competitive advantage. Furthermore, it critically evaluates two major threats facing the current UK labour market, examining the interplay between HRM practices and these external challenges. The report explores the role of HRM in managing resources effectively, and the impact of these resources on the company's overall performance in the market. It emphasizes the importance of rare, non-imitable, and non-organizable resources in achieving market advantage, and how HRM can utilize these resources to improve the company's market positioning.

HUMAN RESOURCES

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
1. Resource Based View..............................................................................................................1
2. Critical evaluation of two major threats which are facing by the current UK labour market..5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Human resource is an important department working in every kind of organization. It is
very crucial for any organization because it is related to the human which are working in the
organization for the achievement of organizational goals. Thus, management of Human
resources is an important function for any organization in order to hire, train and retain them for
longer time in organization. Resource based view is an important concept related to the
management in which company plan about the usage of resources in order to gain competitive
advantages and optimum use of resources. VRIO framework is an important framework which is
being use as a tool to analysis the internal resources and capabilities in order to gain competitive
advantages.
Cadbury is a multinational company which is working in Confectionery industry.
Cadbury is the 2nd largest company in confectionery industry after Mars in the world. It was
founded by John Cadbury in year 1824. Its headquarters is in Uxbridge, London, England,
United Kingdom (UK). It operates its business more than 50 countries worldwide. It has given
employment to 71,657 employees. Its key people are Irene Rosenfeld who is chairman of the
company and Dirk Van De Put who is chief executive officer (CEO).
This report will highlight the resource based view in the context of HRM. It will also
explain the tangible and intangible resources of the organization. It will also explain the VRIO
analysis of the company. It will tell about the two threats which is being face by company and
role of artificial intelligence in elimination of human resources efforts.
1. Resource Based View
The resource based view is an approach of business strategy management which was
emerged in year 1980 and 1990. this view is based on the different tangible and intangible
resources which are available to the organization. These tangible and intangible resources are
property, procedures, knowledge, skills and information. In the combine way these available
resources can help the organization to perform better in the market and gain competitive
advantage (Cascio, 2015). These resources help to improve the capability of Cadbury. Some of
these resources are individual and some of them are developed by combining form of
organization and employees. This all core resources help to develop the set of the capabilities
which are helpful to gain the competitive advantage in the marketplace.

The role of Human Resource Management in the resource based view is to calculate the
resources of the company and evaluate the strength and weakness of them. By this evaluation the
importance of the particular resource can be found and this can help to utilize the resource for the
better performance of the organization in the market. There are two type of resources in an
organization. One is tangible and other one is intangible. These both type of resources can
provide the competitive advantage to the Cadbury to gain the advantage in market when they are
used together. By use these resources in combined way the productivity of the company can be
improved. This combination can be derived by evaluation of resources and make proper strategy
to utilise them for the good of organization (Bratton and Gold, 2017).
Tangible and Intangible Resources of an Organisation
The tangible resources are visible, and can be physically feel and experienced. This type of
resources are physically exists. The example of the tangible sources of the Cadbury are Cash,
inventory, machinery, land, building, computers, and other transportation vehicles. The
evaluation of these resources can be calculated by checking the physical condition and
importance of particular resource (Taylor, Doherty and McGraw, 2015).
The available cash in the company account is most important to take the competitive
advantage in the market. The availability of cash in the company allows the organization to take
the respective decision related to the operation that requires finance. More investment in the
market can help the organization to improve the performance. The next physical resource is the
machinery and production plant of company. This is responsible for the production of the
Cadbury products. The performance of this machinery and plant manages the production of the
company and allows the company to provide the product as per the requirement. If the capacity
of plant to produce the product is less than the market requirement then the Company can face
the shortage of goods in the market. This can cause the customer to purchase the product of other
companies. This can affect the market performance of the Cadbury. So the availability of good
plant and machinery is required must for the organization.
The other tangible sources of the organization are the availability of land, transportation
and different equipments. Land is required to build different operational units of the Cadbury.
This allows the company to improve the productivity of company. This can help to ensure the
availability of the product in the market as per the requirement. Availability of Transportation
facility in the Cadbury to manage the supply chain and raw material required for the production.
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The last and most important resource is the equipments of information technology (Delery and
Roumpi, 2017). These are required must for the improvement of different functions and
operations of organization. The handling of all department is possible by IT equipments.
This how the tangible resources can help the organization to gain the market advantage.
These resources are required for the production, management and transportation of goods. By
maintaining of these resources can help the Cadbury to maintain the production of the product to
full fill the market requirement.
Intangible resources of the organization are patents of the company, Logo, copyrights,
brand value, self development software, customer data, trademark and goodwill. This all
resources are not visible and can't be experienced but these are required for the better operation
and market performance of the organization. The patents of the Cadbury protects the copyright
of the company products. This patents are related to the products and procedures used by the
company to produce the product.
The logo of the company is important to represent the status of product in the market. This
logo is printed on the company product and no one can copy this logo. The value of the brand in
the market and customer's mind is most important. This is related to the reputation of the
company. Good image of Cadbury in the market can help to gain more customer in the market
and also to improve the reputation of the company. The software used by the organization to
improve the procedure and the operation of the company (Schriber and Löwstedt, 2015).
This soft
ware are used to collect the market data and economic data of the company and process it to find
different patterns and sequences to calculate and predict the future data. This can help the
Cadbury to operate according to the market conditions. This can improve the company in the
market. The data of the customer is also an important factor for the organization. Data of the
consumer and their requirement can help the Cadbury to make changes in the company products
and services to gain the competitive advantage (Won and Chelladurai, 2016).
The trade mark of the company represent that the product of the company is different from
the other similar product. In the market there are many products which are of same type and
these products are differentiated by the company trademark. The trade mark of the company
represents its reputation in the market. The consumer buys the product by sighting the company
trademark on it. This also important for the company to manage the trademark of company. The
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last intangible resource of the company is the good will of the company. The reputation of
company, product and services, trade mark, brand name and strong customer base and skilled
employee are the part of the company good will (Indartono and Wibowo, 2017). These all are the
intangible resources which are important to perform in the market. These tangible and Intangible
resources can be evaluated by VRIO criterion to know their importance for the company to
perform in market.
VRIO (Value, rare, Imitate and Organizable)
The resources of the company can be evaluated by the VRIO model. These different
resources are evaluated on the base of four different aspects which are value of resource, rarity of
resource, can be imitated or not and last one is the organizable (Seo, Park and Choi, 2016).
Resource Value
The resources which are valuable for the company and consumer are available cash, plant
and machinery, transportation vehicles, company building, available land, different production
and operation devices company logo, patents, copy rights, softwares, customer data, trademark
and goodwill of company. This all are valuable resources for the company.
Rarity
The different rare resources of the company are plant, machinery, building, stoke,
equipment, softwares, Logo, trademark, brand value, customer data, patents, and copy rights of
company. These are rare resources of Cadbury.
Imitable
The non imitable resources of Cadbury are company logo, Patents, copyrights, brand value
and trade mark. These resources of the company are not imitable and these are to costly to
imitate. So these are most important resources for the company to gain the market advantage.
Organizable
The different resources which are easy and less costly to organize are plant and machinery,
building and different equipments. The resources which are rare and not organizable resources
are company logo, brand value, copy right trade mark and good will. This how the resources can
be divided into different category.
This analysis state provide the information of the important resources of the Cadbury. The
rare, non imitable and non organizable are most important for the organization. These resources
can help the organization to gain the competitive advantage in the market. The HRM can use
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different practices to utilize these resources to gain the competitive advantages in the market.
The rare, non imitable and costly to organize kind of resources can provide this market
advantage.
This how the resource based view can help the organization to work effectively in the
marketplace to gain the advantage from the other market competitors. The tangible and
intangible sources are analysed on the base of VRIO model to know there importance. By this
evaluation the HRM can manage these resources in the combine form to gain the maximum
performance in the market. By improving these resources the overall company performance will
improve. The target of the HRM practices is to utilize these rare, non imitable and non
organizable resource to improve the positioning of the company in market. The practices to
improve this benchmark of the company are recruitment to improve the work force, training and
development are to obtain more capacity and improve the core capacity of company.
2. Critical evaluation of two major threats which are facing by the current UK
labour market
Labour is mainly used for those who performs hard manual work and they are mostly
unskilled who can only earn the money by their efforts but in economics The term Labour also
includes the mental abilities (Pulignano, Doerflinger and De Franceschi, 2016). In simple words,
Labour is the person who undertakes various physical and mental work in order to gain some
monetary rewards. A labour market is the place where workers and employees interact with each
other. The employees compete to hire the best and workers compete for the best satisfying job.
The Labour market in an economy mainly functions with the demand and supply of the workers.
In the market, the demand of the labour in the firm vary according to the supply of the labour in
the market. The demand and supply of the labour in the market is mainly influenced by the
changes in the bargaining power. It may be the workers working in factories, services of doctor,
advocates, officer, teachers are all can be considered as a labours (Vogel, 2018). Uk market is an
area of the economic exchange in which workers seek jobs and employees seek workers.
However, it was estimated that ONS in 2018 put the size of the UK market force at 33.8
m workers out of an estimated population of 66.1 m. In December 2018, those workers totalled
32.48m along with 1.38 unemployment. The prices offered to the labours are generally called as
wages which provides an income to household and represents as a cost to firms. In hypothetical
free market economy, wages can be determined as a unregulated interactions of demand and
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supply. In contrast, the real mixed economies that is government and trade unions can exert an
influence on wage levels. In order to employ the labour in the Cad-bury industry which is a one
of the most popular British Industry and deals with the variety of Chocolate products. The
booming UK labour market broke many records in 218, on the surface in which the things look
great for workers. An unprecedented three quarters of the working age population is employed.
While the unemployment rate hit a 43 years low. Hence the total number of unemployed people
remains low relatively as compared to the number of vacancies. Various important facts
regarding the labour market of UK in which the Cad-bury company operates the huge business
operations within the market. On the other hand, any work which is done for entertainment or for
self satisfaction cannot be included under labour in economics (Dhingra, et.al., 2016). The
labours are generally classified as Physical/ metal labours, Skilled/ unskilled labours and
productive and unproductive labours.
Labours are one of the important key who participates in production of the commodities.
Like a commodity, labour cannot be stored and withdrawn from the market for the favourable
time if the wage offered in low. Working conditions and environment may influence the
capabilities and functioning of the labours in the market.
Moreover, due to the increased technology all over the world, companies are employing
machineries on a large scale. So this have impacted on the requirement to hire the employees for
the organization in UK. Recent new stories have highlighted the increasing use of technology
and the rise in automation within the traditional Blue collar sectors of the economy and also now
increasingly within white collar industry. Artificial intelligence have lead to the huge impact on
the requirement of the human efforts. So this Artificial intelligence had a huge impact on the
demand of the Labour market in UK. Due to the advancement of the technology in the world,
human efforts are eliminated by automatised work. So there is huge unemployment in the UK as
most of the manual efforts are now converted into the mechanical efforts. Most of the
organization often seeks to hire those employees who have a experience so this have leads to the
potential impact on those who have skills. AI to cause a major realignment in UK labour market.
According to the research it is estimated that AI will actually lead to net increase in jobs in UK
in next 20 years. One of the most consistent debate is the Automation machine learning and AI
which may lead to the job loses. In contrast, this leads to the wastage of the skills and
knowledge of labours as they are not getting the potential opportunities to explore their The two
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major threats which are currently influencing the Current Labour market of the UK are as
follows:
The performance of the Labour market from Macro economic point of view
The UK labour market has looked remarkably healthy in recent years since 1997
but currently it have changed the overall scenario of the labour market due to the rapid change in
the technology and science (Stiglitz, 2016). Recent shifts in the equilibrium, It allows rapid
fluctuations in the employment rate, Inflation, Real wage growth, inflation expectations etc. If
unemployment is below the equilibrium rate, either inflation rises and there is no balance of
payment deficit or inflation is stable and there is no balance of payments deficit or there is some
combination of the two. The equilibrium unemployment rate may change quite significantly one
decade to the next. The performance labour market have hugely impacted by the macro
economic point of view in which there is a huge performance gap among the workers.
For instance, changes in the power of trade union, the operations of the benefit system,
The match between the skill requirements of job vacancies with the available skills of
unemployed job searches. Along with this, there are more changes such as labour taxes, product
market competition, minimum wages can all change the equilibrium rate. HMRS has
significantly increased its national minimum wage and national living complience check.
However, there is a little doubt That Brexit uncertainty has had a significant impact on
the recruitment market. As, it is too simple to cite the Brixit as the only cause. So recruiters are
under increased pressure to help clients in order to find the talent which they need from a smaller
pool (Hopkin, 2017). The number of Job vacancies in the UK has increased to a total of almost
816000, the highest figure since comparable records began. On the other hand, demands of the
labour in the market have grown up and meanwhile the supply of the workers has dropped. Due
to the situation of extreme unemployment, people are actually migrating towards new places in
search of jobs and earning the money for their family.
Imbalance in the Labour market across different skill group
As most of the Successful enterprises are recruiting the workforce who have the
experience in the same field. So it leads to the major imbalance across different skill group
people who are freshers. Specialist skills from EU countries aren't readily available which
resulted in decreased number of EU-born workers in the UK which fell by 95%. more surprising
is the decrease in the active young job-seekers Cad-bury company can no longer relay on
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graduate talent as workforce and trends has now changed. In 2018, The UK companies need to
navigate two major challenges which are talent availability and business uncertainty. As such,
the recruiters have an important and necessary role to play which assists the clients and
candidates to achieve their objectives in current labour market of the UK.
Although, Brexit has a triggered an impending workforce crisis. British business wont
have a success to the skills and talent which they have grown and accustomed to and demand of
the labour will ultimately outstrip supply. For the first time in a half century, the number of
workers entering the UK job market is falling behind population growth figures which have a
huge impact on the employment of the labours in the organizations of the UK (Daye, 2018).
However, 47% of the highly skilled EU citizens currently living and working in UK are looking
to leave the leave within next five years. Pestereva, N., 2015
As per the the current forecasts of UK labour market, Average earnings are still
substantially below pre-crisis levels. The recession had a particularly severe impacts on
employees which leads to falling of the earnings by 9.4% between 2007-08 and 2013-14 after
adjusting for inflation. As per the Pestereva, 2015 these statistics are informative because they
allow the people to understand the average pay of people in work as compared to the pay of
those in work in previous year. Many individuals will have personally experienced the
substantial pay growth over this project. The rise of the gig economy had resulted in the
increasing demands and flexibility of deciding when and for how long they basically work.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that Human resource is one of the important
key element which contributes towards the successful business. It has been discussed that
Organizations can perform the main operations with the help of the employees as they are
considered as an assets to the firm. This study has provided various ways which helps in
manager in managing the human resource of the Cad-bury in order to carry out the successful
operations of the organization. Moreover, it has been concluded that Managing the human
resource of the company is referred as an art in which manager need to posses a great talent and
knowledge in managing the skills of the staff members and assigning the duties according to
their abilities.
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In addition to this, The document has described various different arguments which assists
the readers towards developing the knowledge about and labour and labour market of the UK. It
has described the threats to the current labour market of the UK in which the Cad-bury company
is operating its main business operations and exporting such goods and services across the world.
This document has also provided the proper statistics related to the labour market and vacancies
which meet the demands and supply of the market.
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REFERENCES
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630.
Vogel, S.K., 2018. Freer markets, more rules: Regulatory reform in advanced industrial
countries. Cornell University Press.
Dhingra, S., et.al., 2016. The consequences of Brexit for UK trade and living standards.
Stiglitz, J., 2016. The Euro: And its threat to the future of Europe. Penguin UK.
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Daye, S.J., 2016. Middle-class Blacks in Britain: a racial fraction of a class group or a class
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Vasilopoulou, S., 2016. UK Euroscepticism and the Brexit referendum. The Political
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competitive advantage: is the field going in circles?. Human Resource Management
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Indartono, S. and Wibowo, F.W., 2017. VRIO and THES based development of university
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