Analysis of HRM&D in the JustEat-Takeaway.com Merger Context

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the JustEat-Takeaway.com merger from an HRM&D perspective. It begins by exploring the significance of JustEat's founding culture and its potential implications for the merger with Takeaway.com, emphasizing the importance of a strong organizational culture in driving success. The report then examines the new organizational design and business model of the merged entity, aligning them with relevant organizational theories and highlighting the adoption of a matrix structure and a Concierge business model. It further identifies and discusses the key challenges the merged entity is likely to encounter in the coming years, such as overestimating synergies and exogenous risks, and proposes recommendations for the HR group to facilitate communication and foster unification between the two entities. The report emphasizes the importance of addressing potential issues like cultural clashes and employee concerns to ensure a successful integration and sustainable growth in the competitive online food delivery market.

HRM&D in a Global
Context

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
1. Brief explanation of importance of JustEat's founding culture to its success as well as
discussion on potential implications for merger with Takeaway.com.........................................1
2. Looking towards new JustEat- Takeaway.com design and its business model, the ways it
align with ideas/theories about the structure along with evolution of organisation....................3
3. The challenges that JustEat- Takeaway will encounter in next couple of years and why.......4
4. Some recommendations about what HR group might do for facilitating communication
addition to feeling of unification among the two entities............................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management is termed to the practice to effective manage people for the
purpose of attaining better performances. Similarly, human resource development is said to a
framework that assist manpower to develop abilities, skills and knowledge that in turn improves
effectiveness of institutions (Baimenov and Liverakos, 2019). The assessment is prepared on Just
Eat and Takeaway.com food delivery tie-up. The merger of the companies is set for creating the
largest and popular online food delivery groups across the world. The merger marks latest stage
of consolidation in takeaway market.
The assessment covers evaluation of importance of founding culture to organisational
success and potential implications for merger on other entity. It also focuses on organisational
design, business model and the ways these align with ideas about structure and evolution of
company. Further, it includes potential challenges that will be encountered by the merger
companies in coming years. At last, some recommendations are provided about what HR group
might do for facilitating communicate and unification among the two firms.
MAIN BODY
1. Brief explanation of importance of JustEat's founding culture to its success as well as
discussion on potential implications for merger with Takeaway.com
Organisational culture refers to collection of practices, values, expectations and hence
forth which directs addition to inform actions of all department or team members. When an
entity has strong culture then it keeps its manpower actively as well as passionately engaged. A
founding culture creates and supports values, objectives, mission, vision and principles that
influences risk taking level, financial growth, innovation and communication that results in
attaining success (Black, Warhurst and Corlett, 2017). In case with JustEat, the company have
founding culture which is mirror for the founders. In other words, founder inspired culture
reflects values, personality, strengths and values of the founder and takes the business towards
success. It is a mission driven entity that is defined by the beliefs and actions of the founder. It
forms positive behaviour among employees without direction and promotes values across the
entity.
As per views of Hitchcock (2019), it is evaluated that founding culture of JustEat is
important as it contributes widely in making the business successful. It is the cohesion which
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holds all its people together and aligning their purposes with organisational objectives. The
cultural type is important for the business as it transform manpower into advocates. The culture
celebrates contribution, efforts and participation of employees that offers accomplishment sense
among them and motivates them to take the company towards success. Moreover, it plays
important role in directing employees to respond through expanding into traditional business of
other company and allowing its people to fulfil orders by using own delivery fleet addition to
organisation's courier network.
According to Bozer and Delegach (2019), it has been evaluated that founding culture of
JustEat have direct impact of founder's ideas and strategies on performance as well as well being
of employees. Healthy culture addresses all those areas which can act as roadblocks in success of
business. The culture helps in improving workflows addition to guides the process of making
decision. Having clear culture which unifies staff members together with promotes organised
work structures leads to making the business more successful.
Merger refers to an agreement which unites two current business into one new
organisation. It is a way for entity to expand its reach, gain market share together with expanding
into new segment. Moreover, it is perceived that merger is done for reducing operations cost,
unite common products, gaining market share, increasing profits as well as growing revenues
(Brandl, Bos-Nehles and Aust, 2018). In context to Takeaway.com and Just Eat, main purpose of
merger is to create largest online food delivery business, surpassing rivals and making
sustainable position in fast growing sector. The merger with Takeaway.com, there are high
chances of success for JustEat. It implies that the merger creates one of leading largest food
delivery business in increasingly consolidated industry. The merged companies are significant
rival for other food delivery business and become dominant force in the sector. Through the
merger with Takeaway.com, JustEat have high chances to operate on verge of productivity and
profitability. It also requires large infusions of financial and other resources for survival.
Moreover, this creates largest business in online food delivery market with strategic vision,
leading positions in attractive markets, scale as well as diversified geographic presence.
The merger implies that JustEat is able to create more reps along with enhances
databases that leads to greater customer service satisfaction. Furthermore, the company
experiences number of changes in its action, behaviour and performance. It plays major role in
activities of entity and have huge economic and emotional impact son employees (Collings,
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Scullion and Caligiuri, 2018). Because of changes within operating environment as well as
business procedures, it implies negative outcomes on JustEat as its employees suffer from
physical, social or emotional problems. It also impacts drastically on management as it creates
huge misunderstanding among professionals of both company which results in corporate culture
clash and generates high stress level.
2. Looking towards new JustEat- Takeaway.com design and its business model, the ways it align
with ideas/theories about the structure along with evolution of organisation
Organisational design is defined to step by step methodology that determines
dysfunctional aspects of structures, work flows, systems and realigns them for fitting existing
objectives of business so to develop plans for executing new changes (Dastile, 2018). At same
time, business model is organisational core strategy to do business in profitable manner. By
looking towards new design of Just-Eat Takeway.com, it is analysed that the company have
implemented suitable norms together with paradigms of performing business and maintaining
employee behaviours that contributes in its development. There are couple of kinds of norms that
are adopted in the merged business. Some includes trust, respect, ambition for progress,
transparency, accountability and humility. Through these cultural norms, the management
respects ideas, thoughts and views of all human capital and fosters open and authentic
communication at workplace for development in the dynamic industry. These cultural norms
encourages the enterprise to strive continuously for further improvements and work together on
all types of challenges. All these contributes widely in solving complexities around
organisational designs and generates vales for life of company in most better manner than it was
earlier.
The new design of Just-Eat Takeway.com includes key elements that are chain of
command, work specialisation, departmentalisation, span of control and degree of formalisation
which engages all the resources together and helps management to perform jobs for the purpose
of establishing successfully in the online food delivering business. The design of entity is a
platform which incorporates key elements of entity, such as technology, people and information
(Deters, 2017). Since the planning of evolution of Just-Eat Takeway.com, several tenets are
applied by human resource management to work with changes and managing complacency
effectively. The merged business have adopted Concierger business model for development. In
this, the company takes current products and add essential custom element for transactions to
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make each sale unique for the target customer. Also, the new business structure that is used by
the merged businesses is matrix structure. The idea behind this is to group people of both
companies into one functional unit of specialisation and further separating them into divisional
projects.
To operate successfully in the fierce competition, Just-Eat Takeway.com have aligned its
structure and business model with Systems Theory. The concept behind the theory is based on
the interrelatedness of entire organisational parts and creating an equilibrium in systems for
adapting changing environment. With the theory, the organisation have managed its design and
business model in pressurising situations and built their businesses with in-house delivery
options (Gaudet, Brown and Lunsford, 2017). The merger is latest sign which accelerates in food
delivery industry and takes it as beginning of long existence in the sector. The design and
structure of Just-Eat Takeway.com are aligned with System Theory with methods and procedures
related to organisational development that supports new strategies to take lead in the competitive
sector. In this aspect, management of the newly merged businesses have adopted team building
which is crucial methods of development or evolution of the business. With the organisational
design and business model, both organisations reported hard hot towards profits. It is because
they pump investments into new logistics operations for taking lead on rivals. Just Eat
experienced pre-tax profits decline by 98 percent in first half of the year to £800,000, after the
revenues have jumped to £464.5m. Similarly, Takeaway.com increased its revenue by 70 percent
to €179.4m during the merger.
The deal of Just-Eat Takeway.com is dream combination of online food delivery sector
as its structure and design links customers to restaurants which handled their delivery effectively.
With this, the merger business have branched out handling deliveries as well as responding
competitions from the companies such as Deliveroo, Uber-Eats and so on. The merger have
expanded by 20% in the UK market. Even in the chaotic situation, the companies have
developed with designs that are trustworthy, quality, transparency along with matrix organisation
structure which contributed greatly towards life of the merged business (Gunz, Lazarova and
Mayrhofer, 2019).
3. The challenges that JustEat- Takeaway will encounter in next couple of years and why
JustEat- Takeaway is a merged business that is set for creating largest online food
delivery for its customers outside China. The combined group have chances to become worth of
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nearby €10bn. The deal is latest sign of merger which is accelerating within food delivery
industry (Mabelane, 2017). Despite of the growth and acceleration, there are high chances that it
could encounter various challenges in coming years. In this context, following are some of the
challenges that JustEat- Takeaway will encounter in next couple of years:
Overestimating synergies: Synergy is the term which combines vales as well as
performances of two entities will be more than sum of separate sole parts. It arises at the
situation when one plus one is more than two. It means either cost savings or enhanced revenue
that are consequences of a transaction. Unsurprisingly, these are hardest motives for multiple
deals (Mabope, 2018). At same time, these are commonly overestimated. It is critical challenge
which will be encountered by management of JustEat- Takeaway while thinking about future and
making decision. It is because managers estimate future synergies on the basis of present
situation or present circumstances pertaining in company and industry. While making decision,
they might overestimate synergies of merged businesses that will result in complex challenge in
coming couple of years.
Exogenous Risks: These are concerned with news that are the fundamentals which drive
markets. Economic, technological or industrial shifts could refers to that even most planned and
arranged deals can fail (Mahadevan and Ancut, 2017). In case with JustEat- Takeaway, it will
face exogenous risk because of changing shift of industrial and technological factors that would
lead to failures of dealing or transactions in the market. At present, the entity is achieving
success in its planned deals but in coming years, it can perform in opposite direction that will
result in diverse complexity for the management of JustEat- Takeaway.
Losing trust and interest of key stakeholders: For most modern businesses, human
capital is important part. Yet, there are many mergers which considers it as scant attention that
leads to more merger challenge. In association to JustEat- Takeaway, it will face the issue of
losing trust, power and interest of stakeholders because top management is more enthused about
the merger and do not involve staff in decision making or other activities. It goes for people at
top of organisational hierarchical structure along with those who works at bottom level. Losing
trust will be massive challenge for the merged organisations in coming couple of years
(Makamu, 2016).
Inadequate due diligence: The term due diligence is said to an audit, review as well as
investigation that is performed for confirm the facts related to matter under consideration. In
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financial world, the concept requires proper examination of all the financial statements prior to
entering into proposed transaction with others. In references to JustEat- Takeaway, the
management will take every necessary step for examining records so to ensure that merger
transaction is success. However, shortcuts are moistly common that are seen by business
community as one of challenge that will be faced by administration team of JustEat- Takeaway
in coming years as various uncertain circumstances would create working hard for managers and
it can lead to inadequate due diligence.
Failed integration: In technical terms, integration comes after merger or before
(Mariappanadar, 2019). It is cone of challenge that will be faced by JustEat- Takeaway in
coming years due to changing circumstances in market. It comprises change as well as cultural
management that creates inefficient together with toxic work environment. It is one of vital issue
that arises in relation to organisation merger is post merger integration. Businesses which
combine their resource along with efforts should learn to so this through bringing all constituents
elements or designs together. However, it is easier to say but difficult to perform. The integration
planning is associated to cultural issues because this involves planning process for identifying
what corporate culture will look alike after some years. Due to constraints in planning, JustEat-
Takeaway will face the issue of failed integration in coming years.
4. Some recommendations about what HR group might do for facilitating communication
addition to feeling of unification among the two entities
HR group is combination of human resource management and human resource
development. According to Maya (2019), human resource management is described as the
practice for managing people and company for achieving better productivity and efficiency.
While. Human resource development is the approach to enhance potentiality, skill sets and
workings of employees. The HR group of JustEat- Takeaway might perform or undertake
various strategies for the purpose of facilitating communication as well as sense of unification
among the two corporates. Some of the recommended activities to HR group are as follows:
Arranging meetings and gatherings: It is responsibility or HR group to arrange format
meetings and informal gatherings for the merged businesses so that all the necessary information
are communicated to both and feeling of unification is derived among management of the firms
(Muthini, 2019). In context to JustEat- Takeaway, the HR group is recommended to organise
more number of gathering and meeting wherein resources, especially human resources in which
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detailed information are discussed and unified approaches are shared. More commonly, HR
group can help employees of both companies to serve as point for contact and concerns.
Furthermore, HR group coordinates meetings as well as communications related to change or
other related initiatives.
Developing training programs: Training program is said to education program which is
designed or developed for equipping manpower with skills and knowledge in order to make them
professional and communicating important trends which are pertinent with job (Onnis and Onnis,
2019). In context to JustEat- Takeaway, HR group can facilitate communication and unification
by developing training programs for employees of both companies. Moreover, implementing
cross training program might give employees a better understanding about responsibilities and
functions in other company. It performs a great working to show employees that how well all
work together for same mission.
Creating new policies: For fostering sense of unification among JustEat and
Takeaway.com, HR group is recommended to create new policies that shapes culture of merged
businesses. It is recommended to HR group that it should develop and communicate a cogent
people related strategy. This kind of strategy must comprise of developing key policies,
workplace expectations and guidelines for governing behaviour of manpower (Pareek and
Purohit, 2018). With this, all the employees will share their ideas or thoughts about some topic
with employees of other business that are working under contract of merger and it will create a
sense of unification among them.
Developing compensation policies: On dependence of situations of the deal,
compensation policies for employees of combining entities are likely to be called by HR group
on splicing disparate payment or compensation plans into effective programs which engages
manpower or fa ciliate communication between staff of both companies. Alternatively, HR group
of JustEat- Takeaway might have to discard original plans as well as then create suitable
program from scratch that fosters communication and feeling of unification to work together for
meeting objectives of directions of merged entities.
With mentioned tactics, it is recommended to HR group that all these will lead to
engaging people of both companies into communication about key topics or random sentences.
Moreover, these will also help the HR group to generate feeling of unification among staff
members and management of two organisations(Reiche, Harzing and Tenzer, 2018).
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CONCLUSION
From the assessment, it is concluded that the basic tenant of HRM/D is that workforce
performing in entity are its biggest asset to reach heights. Human Resource management is key
element of any business. Human Resource Development is component of human resource
management which only focuses on training and development of manpower in enterprise.
Culture is important for company to achieve success as strong or founding culture is the one
wherein members agrees and cares intensely for values of company that improves efficiency and
productivity through stimulating manpower along with coordinating their actions towards vision
of merged business. In upcoming couple of years, a merged business have high chances to face
challenges including overestimating synergies, exogenous risks, inadequate due diligence, failed
integration as well as losing trust and interest of key stakeholders. For the purpose of fostering
communication together with generating sense of unification of two companies, HR group is
recommended to arranging meetings and gatherings, developing training programs, creating new
policies and developing compensation policies.
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REFERENCES
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Online:
Hitchcock, J., 2019. The Importance of founding culture. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.minim.co/blog/the-importance-of-founding-culture>
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