HRM Issues and Solutions in Redbubble Australia: A Detailed Report

This report evaluates HRM issues within Redbubble, an Australian online marketplace, focusing on gender imbalance as a key challenge. It details Redbubble's mission, vision, and values, highlighting its role in supporting independent artists. The analysis reveals that gender imbalance, with male workers dominating senior positions, negatively impacts female employees and overall productivity. The report suggests recommendations to address this issue, promoting equality and improving the work environment. The aim is to help Redbubble foster a more inclusive workplace, retain talented staff, and enhance organizational performance. Desklib provides students access to similar solved assignments and resources.

AUTHOR NAME:
DATE:
HRM ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS
FOR REDBUBBLE, AUSTRALIA

Executi ve summary
The primary purpose of the paper is to evaluate the HRM issues that occurs in a small
organizations of Australia. For this reason, the organization selected here is Redbubble which is
a small online-global marketing firm that provides clothes, stationery, wall art and houseware
products with proper artwork that make by the designers. Apart from this, the paper will provide
information regarding Redbubble mission, vision as well as value statement and also their motive
of doing such different type of business. In other words, the findings obtained after evaluating
the company background in websites and magazines states that independent designer makes
innovative design and this design is incorporated within the products, and hence it can be said
that this firm provides a mode of income to the independent artists. Besides this, the major HRM
issue that occurs in this firm is gender imbalance, and this issue not only affected both male and
female workers but it affected the business procedure. Thus for diminishing this issue, some
recommendations has been provided that will help the firm to diminish this inequality issue in
their coming days.
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Overview of Redbubble...............................................................................................................................3
Mission and Vision Statement.....................................................................................................................3
Value statement of Redbubble.....................................................................................................................4
Findings from the information.....................................................................................................................4
Gender imbalance issue...............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion and recommendations...............................................................................................................7
References...................................................................................................................................................8
Appendices................................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
The paper will explain the current HRM issues that take place in the small firm of Australia
named as Redbubble. In other words, the mission, vision as well as value statement of the firm
will also be discussed in this context. Besides this, the nature of this business and its current
performance in the market will be analyzed by conducting proper research. Furthermore, the
paper will provide information regarding the gender imbalance of the HR issues that takes place
in this Redbubble organization. Moreover, some recommendations or solution for diminishing
this issue by the HR manager will also be provided that will help the firm to decrease this gender
inequality issue in future.
Overview of Redbubble
Redbubble is an ASX (Australian Securities Exchange) global online marketplace that provides
customized printed products which are mainly based on the user-submitted artwork that is purely
original. The firm was founded in 2006, and its headquarters lies in Melbourne, Australia. Their
office is also present in Berlin and San Francisco respectively, and the founders of this firm are
Martin Hosking, Paul Vanzella and Peter Styles (Redbubble, 2018). The company mainly
operates through the internet, and hence the nature of a business is based on the internet, along
with it is considered as the marketplace for artists. In the current trend, the firm connects over
400k artists and designers across the nation with millions of fans worldwide (Cole, 2016). In this
firm the artist opens the website and upload their respective designs which has been incorporated
in various clothes of both males and females. Thus the main products of this firms are clothes
that include t-shirts, leggings, hoodies, stickers, cushions, skirts, duvet covers and scarves. About
170 number of employees till 2016 are working in this firm that belongs to the diverse culture,
having both generation and gender mix in their workplace (Redbubble, 2018). The firm is purely
a sole trading company, and in the current day it reaches some about two million buyers in the
world, and thus its revenue reaches about Australian 115 dollars till 2016. In other words, the
firm offers free membership to the designers and artists those who maintain copyrights of their
work and also regulate the prices of their designs.
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Mission and Vision Statement
The mission statement of Redbubble describes the company's mission, values as well as the
purpose which is determined as: "Redbubble is creating the world's largest marketplace for
independent artists, bringing more creativity into the world" (Simic, Spichkova, Schmidt, &
Peake, 2016).
The vision statement of Redbubble demonstrates the brand growth in concerning to the market,
and hence the statement states that: “To be the global marketplace synonymous with creative
individualism” (Al-Hassan, & Kharazmi, 2017).
Value statement of Redbubble
The value statement of this firm demonstrate that integrity, as well as honesty, must always be
present in all of its dealings including with its contractors, employers, shareholders, consumers,
creatives and the broader community (Luckman, 2016). Thus to maintain this they have adopted
five core values, and these are- Courage, Creativity, Accountability, Commitment and
Compassion, and with the help of these core values, they enable to maintain their honesty as well
as integrity between their employees and shareholders respectively (Ackrill, Caven, & Alaktif,
2017).
Findings from the information
From the findings of the company background, it is clear that the firm is mainly powered by
independent artists irrespective of their gender, age, caste as well as religion. It is noted that the
community of Redbubble mainly consists of passionate designers and their designs are
incorporated in the clothes, housewares, wall art, bags, stationery and sell these to all over the
nation (Huong, Zheng, & Fujimoto, 2016). By selling these products in their online store, they
gain huge profits and their creativity helps in attracting large number of customers towards their
online e-commerce market. Besides this, the individual artists also get profited by working
through this firm and their creativity not only attracts huge number of customers to purchase the
products, but it helps them to increase their bank balance by doing the side job (Nica, 2016). It is
noticed that artists mainly creates unique designs that can easily attract large consumers to
purchase their designer product from this online firm.
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The findings also helped to know that this firm became a three-sided global online marketplace
where independent artists upload their creative works and designs and earn from the company
website. The designs are only made after getting confirmation from the consumers. For this
reason, Redbubble in the current days possesses more than 602,000 independent artists that show
their talent to create new as well as innovative design (Tatli, Ozturk, & Woo, 2017). In other
words, the independent artists individually earned a total amount of 103 million dollars through
sales from the firm marketplace since its launch. Besides this, both female and male employees
are working on this firm, but it is seen that some issues occur due to the gender mix employees.
Apart from this issue, the firm operates 28 different production centers to fulfil about 66 different
products types and hence their online store has provided services to approximately 200 countries
of the world (Nemeth, 2017).
Gender imbalance issue
It has been noticed that gender imbalance in a workplace is considered to be a pervasive problem
in many countries of the world. This problem has also arisen in the Redbubble Company where
the male workers were found dominating the female workers, and this causes the issue for the
women to work in this company. It is seen that gender imbalance revolves around the assertion
of biological differences between male and female differences where male possess some
advantages and female possess some disadvantages in the workplace (Ozturk, & Tatli, 2016). In
this company, one of the significant HRM issues is the gender imbalance, where the male
workers wanted to dominate more than that of the female workers working in this firm. Hence it
is seen that in Redbubble Company the high percentage of men are working at HR senior level
positions compared to that of the women. It has been found that most of the women in this firm
works at lower rank and males have a belief that they cannot handle tough works (Nemeth,
2017).
The reason for this gender inequality and disparity remain become a debate, and it created
various issues of the HRM team to manage this inequality factor between the workplace. In other
words, due to this gender inequality in this Redbubble firm, the females are hurt by their
profession, and thus in some situation, most women are willing to leave their job. Hence this
causes a major issue to the HRM department as sometimes they leave a dedicated as well as
talented workers from their workplace. This gender imbalance gives rise to two major issues in
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the HR department. One of the major issues is that the relatively high percentage of male
workers in the HR profession creates a negative impact on the females’ mind which leads them
not to work with their full effort in their working procedure (Gould, Kulik, & Sardeshmukh,
2018). Another major issue that few women are working in this HR department compared to that
of the male one which thereby unable them to work freely in their profession (Khan, 2017).
It is noted that in some situation the higher level female staff of the HR department have to
arrange meetings with their junior level male staff before taking any decision. Hence it causes a
lack of dedication by the women workers, and they do not give their best for the Redbubble
Company. In other words, it is also noted that comparatively higher percentage of women of this
firm is working at the boardroom and executive levels in comparison to the male workers
(Newman, Chama, Mugisha, Matsiko, & Oketcho, 2017). Therefore, due to this imbalance, it
causes a negative impact on the whole working procedures of the firm. Hence it can be said that
the company mainly follows the older traditional extent where the male is the dominant group in
an organization rather than the females one. These gender imbalances may give rise to gender
discrepancies such as the difference in pay structure for both male and female, and also the
ongoing stereotypes possess a significant impact on both the genders.
On the other hand, the HR department of most of the firm contains the highest percentage of
women (Hof, 2017). While in case of Redbubble firm, this strategy is not working nicely and
according to their founder, females are unable to provide their best efforts in this online printing
artwork organization, and thus they are selected only for the lower rank position. The men have
the ability to works for hours whereas females are not so strong that they can physically work
hard as like the other men. Due to this reason, they have less number of women executives for
their HR department as compared to the male ones. Hence for this selection gender inequality
generated that creates an imbalance in the workforce and the males are unable to listen to their
female colleagues because they think that they are always right in their decision (Alhejji, Ng,
Garavan, & Carbery, 2018). Hence it is clear that this gender imbalance issue of the HR
department creates a lot of problems for the females to give their full effort as well as work
freely for this Redbubble firm.
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Conclusion and recommendations
The paper concluded that Redbubble provides online printing artworks clothes, stationery, wall
art, houseware and bags to their customers and this small firm has enhanced their business all
over the nations. From the findings of this Redbubble Company it is noted that they mainly sell
designer products and for this, they take designs from independent designers that present all over
the world. In other words, the findings of this firm working strategy also demonstrate that this
firm became one of the online-global marketplaces where all sorts of designers upload their
designs and earn from them. Besides this, the firm faces the gender imbalance issue where the
males are given more importance in the workplace rather than the female’s one. Due to this
problem, the HR department faces the huge problem in maintaining their staff, and in some
situations, female workers are willing to leave their job. It is noted that some talented and
dedicated female’s workers leave their job which may lead to problems in the HR department to
maintaining their staffs. Hence to diminish such gender imbalance HR issue, some
recommendations are provided that are as follows:
The issues of the gender imbalance in HR seemed to be a problematic approach, and for
diminishing this issue, it is recommended that the firm has to appoint workers from other cultural
backgrounds mainly the female’s one. This will help the HR team to diminish this issue as a
diversified environment always help a native individual to learn from others, foreign workers.
It is also recommended that in every meeting the HR team has to discuss female role model
which thereby help the male workers to know about the working ability of women and by this
strategy their dominance over female workers will be reduced.
The firm should build an environment where both male and female workers are allowed to
equally work together, and no discrimination should be maintained. In such conditions, the
females are willing to work with the men workers, and hence it enhances their confidence to
work with the men. In other words, it will help the female workers to give their best in the
working procedure.
Hence by following this strategy, the Redbubble firm can easily diminish this gender imbalance
issues in their operational procedure.
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References
Ackrill, R., Caven, V., & Alaktif, J. (2017). ‘Black Boxes’ and ‘fracture points’: the regulation of
gender equality in the UK and French construction industries. The International Journal
of Human Resource Management, 28(21), 3027-3046.
Al-Hassan, M., & Kharazmi, S. (2017, November). Personalized Web Search Based on
Ontological User Profile in Transportation Domain. In Neural Information Processing:
24th International Conference, ICONIP 2017, Guangzhou, China, November 14–18,
2017, Proceedings (Vol. 10637, p. 239). Springer.
Alhejji, H., Ng, E. S., Garavan, T., & Carbery, R. (2018). The impact of formal and informal
distance on gender equality approaches The case of a British MNC in Saudi Arabia.
Thunderbird International Business Review, 60(2), 147-159.
Cole, G. (2016). Changing priorities for female managers in mid-career: How perceptions of
work can change. Human Resource Management International Digest, 24(3), 38-40.
Gould, J. A., Kulik, C. T., & Sardeshmukh, S. R. (2018). Trickle‐down effect: The impact of
female board members on executive gender diversity. Human Resource
Management, 57(4), 931-945.
Hof, H. (2017). ‘Worklife Pathways’ to Singapore and Japan: Gender and Racial Dynamics in
Europeans’ Mobility to Asia. Social Science Japan Journal, 21(1), 45-65.
Huong, L., Zheng, C., & Fujimoto, Y. (2016). Inclusion, organisational justice and employee
well-being. International Journal of Manpower, 37(6), 945-964.
Khan, M. (2017). The Practice of Basic HR Functions in Garments Industry in Bangladesh:
Focus Group Finding. J. Mgmt. & Sustainability, 7, 120.
Luckman, S. (2016). Micro-enterprise as work-life ‘magical solution’. In The Post-Fordist
Sexual Contract (pp. 91-108). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Nemeth, J. (2017). Human Capital Theory in the Framework of Organization
Theory. STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, 22(3), 29-35.
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Newman, C., Chama, P. K., Mugisha, M., Matsiko, C. W., & Oketcho, V. (2017). Reasons
behind current gender imbalances in senior global health roles and the practice and policy
changes that can catalyze organizational change. Global health, epidemiology and
genomics, 2.
Nica, E. (2016). Will technological unemployment and workplace automation generate greater
capital-labour income imbalances?. Economics, Management and Financial
Markets, 11(4), 68.
Ozturk, M. B., & Tatli, A. (2016). Gender identity inclusion in the workplace: broadening
diversity management research and practice through the case of transgender employees in
the UK. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(8), 781-802.
Redbubble. (2018). Redbubble. Retrieved 9 October 2018, from
Simic, M., Spichkova, M., Schmidt, H., & Peake, I. (2016). Enhancing learning experience by
collaborative industrial projects. ICEER 2016, 1-8.
Tatli, A., Ozturk, M. B., & Woo, H. S. (2017). Individualization and marketization of
responsibility for gender equality: The case of female managers in China. Human
Resource Management, 56(3), 407-430.
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Appendices
1. Will you think that equal employment should occur in the workplace?
2. Will you think there is a correlation between the women treated in the workplace with
that of the women treated in society?
3. What suggestions or recommendations do you give that will enhance the women
standards in the workplace?
4. How the male employees’ decision over women will change?
5. How the female employee supports one another during the work?
6. What law should be implemented that should maintain the equality among both male and
female employees?
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