Innovation Solution Report: Coles, Addressing Talent Challenges

This report addresses the industry challenge of talent acquisition, specifically within the context of Coles Supermarket in Australia. It proposes 'Programmatic Advertising' as a cutting-edge innovation solution, identified through brainstorming and collaboration techniques. The report outlines an implementation plan based on the Strategic Innovation Model, including action steps, required leadership styles (transformational), and cultural considerations. The report also considers how Coles can leverage programmatic advertising through one-to-one interaction to reach talent faster than competitors. The report covers organizational culture, leadership, and the need for a dynamic workforce. Appendices provide evidence of idea generation techniques. The solution focuses on the strategic alignment, consumer insights, and disciplined implementation of the innovation.

Running head: INNOVATION SOLUTION
Getting the Best Talent is a Big Challenge
[Coles Supermarket, Australia]
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1INNOVATION SOLUTION
Executive Summary
The report is aimed at identifying an industry challenge (‘Getting the Best Talent) and proposing
a cutting edge innovation solution (Programmatic Advertising) to this problem. The solution was
identified using ‘Brainstorming’ and ‘Collaboration’ as the idea generation techniques. The
action to be performed utilizing the solution is posting the ‘Job Ads’. As found in the study, the
advertiser and the publisher can interact through one-to-one discussions. The move can be a
good initiative provided if Coles manages its culture and leadership as per the business needs.
The study identifies the ‘transformational leadership’ as the most preferred leadership style for
Coles considering an implementation of the ‘Programmatic Advertising’.

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Table of Contents
1. An outline of the industry challenge ("GETTING THE BEST TALENT")...............................3
2. A Creative Proposal of a leading-edge strategic innovation solution, by using creative idea
generation techniques (use appendices to evidence the process)....................................................4
3. Implementation (the Strategic Innovation Model)......................................................................5
3.a. The innovation action plan....................................................................................................6
3.b. The Culture and the Leadership needed...............................................................................8
3.c. The innovation implementation..........................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13
Appendices....................................................................................................................................16
1. Brainstorming........................................................................................................................16
2. Collaboration.........................................................................................................................17

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1. An outline of the industry challenge ("GETTING THE BEST
TALENT")
The industry challenge, which is the central focus of this report is “getting the best
talent”. It is not the challenge specific to one company but many across the different industries
in Australia. However, this study discusses the issue particularly in the context of 'Coles', which
is one of the most reputed large chains of supermarket stores. Coles enjoyed it being in a duopoly
market with Woolworths as it had in those days less trouble to manage and more opportunities to
gain from. However, the Australian retail market landscape will soon change to accommodate
three retail brands holding the lion’s share of shoppers. This will certainly be a case in the next
10 years if Aldi grows with the current pace to double its market share. A doubling of the market
share will bring it to 22% almost equaling the shares of Woolworths and Coles such as 28% and
22% respectively (Smh.com.au 2020). Aldi performs better in terms of overall customer
satisfaction as compared to Coles.
The facts stated above indicate that Coles had struggled to boost its market shares while
Aldi had been doing it considerably. There can be many reasons why Coles has not been able to
boost its shares of shoppers in recent few years. It can be a case of strategic failures or a lack of
innovation from the retail brand. Irrespective of the reasons it could be, Coles like many other
retailers also faces similar situations when it comes to attract and retain the industry's best
talent. It is due to many reasons such as a likely labor shortage in years to come, increasing
talent competition between the industry’s retailers and so forth (Tai.org.au 2020). According to a
report from the “Boston Consulting Group (BCG)”, Australia is likely to experience a significant
labor shortage by 2030. The shortage could be as many as 2.3 million workers (Tai.org.au 2020).

4INNOVATION SOLUTION
Considering that there will be a huge shortage of laborers in the future and that there
is fierce competition between the retail brands to attain the best talent, Coles should focus on
new ways of reaching the talent faster than its competitors can. The action as such this should
help to offer many innovative products and services to its customers. It is why the group
concluded that there should be a leading-edge strategic innovation solution to this problem.
Through intensive utilization of ‘Creative Idea Generation Techniques’ the evidence of which
can be accessed from the “Appendix Section”, the group found “Programmatic Advertising" as
the desired solution for the industry challenges faced by Coles.
2. A Creative Proposal of a leading-edge strategic innovation solution, by
using creative idea generation techniques (use appendices to evidence the
process)
The section talks about the different idea generation techniques as exercised by the group.
The evidence of the techniques will be provided in the (Appendix Section) of this report. These
are (Ritter and Mostert 2018):
 Brainstorming: This process involves identifying many solutions for one problem.
Those many solutions are then assessed for their viability in the situational context. The
assessment is done talking about the ‘Pros’ and ‘Cons’ of each one of the ideas. The
blending of ideas in this way helps reach to one potential solution. This technique can be
performed both individually or in a group of 6 to 10 people. The brainstorming session
helped to identify “Programmatic Advertisement” as the ideal solution to the contextual
industry challenge. The evidence of the process will be shown later in the “Appendices”.

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 Collaboration: It is about two or more people collaborating to discuss a corporate
challenge and identify the best feasible solution to address it. Here again, the group
agreed to “Programmatic Advertisement” as the most suitable solution to address the
challenge faced to get the best talent. The evidence of the process will be shown later in
the “Appendices”.
3. Implementation (the Strategic Innovation Model)
The section considers "The Strategic Innovation Framework" to carry out the different
tasks such as those mentioned later in this section. The framework has seven different
dimensions of strategic innovation such as those listed below (Palmer and Kaplan 2007):
1. A Managed Innovation Process
It is about using a combination of the non-traditional and traditional approaches to derive a
business strategy.
2. Strategic Alignment
It talks about building support for a business strategy.
3. Industry Foresight
It involves understanding the emerging trends, which may have an impact on a business strategy.
4. Consumer/Customer Insight
It encourages to understand what could be the articulated and unarticulated needs of the
consumer/customer.

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5. Core Technologies and Competencies
It involves both leveraging from the existing pool of technologies and competencies as well as
extending the corporate assets.
6. Organizational Readiness
It checks the action taking capability of a company.
7. Disciplined Implementation
It is about managing the entire path from inspiration to its business impact.
All these dimensions of "The Strategic Innovation Framework" will be applied to the
(Question 3.c).
3.a. The innovation action plan
The innovation solution to the identified industry challenge is “Programmatic
Advertising”. This section will discuss the ‘Action Plan’ to be useful in recruiting the best talent.
‘Programmatic Advertising’ allows automating the job posting on the usual list of job
sites. It all needs reaching to the most suitable vendor who assists with this service. ‘Recruitee’ is
one of the ‘ATS Platforms’ that can help create job ads by targeting specific traits and skills
needed to fill up a job position. Many of such platforms can help the job ads put in front of the
target audience. It, therefore, increases the chances of reaching a quality applicant.
'Programmatic Advertising' can also be used for alternative websites and thus reaching a diverse

7INNOVATION SOLUTION
pool of talent, which cannot be accessed from a traditional approach to job ads posting
(Malthouse, Maslowska and Franks 2018).
Action Plan:
There are several ways ‘Programmatic Advertising’ can be put into action. The
employers can go for the ‘Programmatic TV Advertising’ or ‘Programmatic Direct’. The
decision to select the most appropriate action should involve the stakeholders such as the
management team, the IT department and the HR department of a company. Effective
coordination between the stakeholders and an appropriate understanding of their job in the
context should help to identify the most suitable set of actions (Braun and Eklund 2019).
Considering the labor shortage to be a problem for Coles in the long-term,
“Programmatic Direct” appears to be the most viable option. This form of advertising will
involve one-to-one interaction between the publisher and the advertiser. One of the actions will
be buying the ‘Ad Inventory’ from the publisher. However, the inventory can only be accessed if
the software is added into the system to be used for monitoring purposes (Braun and Eklund
2019).
This will follow an action needed to sign the agreed terms and conditions with the
publisher for running the media campaign. The terms and conditions should be there to safeguard
the rights of the advertisers as well as the publishers (Palos-Sanchez, Saura and Martin-Velicia
2019). There should be certain targets for the campaign such as attaining a certain amount of
quality applicants in a given time. If 80 or 90% of the set targets are achieved, Coles should
continue with this media-campaign until their talent needs are not met.

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The third action should be to deploy the resources on monitoring the system to have
some data needed to measure the campaign’s efficiency. The HR department should be the team
to take care of this campaign. The allocation of related tasks should be the responsibility of the
HR manager. The AdTech platform will be used for automating the delivery and tracing of this
media-campaign (Braun and Eklund 2019).
The fourth action should involve measuring the data obtained from monitoring the
campaigning sessions. The quality of the data can be checked by comparing it against the KPIs
(Key Performance Indicators) set for the campaign (Maté, Trujillo and Mylopoulos 2017). The
findings will indicate whether the investment in “Programmatic Direct” has been fruitful for
Coles.
Finally, the managers at Coles will submit their ‘campaign delivery reports’ to the top
management panel. The panel will take the final call regarding whether to continue with the
campaign.
3.b. The Culture and the Leadership needed
Organizational culture matters a lot while leading a change or something else. The type
of organizational culture indicates whether a recommended business strategy applies to a given
company. Organizational culture has four distinct subcategories like ‘Clan’, ‘Market’,
‘Adhocracy’ and ‘Hierarchy’. Out of these subcategories, market-oriented cultures constantly
look for the results. They give their utmost focus to the achievement of goals, facing off the
competition and ensuring that the job is done. Conversely, clan-oriented cultures do give
importance to mentoring and nurturing their people (Saif 2017).

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‘Coles’ is a market-oriented company that strives to put forward a strong fight to its
competitors. They have done it in the past on so many occasions such as its "Down-Down,
Prices Are Down" campaign as part of its cost-effective strategies. They are doing it again with
the ‘Quiet Hour’ program, which is an attempt to offer a low-sensory shopping experience. This
is to make shopping more suitable for autistic people (Colesgroup.com.au 2020). Moreover, it is
an attempt to target a market segment largely untouched by many others.
The Culture to Support the Implementation:
Coles after being demerged from Wesfarmers had needed to do everything accurately to
create possible chances of success for them. The effort to create the possible chances is
evidenced in Coles leading the “Quiet Hour” program and expanding this service to its stores
nationwide (Colesgroup.com.au 2020). Nevertheless, they would require a dynamic workforce
that could respond spontaneously to all such initiatives.
The workforce should have a good mixing of tenured as well as fresh recruits to help it
take the risks under the superficial supervision of the tenured staff. Fresh recruits should be the
eligible people having desires and abilities to perform on the management’s expectation level.
The challenge to get the best people onboard can be resolved with “Programmatic Advertising”
in shorter times.
The leadership:

10INNOVATION SOLUTION
The ‘Transformational Style of Leadership’ should be the most ideal leadership style for
Coles considering the implementation of “Programmatic Advertising” into the system as well as
recruiting new people. As stated above in the culture section, the future workforce of Coles will
have the right mixing of tenured and fresh minds. Leaders need to work closely in collaboration
with their team leads as well as instruct clear guidelines of action to the employees. Coles would
expect a significant contribution from both its team leads and the team members for pursuing the
new actions. The development of a dynamic workforce will depend broadly on what people are
being picked on board and how they are nurtured (Nguyen et al. 2017).
With regards to the ‘Programmatic Advertising’, leaders will have to ensure few things
like resource allocation, risk management, problem-solving, decision-making, object-handling
and more (Nguyen et al. 2017). Besides, there is a need to instruct its team leads to submit the
process reports regularly. A follow-up to the reporting will also be their responsibility. It is to
ensure that the issues being faced are resolved in real-time.
3.c. The innovation implementation
The implementation of “Programmatic Advertising” can be explained using the
"Strategic Innovation Framework". Hence,
A Managed Innovation Process: ‘HRM database’ and the ‘Admin Portal’ have been the
most common approaches to track the recruitment and attrition of employees. When
‘Programmatic Advertisement’ goes live, Coles would just require generating time-to-time
reports for the Ad posting. The reports should have elements such as the number of visitors who
have viewed the posts and their conversion into actual job applications. These reports can be

11INNOVATION SOLUTION
compared against those of the HR’s to identify whether the Ad posting has managed to fill the
gaps as created from employee attrition (McDonnell et al. 2016).
Strategic Alignment: Coles’ leaders should form a strategic alignment between its
tenured people and the recruits. If this does not happen tenured people might feel overburdened
with the increased management expectations. There should be clear instructions given to both the
tenured and the fresh hires concerning their job responsibilities. Besides, challenges escalated the
need to be addressed in the quickest possible time. Performance should be appreciated to let
them feel being valued (Sosnowski, Dobrzyński and Janczarek 2017).
Industry Foresight: Every emerging trend should be given a serious concern to see
hidden opportunities. For example, automated or cashier-less shopping is receiving news in the
United States. Amazon.com and many other retail brands have already tested cashier-less stores
to enhance the overall shopping experience of shoppers (Techcrunch.com 2020).
Consumer/Customer Insight: Coles is one of the major Australian retail brands to have
met their customers’ expectations on many occasions. The real problem it suffered was for its
attempt to give the cheapest offers. It could not compete noticeably against Aldi, which offers
the cheapest products (News.com.au 2020). It is therefore important to know the market demand
to meet the diverse needs of consumers. Coles has done it well to sense the needs of thousands of
‘Mums’ who could not earlier shop with their kids having suffered from autism
(Colesgroup.com.au 2020). It needs to do more such things in the future as well.
Core Technologies and Competencies: “Programmatic Advertising” can be performed
into the system using its dedicated software. By installing the software into the system, the
advertiser and the publisher can interact in real-time.