FY021 Introduction to Business Studies: Lush HR and Finance Report

This report provides an analysis of Lush, a British cosmetic retailer, focusing on its HR strategies, financial management practices, and a SWOT evaluation. It details Lush's recruitment and training processes, emphasizing their commitment to ethical and sustainable practices. The report also examines Lush's financial performance, including revenue generation and sales trends, and discusses their unique retail strategy. The SWOT analysis identifies the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, offering insights into its competitive position and future prospects. The report concludes that Lush maintains a strong CSR profile and environmental sustainability, contributing to its success in the market.

INTRODUCTION TO
BUSINESS STUDIES

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Information over the HR strategies of Lush................................................................................3
Financial management strategies.................................................................................................4
SWOT Evaluation of Lush..........................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Business studies refers to the areas of study that can be combined in productive activities as
it helps to provide an enhanced understanding related to the mutual dependence upon the
business system. Nowadays, it has been greatly identified that the people are becoming more and
more dependent upon others for the products and appropriate services in order to make their life
comfortable and easy to sustain (Srivastava, Singh and Dhir, 2020). This report will illustrate the
concepts by choosing Lush as a company which is a British cosmetic retailer firm headquartered
in Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom. This study will highlight the thoughts with the help of
discussing over HR strategies, understanding about collaborative working practices along with
knowledge about the role of financial management and reporting within the firm.
MAIN BODY
Information over the HR strategies of Lush
Lush is a fresh handmade cosmetics firm which offers scented selections o ethical skin care
products, hair care, bath as well as body treats products to their customers. The establishment
also excel in providing off-beat gift ideas loaded with a lot of natural ingredients. The firm is
responsible for making effective products and provide appropriate services to their customers out
of fresh fruits and organic vegetables, finest essential oils and a lot more ingredients that are
sustainably and ethically procured from all across the world. The philosophy of the firm is solely
based upon ethics and providing importance towards the positive blows to the atmosphere and
impact the environment as much less as possible. Thus, the company adopts effective human
resource strategies that plan the overall business activities in order to manage their human capital
in order to align it with the business activities done by Lush (Vankevich, 2019). They are
responsible to set the directions for all the other areas of human resource which involves hiring.
Development and training provide employees compensation, performance appraisal and similar
kind of activities.
The recruitment process within the Lush is described that they hire large number of staff
for the holiday season as they typically host in house hiring sessions which helps to showcase
their brand and also allows people to meet the faces at Lush and get hands-on with their
products. They also follows phone interviews, personal interviews as well as working technical
interviews in order to identify the candidates that they are able to get good idea over what they

are going to work i.e. over the manufacturing floor at Lush. When they hire for head positions
they do find right candidate whether it will take huge amount of time say for 1-3 months
depending upon the speciality of the role. Initially the candidate met with the recruiter, then team
manager and then the final interview happens with the department director. They also provide
online hiring facilities a well by contacting candidates whose experiences aligns with the
opportunity. In order to provide much personalised customer experiences to their consumers,
Lush trains their workforce people over recognizing diversified customers’ types as they expect
rapid customer services and make quick decisions regarding the same.
Organization train their employees and development an understanding within them to
handle the customers who continuously asking questions to them. There are currently 750
employees working in Lush Canada, around 5000 employees in United Kingdom and
approximately 1750 in North America (Katiyal, 2019). The company is a private owned firm and
having 44 stores across Canada and 96 across the United States. Their head office is situated in
Vancouver and manufacturing is based upon in Toronto and Vancouver. Hence, they follow a
great recruitment, training and development strategies which are the basic function of human
resource personnel through which the company is able to achieve success in highly effectual
manner.
Financial management strategies
Lush cosmetics limited firm is able to generate revenue of $533.45 million through their
effective sales with the help of various kind of employees as they are having more than 360
companies that are related to the Lush family. Their retail strategy is related to turning the
natural cosmetics buying procedure on their own as they have a riot to colour and smell as well
as many products is sold without any kind of packaging which makes their bright colours more
visible. This also acts as a central feature of the firm (Lawler, 2020). They have a wide presence
in the market area having a beauty landscape all across the world. The products offer certain
authenticity to them because they are freshly made and most significantly they all are handmade
products along with cruelty free and never tested over animals helps a lot to the firm to become
successful in nature.
The company spends nothing over expensive advertisements and utilises social media,
content marketing as well as practices that makes the brand highly strong to create a buzz all

around their products as the establishment does not have any kind of global advertising policy
which makes a purposeful policies to the firm.
Profit and Loss of the Lush Company
The above statistics effectively able to illustrate that the operating Lush cosmetics
Limited group globally from the year 2012 to 2019. As per the above represented figure, it has
been identified that the company is facing a drastic swing of profit and losses during the sessions
in which they are working within the market in diversified situations (Chanodkar, 2020). They
are one of the large cosmetic retailers within the UK having lots of competitive firms but the
establishment is highly known for their handmade beauty care products which include necessary
products such as soaps, body care, face wash, shower cosmetics, perfumes and hair styling
products. Although the sales volume of Lush company increased exponentially in 2020 as the
true value of sales reached up to 120.4 million British pounds, as compared to previous years
when the sales value was estimated at just 45 million British pounds (Mawejje, 2019). Recently,
the company feels that they are doing exponentially great in order to sale organic health and
beauty products within the United Kingdom that have almost quadrupled in just less than ten
years. They adopt various practices in order to make their activities highly sustainable in nature

such as they save nearly 6 million plastic bottles internationally from selling shampoo sachets all
alone. It is when the packing is unavoidable they prefer to utilise recycle materials. They like
their packaging to be reused and recycle or composed at the end of products lives and aim to
have 100 percent their packaging compostable.
SWOT Evaluation of Lush
With the help of SWOT analysis of the Lush cosmetics company, the firm is able to compare
their activities with other establishments against their competitors. It is a great way to identify
whether the firm is prospering, growing, expanding or failing somewhere or in some direction
and thus, during that specific point of time, the Lush have to take necessary steps in order to
overcome from such drawbacks (Yang, 2018). Below is the SWOT analysis of the firm in order
to discuss the practices in detailed manner:
 Strengths
- Their packaging budget helps them to make great profit margins.
- The unique production of goods and services that has been offered by them within the
society.
- The experiences that has been provided by them to their consumers.
- The company is highly responsible in context of the CSR activities towards the
society as well as the whole environment as they started few campaigns in support of
environmental friendly products along with eco-friendly packaging.
 Weaknesses
- Their major numbers of stores are not situated at good locations as well as in highly
popular cities.
- The firm is unable to catch their competitors at certain point of time as their products
were limited to bath bombs and hair care.
- High store designing cost.
- Weak advertising strategies.
- Costly products.
 Opportunities
- Phobia of chemicals.
- Investing in marketing

- Enhancing the vegan product line
 Threats
- High competition
- Building trusted brand
- Competitors are going more and more digital
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been concluded that Lush is being maintaining a strong CSR
profile and environmental sustainability with the help of their effective human resource strategies
as well as financial strategies which helps the firm to overcome from certain losses. This had
proven to be beneficial for the firm as well as the environment. Moreover with their effectual
services, the company had excelled into all of their competitions within the United Kingdom and
also able to provide best customer experiences with their appropriate services. This had given a
competitive advantage to the Lush along with this; the firm has also considered developing
unbeatable advertisements and digital marketing strategies to beat its competition.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Chanodkar, A., 2020. Impact of HR Analytics on strategic HR interventions.
Ghosh, B., Herzig, C. and Mangena, M., 2019. Controlling for sustainability strategies: findings
from research and directions for the future. Journal of Management Control, 30(1),
pp.5-24.
Katiyal, D., 2019. Work-life balances model for working women: To draw attention of the
society and hr professionals. Asian Journal of Multidimensional Research (AJMR), 8(4),
pp.169-178.
Lawler, E., 2020. HR Decision Science. In Effective Human Resource Management (pp. 43-56).
Stanford University Press.
Mawejje, J., 2019. Financial inclusion, shocks and coping strategies: survey evidence from
Uganda. African Journal of Economic and Management Studies.
Srivastava, S., Singh, S. and Dhir, S., 2020. Culture and International business research: a review
and research agenda. International Business Review, 29(4), p.101709.
Vankevich, A., 2019, January. HR-Departments of Organizations: Scope of Activity and
Prospects in the conditions of new industrialization. In 2nd International Scientific
conference on New Industrialization: Global, national, regional dimension (SICNI
2018) (pp. 675-679). Atlantis Press.
Yang, K., 2018, November. Teaching Strategies of Financial Interpretation in the Background of
RMB Internationalization. In International Conference on Contemporary Education,
Social Sciences and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2018) (pp. 154-156). Atlantis Press.
1

2