Analyzing HR Issues and Strategies: Greenwich Pharmaceuticals Report

This report examines the human resource management challenges faced by Greenwich Pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical company with a UK subsidiary. The report begins by analyzing the need to redesign the HR mission statement to align with organizational goals. It then explores the development of new HR strategies, including workforce planning, performance management, employee motivation, and training programs, to address issues such as declining sales and employee morale. The report delves into workforce planning, highlighting its benefits in identifying human resource demands and optimizing employee placement. Employee performance and well-being are also addressed, focusing on issues like employee engagement, training, and the implementation of a new performance management system. Finally, the report discusses relevant employment legislation in the UK and its impact on HR policies, providing a comprehensive overview of the company's HR challenges and potential solutions.

Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT – 941143
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Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
Table of Contents
1. Introduction......................................................................................................................3
1.1 Case Background......................................................................................................................3
2. Redesigning the Mission Statement.................................................................................4
3. Developing New HR Strategies........................................................................................5
4. Workforce Planning.........................................................................................................7
5. Employee Performance and Wellbeing Issues................................................................9
5.1 Employee Well-Being Issues.....................................................................................................9
5.2 Aligning Performance Management and Mission Statement.................................................9
6. Employment Legislation.................................................................................................11
7. Conclusion......................................................................................................................13
8. Bibliography....................................................................................................................14
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Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
1. Introduction
1.1 Case Background
Greenwich Pharmaceuticals is an American company that has its subsidiary in the United
Kingdom as well. The company manufactures a wide range of drugs in the United States and
has around 400 employees carrying out different functions for the company. The company
has been operating in a very competitive market and has lost its sales because of a new
market entrant. The effect of the dropping sales has had an impact on the workforce of the
company too. The employees at Greenwich Pharmaceuticals have lost their morale and
confidence as well.
A new chief executive has been redeployed from the headquarters of the company to turn
things around for the United Kingdom subsidiary. He has been looking at a number of
operations and processes of the company and has recently started paying attention to human
resource policies as well. The existing human resource manager of the subsidiary has
resigned. The new chief executive of the company is not happy with the mission statement of
the human resource department of the company and has asked for a new mission statement
that should hold the department more accountable for organizational success rather than
focusing too much on providing service.
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2. Redesigning the Mission Statement
A mission statement is generally a short description of why an organisation exists, how it
operates, what are its goals and objectives, what customers does it serve, etc. The mission
statement of an organisation or a department should be simple and should be something that
the employees can relate to. It should be able to motivate the employees to collectively work
towards the achievement of organizational goals and objectives. The new mission statement
for the human resource department of Greenwich Pharmaceuticals is given below:
“To help the company in achieving its organizational goals and objectives and to optimize
employee performance levels by improving the workplace conditions, by strengthening
human resource management policies and by fostering better workplace relations between
employers and employees.”
The new mission statement of the human resource department would provide a unity of
direction to the human resource personnel. Rather than focusing more upon providing human
resource services, they would now be able to lay a greater stress on implementing human
resource policies that would help the organisation in achieving its goals and objectives. The
new mission statement would widen up the scope of the human resource department and
would convey the role that human resource management can play in the success of an
organisation.
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Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
TASK 1
3. Developing New HR Strategies
Human resource management is a concept that has gained a lot of importance in the past few
years. Human resource management allows business organizations to optimise the
performance levels of their workforce by strengthening their policies related to the
workplace. Human resource managers perform a number of core and non-core functions,
such as training and development, recruitment and selection, career development,
performance management, compensation and benefits, attraction and retention of employees,
employee motivation, etc., which enables them to improve the workplace conditions for the
employees and also in establishing better employer-employee relationship (Armstrong,
2006).
For an organisation to become successful, it is imperative that its human resource department
strategies are aligned with its overall organisation strategy. To align human resource
strategies with the overall organizational strategies, Greenwich Pharmaceuticals will be
required to formulate its long-term objectives as well as short term objectives. The objectives
of the company will then have to be broken down into individual objectives for the human
resources. For example, the new chief executive included increase in sales and profitability as
a long-term objective for the organisation (Montazer, 2018). The human resource
management department of the company should break it down and assign individual
performance objectives to the entire workforce and should develop performance management
systems that should reflect the objectives formulated by the new chief executive. Further, to
achieve higher profitability, the human resource management department of the company can
then implement strategies that can help the company in bringing down its labor turnover
ratios, avoid wastage of human resource through proper workforce management, etc.
(Righeimer, n.d.) In this way, the human resource department of the company will be able to
align its human resource management strategies with the new mission statement of the
department.
Some of the human resource strategies that can be used by the company to achieve its
mission statement are discussed below:
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Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
- Workforce planning
- Performance management and appraisals system
- Employee motivation strategies
- Employee engagement and retention
- Training and development programs
- Compensation and benefits (Paychex, 2017)
All of the above strategies will help the human resource department of the company in
achieving its mission statement step-by-step.
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TASK 2
4. Workforce Planning
Workforce planning is a process in human resource management that allows an organisation
to identify its human resource demands in terms of size, quality, type, knowledge and skills.
Based on data available from the past as well as from the present, workplace planning helps
in determining the labor requirements of a company in order to minimize the possibility of a
staff shortage. Workforce planning can have multiple roles to play in a business organisation
(Bratton & Gold, 2017). It can not only help in identifying human resource demands of a
subsidiary but can also be used to develop work schedules for the employees of a company.
This not only helps in aligning the efforts of the human resource with the organizational goals
and objectives but also ensures that there is not wastage of effort (De Bruecker, et al., 2015).
Workforce planning can be highly advantageous for a company like Greenwich
Pharmaceuticals because of a number of reasons. The company is experiencing a shortage in
its workforce already and most of its employees are being poached by competitive firms.
Labor turnover rates in the company are at an all-time high. If the situation is not controlled,
the company would lose its ability to function properly, because of a lack of human resources
(Peter Louch, 2014). Workplace planning in such a scenario will not only strengthen the
human resources of the company but would also ensure best fit within the workplace.
Firstly, workforce planning would allow the company in analyzing its present human
resource capacity. Before making any recruitment and selection decisions, it is important that
Greenwich Pharmaceuticals knows about the human resource demand of its subsidiary and
the talent that is available at the disposal of the company. By developing a skill inventory the
organisation will be able to analyze the skills and competencies of its employees and would
also be able to assign the best suitable roles to them (Kelley, 2018). Secondly, workforce
planning can be used to analyze the human resource demand that is most likely going to
occur in the near future. Human resource shortage can be experienced because of retirements,
high attrition rates, internal promotions and demotions, dismissals, etc. Once a human
resource shortage is analyzed, the company will be able to prepare itself to fulfil the demand
in advance and use the best recruitment strategies to find the right talent. Thirdly, through
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Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
workforce planning, the company will be able to identify those employees who have the
skills and the competencies to take up higher job positions in the company. The human
resource management department can then train and develop such employees and can offer
them promotion if a higher job position in the organisation becomes vacant (Fortin, 2016).
Not only will it help the employees in developing their careers but will also keep them
engaged in their jobs. Therefore, workforce planning can be used by Greenwich
Pharmaceuticals to find the right fit for the right job at the right point of time.
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Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
TASK 3
5. Employee Performance and Wellbeing Issues
To achieve a high performing workforce, human resource managers generally focus on
employee well-being and try to improve the workplace conditions for them. If an organisation
doesn’t care about the well-being of its employees, it becomes more likely to fail in
optimizing its workforce’s performance levels, which can ultimately have an impact on the
overall efficiency of the company. Certain employee wellbeing and performance issues
identified in the case study of Greenwich Pharmaceuticals are discussed below:
5.1 Employee Well-Being Issues
First of all, the human resource management department of the company focuses more on
preforming their core functions, such as recruitment and selection, resolving day-to-day
issues, compensation and benefit programs, etc. and has little focus on non-core human
resource management activities, such as employee motivation, attraction and retention of
employees, employee engagement and empowerment, etc. which form the back bone of a
happy workforce (Bryson, et al., 2015).
Secondly, the human resource management department of the company has not implemented
enough training and development initiatives for its employees. The only training or
development programs implemented by Greenwich Pharmaceuticals were in the form of
supervisory training. Therefore, the company has been depriving its workforce from the
benefits of training and development programs (Hassan, 2016).
Thirdly, there have been issues in the workplace that were related to unfair dismissals,
bullying and harassment. Such employee wellness issues have been occurring in the company
because of the inability of the human resource managerial department of the company to talk
about the importance of employee well-being in its mission statement.
5.2 Aligning Performance Management and Mission Statement
Implementing a new performance management system can be one of the best ways to ensure
that the company fulfils its goals and objectives conveys through the new mission statement.
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Greenwich Pharmaceuticals
The new performance management system should be based on Management by Objectives
system, which is one of the most commonly used performance management systems in the
world. Under this system, the company will be able to formulate its organizational goals and
break them down into individual goals. By aligning organizational goals with individual
goals, it will become easier for the company to keep its workforce motivated and to make
them realize that their efforts are actually contributing towards the success of the organisation
(Noe, et al., 2017). Based on the mission statement, the managers can formulate SMART
performance goals for the employees. SMART performance goals are the ones that are
specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic and time-bound (Bjerke & Renger, 2017). The new
performance management system will foster a challenging workplace environment where the
employees would be motivated to perform and achieve their performance objectives.
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TASK 4
6. Employment Legislation
Employment legislation is a set of guidelines formulated by the legal bodies of a country.
Employment legislation offers a number of rights to the labor of a country and governs the
behavior and policies of business organizations towards their human resources (Peterson,
2017). In United Kingdom, United Kingdom Labor Law governs the relation between
employers, employees and trade unions. There are a number of labor laws in the field of
recruitment and selection, bullying and harassment and disciplinary and grievance procedure,
which can have an impact on the human resource management policies of Greenwich
Pharmaceuticals.
In the United Kingdom, under the Employment Rights Act 1996, the employers are required
to provide their employees a written statement of the main terms of contract within two
months of their joining. The statement should contain detail information on names of both the
parties, job titles, description, date of employment, place of work, details about pay,
incentives, holidays, pension arrangements, notice period, dismissal procedures, etc. The
employees working in the United Kingdom are entitles to an equal pay, participation in trade
unions, take maternity leaves and are also protected against unfair dismissals and
discrimination. In United Kingdom, an employer is required to give his employee an advance
notice in case of termination and an employee also has to notify his or her company in case
he or she wants to quit. In case a company fails to provide an advance notice to an employee,
the employee can make a claim to the court against wrongful dismissal (Lexology, 2018).
Employees can make a complaint to ACAS helpline, which is an organisation that mediates
between employers and employees, within three months of being wrongfully dismissed.
Moreover, the government of United Kingdom has also fixed minimum wage rates for
different groups of people. For 16-17 years old employees, the minimum wage rate is GBP
3.57. For 18-21 years old employees, the minimum wage rate is GBP 4.83 and for employees
above 22 years of age, the minimum wage rate is GBP 5.80 (Expatica, 2018)
In the United Kingdom, workplace bullying and harassment are unlawful under the Equality
Act 2010. Employees working in the United Kingdom can try to sort out any kind of
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workplace bullying or harassment cases within the company initially by talking to their
managers, HR personnel or trade union representatives. If it does not work, they can make a
formal complaint about it by making use of their company’s employer’s grievance procedure.
If nothing works, they can take a legal action by getting in contact with an employment
tribunal. Another option that the employees working in the United Kingdom have (in case
they are being bullied or harassed) is to get in contact with ACAS (Advisory Conciliation and
Arbitration Service). The United Kingdom labor law holds business organizations responsible
for preventing bullying and harassment in their workplaces and are liable for any kind of
sufferance experienced by their workforce (GOV.UK, n.d.). ACAS also assists business
organizations in formulation of anti-bullying and harassment policies.
The legal scenario in the United Kingdom is very strict, especially when it comes to
protecting the rights and the interests of the employees. The government has formulated strict
laws in the fields of recruitment and selection, harassment and bullying and grievance
procedures, which are a strict binding on all business organizations operating in the United
Kingdom (Ghani, 2016). Greenwich Pharmaceuticals has already been experiencing a
number of issues related to workplace bullying and harassment, unfair dismissals, etc. and the
scenario will only get worse for the company if it is unable to make changes in its workplace
policies. Greenwich Pharmaceuticals will have to formulate strict workplace policies that
would protect its employees from being harassed or bullied and will also have to implement
an efficient grievance procedure which could be helpful in making the employees more
confident and open about their problems.
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