Analyzing Randstad's Business and Marketing Strategies in Singapore

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Randstad's business and marketing strategies within the Singapore market. It identifies key issues such as complacency, ineffective leadership, and a lack of collective ambition as significant challenges to the company's growth and market share. The report delves into the causes of these issues, exploring the company's internal and external environment, and offers alternative solutions to address complacency, improve leadership, and develop a more effective strategy. It also discusses decision-making criteria and recommends specific actions to improve Randstad's market performance. The report covers various aspects of Randstad's business operations, including market analysis, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, ethical considerations, and leadership strategies, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the company's challenges and opportunities in the Singapore recruitment market.

Running head: BUSINESS AND MARKETING
Business and Marketing: Randstad
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Executive summary
The report tries to identify the issues that the global recruitment company Randstad experienced
during their business venture in Singapore market. Various inter organizational and external
factors created difficult environment for the company to achieve its desired growth. The report
tries to investigate the causes that initiated those issues and also looked at the background of
such issues. The main causes were the complacency or the self satisfaction of the company, the
ineffectiveness of the leadership and lack of core values and shared ambition. After identifying
the issues and causes the report develops certain alternatives to handle the complacency issues.
The report also suggested few solutions and alternatives. The decision making criteria are
discussed in order to understand which one is best suited for Randstad. The later part of the
report focuses on the Randstad business performances that are focused to resolve those issues.

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Table of Contents
Issues................................................................................................................................................2
Causes..............................................................................................................................................3
Complacency...............................................................................................................................3
Leadership....................................................................................................................................4
Lack of Collective aspiration and Clear strategy.........................................................................4
Cause background............................................................................................................................4
Alternatives......................................................................................................................................5
Complacency handling................................................................................................................5
Effective strategy.........................................................................................................................6
Leadership....................................................................................................................................6
Decision criteria...............................................................................................................................6
Identification................................................................................................................................7
Implementation............................................................................................................................7
Development................................................................................................................................8
Selection......................................................................................................................................8
Recommendation.............................................................................................................................8
Reference.......................................................................................................................................10

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Issues
Randstad opened a new branch in Singapore market in October 2012. The primary issue
was to become a more competitive player in the Singapore market. The market value in
Singapore was 2.65 billion dollars spent on the recruitment service, while the country has almost
3.3 million people so the spent is huge (YouTube 2016). At that time there were 2800 companies
in Singapore so one agency for every 20 people were already present. Differentiation is the key
strategy for most organization. As a global company Randstad had to be one of the top three
companies in the market. However the company was at the eighth position for their market
performance at that time. The company had to grow more than 8 % as the market was growing
by 8%, so the company had to perform more than 8% in order to stay ahead in the competitive
market. At that time Ranstad was growing by 5% so they were losing their market share to their
competitor companies. Randstad is one of the Fortune 500 companies, so it was expected that
they would grow double or at least 50% above the average market rate (Fortune.com 2016). At
that time Singapore’s market was growing really fast compared to the global scale, so the
company had great opportunity to enhance their organizational performance. The company was
also struggling to move from 8th position to 3rd position and moving the people together working
to improve brand image, market positioning, increasing quality activities on a daily basis to turn
the employees more productive and lead the company believe in the change was challenging for
the company.
Following are causes that were resisting Randstad from becoming a winning company.

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Complacency
The Randstad company management was suffering from complacency issues from 2010
to 2012. The growth was not improving for that period. The company was satisfied with the
result and did not explore the outside market opportunity and did not develop internal
infrastructure to utilize such outside market opportunities (Drucker 2017). The company did not
do extensive market analysis of its competitors before starting the business venture in the highly
competitive market of Singapore. Therefore the company failed to understand the growth rate of
its competitors. The competitive companies’ structure and achievement were also unanalyzed by
the company. The company fails to explore their best organizational part which they can use in
the business strategies to outperform them. This led the company to perform alright for a long
period but not achieve the high performance which was desired.
Leadership
The organization was not growing as fast as expected but it was growing and every
organizational activity appeared orderly from surface but the leaders were expected to analyze
every activities or employee performance minutely (Southwick et al. 2017). The leadership failed
to get the granular details about how the company was operating from a client, candidate or
consultant perspective.
Lack of Collective aspiration and Clear strategy
Individual drive and collective aspiration were missing in the organizational performance
(Katzenbach and Douglas 2015). The employees were unsure where they would see themselves
in a year or where the company is actually headed.

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Cause background
The organization was purely focused on generalized recruitment. The generalized
recruitment was based on individuals who would be doing everything from finding out forklift
drivers to find sales professionals and to CEO that made the job complicated (Youtube.com
2016). As the country had low unemployment rate, the company had to work hard in order to
find good and skilled people. The shift from to Singapore market was also large for Randstad as
the Singapore government is trying to push the country towards higher qualified jobs, so the
environment was shrinking for such companies.
Alternatives
Alternatives Merits Drawbacks
Measure customer satisfaction
and employee job satisfaction
Employees serve the clients
directly so their satisfaction will
ensure better performance.
Wrong measurement my lead to a
wrong direction.
Continue re-innovating - service
and strategies
Randstad follows the same
traditional practice of their home
country in the host country as
well, the re innovation of certain
strategies will help them to
surpass their competitors.
Proper market analysis and
research on the competitors
needed before implementing
innovative strategies.
Admitting the issues and offer
compensations. Implementing a
formal process for learning from
those mistakes.
The wise thing for Randstad
would be moving on and offering
compensation in the forms of
rewarding the employees and
offering discounts to the
Admitting the flaws might affect
the Randstad’s reputation. More
money needs to be invested for
the rewards.

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customers.
Leadership needs to be more
attentive to the details.
The leadership will challenge the
status quo of the company. As
his lack of attention to detail has
already affected executive
presence it will help him to meet
the growing demand of
complacency (Llopis 2014 ).
This might create tension
between the management and the
employees.
Complacency handling
As an organization of twenty first century Randstad is focused on profit sustainability and
longevity. The company is working in an environment that is focused on global expansion,
process innovation and increasing market pressure. The company is seeking to step ahead from
their competitors in the foreign market. Compliancy has always been an issue for large
industries, like in the financial company’s crisis (Harraf, Soltwisch and Talbott 2016).
Complacency can be found in four areas of people, culture, structure and process. The
complacency of top managers can lead the company into risky investments. The organizational
complacency can affect the organizational performance in various ways. The complacency of
processes leads to environmental scanning that is not sufficient. The company fails to react to the
external changes. The overconfidence results in lack of effective decision making process, even
when it is needed (Tsai et al. 2017). The complacency of the management people encourages
little liability among them. It has also been observed that the complacency is used as the
justification for retaining the leadership that is not effective enough. The complacency in the
structure makes it cumbersome and the resources get wasted. The complacency leads to an

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organizational culture that does not encourage challenging procedures, processes in order to
achieve high standards. Critical analysis at regular interval is necessary to minimize the
complacency otherwise organizational failure can occur (Clancy, Hanover and Masini 2013).
The business world has experienced how the complacent characteristics had led to organizational
failure for such companies like Kodak, Blackberry, Circuit City, Borders and Block buster
(Linkner 2012).
Effective strategy
In a recent survey, maximum numbers of the respondent who are company executives believe
that their companies are not engaged in a strategy that has winning quality (Harraf, Soltwisch
and Talbott 2016). There are long gap between the expectation and execution. The company
needs to combine strategy with execution in everyday practice. Most company establishes a
mission and vision statement that is simple yet deep. The aim that the company aspires for must
be communicated through the message and is delivered to employees effectively (Gordon 2017).
The management of successful companies should be engaged with market reality.
Leadership
For a company like Randstad the management leadership needs to be exposed to the
foreign market. An effective leader assesses the organizational activities at regular interval along
with the self assessment. This helps him to identify the flaws in the organizational performance
and the needs. The leadership is engaged in effective communication in every level of the
organization (Hackman, Michael and Johnson 2013). The leaders have to get involved in

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everyday activities so that the “okay standard” of the surface level gets addressed and the better
options are searched for.
Decision criteria
Ranstad has to apply decision criteria before reaching any decision. Decision criteria can
be defined as the characteristics or variables that are significant part of organizational decision
making process (Yu 2013). And the final decision making is the selection of the most appropriate
variable suitable for the organization.
Decision Criteria Weight Evidence
Implementing innovative
strategies
25% Randstad is suffering from
various management and
performance related issues.
Setting up core values and
effectively spreading the
objectives among the employees.
New effective strategies can
eliminate the complacency issues
successfully.
Customer satisfaction 25% The company is initiating in the
“Voluntary Service Overseas
(VSO)” that helps the company
to include local communities and
support from Singapore market

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(Ir.Randstad.Com 2015).
Employee satisfaction 15% The company has been engaging
in enhancing the labor market
relationships, participating in
social dialogs with employees.
Ethics 25% The company has been practicing
ethically since its inception
however the management must
be careful that the ethical
conducts must meet the host
country’s rules and regulations.
Leadership 10% The leadership of Randstad is
incorporating ambitious
strategies, great execution, and
agility and combining the ability
to “think global and act local”.
Identification
The problem has been identified as the difference between the existing and desired state
of the organization (Velasquez, Mark and Hester 2013). The problem in the case of Randstad is
the complacency or the overconfidence of the management even when trying to establish a new
branch in Singapore. The company has been working in a comfortable environment and failing
to establish a successful business and complacency has been identified as a major problem. The

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leadership then frames the problem definitely so that the decision can be made accordingly. The
direct and indirect competitors are Ranstad not only has to consider the direct competitors but
also the competitors who are working from outside of Singapore. Randstad has to identify
whether the changes initiated by its competitors are strategic or tactile. The company has to
identify if the competitors are often engaging in big changes or mainly staying in their current
state. How the target market, cost structure, market share have affected the company after
implementing the strategies must be identified by the company as well. Few factors are
important to identify the decision criteria like facilities, opportunity to progress that are suitable.
Implementation
The annual report by Randstad in 2015 the company has discussed various strategies that
the company is implementing for enhancing the performance. The company has set their core
values as knowing, serving, trusting, striving for perfection and promoting all interests.
Therefore it can be noticed that the company has been giving much importance to knowing the
other culture and its competitors. The message of “Good to know you” is highly effective for
spreading the message of collaboration. The company has been engaging in enhancing the labor
market relationships, participating in social dialogs with employees. The company is initiating in
the “Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO)” that helps the company to include local communities
and support from Singapore market (Ir.Randstad.Com 2015). The past experience has taught
Randstad management about the static performance so the management is implementing newer
technologies to their service to enhance the performance. The leadership of Randstad is
incorporating ambitious strategies, great execution, and agility and combining the ability to
“think global and act local”.