Woolworths case study management PDF

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The Woolworths Group is a major retail company that operates in Australia and New Zealand with over 3,000 stores (Woolworths Group, 2020). The Group contains multiple sectors such as food, beverages, hotels and portfolio, with brands including Woolworths Supermarkets, Big W, Dan Murphy’s, BWS, Countdown, AHL Group and Langton’s as well as others (Woolworths Group, 2020). The Woolworths Groups utilises the strategy of differentiation, which is a competitive strategy used by an organisation to distinguish its products from their competitor (Samson et al., 2017), to achieve the organisations goals and mission statement “we create better experiences together for a better tomorrow” and to “deliver the best in convenience, value and quality” (Woolworths Group, 2020). Through differentiating its leadership approach, organisational culture, organisational structure and their Human Resource policies, the Woolworths Group have been able to effectively align the implementation of their business strategy with their intended strategy. business strategy is constructed on the basis of cost leadership through adopting a customer-focused approach, whereby the company maintains a commitment to providing their customers with the best quality products at the lowest possible price. Through the core competencies of Woolworths’ customer-based approach, they have gained competitive advantage over rivals which has facilitated their success, enabling the supermarket giant to be one of the two major players that have dominated the market. Their strategy is built on the main vision of the group, which is to ‘deliver the best in convenience, value and quality’ for the customers (Woolworths Group 2019). The company prides themselves on their ability to adhere to their strategy by prioritizing each customer’s experience and committing to exceeding expectations through offering greater convenience, better quality and value-formoney products at a lower price while maintaining high-end services. Woolworths has successfully established a positive reputation with their customer base, persevering towards their goal of having ‘its customers put it 1 st , across all the brands’ (Woolworths Group 2019). This focus leaves customers feeling satisfied when engaging with Woolworths and leads to customers remaining loyal to their brand (Minculete & Chisega-Negrilă 2014) business strategy is constructed on the basis of cost leadership through adopting a customer-focused approach, whereby the company maintains a commitment to providing their customers with the best quality products at the lowest possible price. Through the core competencies of Woolworths’ customer-based approach, they have gained competitive advantage over rivals which has facilitated their success, enabling the supermarket giant to be one of the two major players that have dominated the market. Their strategy is built on the main vision of the group, which is to ‘deliver the best in convenience, value and quality’ for the customers (Woolworths Group 2019). The company prides themselves on their ability to adhere to their strategy by prioritizing each customer’s experience and committing to exceeding expectations through offering greater convenience, better quality and value-formoney products at a lower price while maintaining high-end services. Woolworths has successfully established a positive reputation with their customer base, persevering towards their goal of having ‘its customers put it 1 st

, across all the brands’ (Woolworths Group 2019). This focus leaves customers feeling satisfied when engaging with Woolworths and leads to customers remaining loyal to their brand (Minculete & Chisega-Negrilă 2014 Woolworths maintains successful brand awareness through their in-store promotions such as their weekly catalogue sales and innovative marketing campaigns such as ‘Everyday-low-value-pricing’. This campaign places focus on their commitment to providing low cost prices on a day-to-day basis, ensuring their customers are receiving the most competitive prices. This enables the company to pursue the low-cost strategy to gain competitive advantage over their rivals by providing quality products at a lower price. Woolworths maintains successful brand awareness through their in-store promotions such as their weekly catalogue sales and innovative marketing campaigns such as ‘Everyday-low-value-pricing’. This campaign places focus on their commitment to providing low cost prices on a day-to-day basis, ensuring their customers are receiving the most competitive prices. This enables the company to pursue the low-cost strategy to gain competitive advantage over their rivals by providing quality products at a lower price. Woolworths maintains successful brand awareness through their in-store promotions such as their weekly catalogue sales and innovative marketing campaigns such as ‘Everyday-low-value-pricing’. This campaign places focus on their commitment to providing low cost prices on a day-to-day basis, ensuring their customers are receiving the most competitive prices. This enables the company to pursue the low-cost strategy to gain competitive advantage over their rivals by providing quality products at a lower price. Leadership Approach The Woolworths Group has incorporated a participative leadership approach, as discussed in Hersey and Blanchard’s situational model of leadership (Samson et al., 2017). This approach aspires to involve employees in problem solving and decision-making, whilst paying attention and providing support to them (Chan, 2019). The Group also adheres to a peopleoriented behavioural approach as demonstrated through their inclusive contingent leadership approach. In 2018, the Woolworths Group established the inclusive leadership program which was aimed to be delivered to all hiring managers by 2020. The program incorporated a ‘Team First, Customer first’ culture, creating a workplace where employees felt empowered, included and valued (Counsel, 2019). By creating a more inclusive environment the Woolworths Group has improved team engagement and performance, established a sense of belonging and has created a workplace culture that promotes collaboration and innovation (Counsel, 2019). First, they had to understand why their leadership had to change and evolve to achieve a cultural transformation. Then they had to form a plan of action with tools and tips to create an inclusive environment (Counsel 2019), aligning with contingency model of leadership as the Group must adapt their leadership style according to change (Samson et al., 2017). By implementing the inclusive leadership program, the Woolworth’s Group has effectively differentiated themselves from their competitors as they can increase their capacity to expand and utilise the diverse range of backgrounds, perspectives and talents of their employees

(Clark, 2017). This will also be beneficial for the Group, as gender diverse groups are apt to experience fewer relationship and task conflicts in a highly inclusive environment (Xiaotao et al., 2018). The Woolworths Group has implemented their business strategy to a high extent and have started achieving their goals since as of 2018, over 420 leaders across the group has participated in leadership and unconscious bias workshops. By 2019, women now hold 34% of executive/ senior leadership roles, which is a 2% increase from 2018 (Woolworths Group, 2020). Organisational Culture The organisational culture of a business is deeply imbedded in the beliefs and values of the people in an organisation (Martins & Terblanche 2003). There are four types of organisational culture including; adaptability, achievement, involvement and consistency culture (Samson et al., 2017). The Woolworths Group’s takes the form of adaptability and involvement as they; put their customers first, prioritise employee participation, stress innovation, employee wellbeing and teamwork (Woolworths Group, 2020). The Woolworths group aims to create an atmosphere with exceptional customer service with friendly customer interactions. This aligns with their main priority of having a ‘Customer first, Team first’ culture, as well as the adaptability and involvement cultures. The Group has introduced new Enterprise Agreements in Woolworths Supermarkets which benefit over 100,000 team members (Woolworths Group, 2019), showing their dedication to putting their team first. Big W has also invested in the team through a variety of training programs (Woolworths Group, 2019). These policies that have been implemented have made up the Woolworths Group’s business strategy to differentiate themselves from competitors and it has been successful as they were awarded Australia’s top company for Diversity and Inclusion as per Thomson Reuters’ 2018 Diversity & Inclusion Index in 2019, and ranking 14th globally (Counsel, 2019). They were also the first retail organisation, due to their inclusion of LGBTI, to accomplish a ‘Gold Tier’ level in the Australian Workplace Equality Index Awards (Retail World, 2018). The Woolworths group is constantly innovating as per its adaptive culture, meaning the organisation must alter its components to keep up with changes from the external environment (Seah et al., 2014). This can be seen by Dan Murphy’s launching 30-minute pick-up and on demand delivery, as well as growth in Woolworths Supermarket’s macro lines and price drops (Woolworths Group, 2019). The effectiveness of these strategies is demonstrated by Woolworths Supermarkets winning Canstar Blue’s award for No. 1 Customer Satisfaction in 2018, in addition to being rated first by Choice Recommended for Online Grocery Delivery. Organisational Structure The organisational structure of a company discusses the framework of the organisation which states how different tasks will be divided and how departments are managed (Samson et al., 2017). The Woolworths Group has traditionally utilised a vertical hierarchical structure, which involves a hierarchy with a narrow span of control, centralised decision-making, specialised tasks, vertical communication and limited teams/task forces (Magnier-Watanabe & Senoo 2010). However, as per their contingency leadership approach and adaptive organisational culture, they are moving to a more horizontal approach, consisting of a more

relaxed hierarchy with face-to-face communication, decentralised decision-making and more group tasks and teams (Magnier-Watanabe & Senoo 2010). The Woolworths Group consists a board of directors which includes nine people. There is also an executive committee of seventeen people who are accountable for overseeing the managerial decisions, processes and running of the Group’s brands and then reporting the findings to the board of directors. Additionally, there are also four committees that have been established to assist the board in meeting their responsibilities. A member of the board of directors is the chair for each of these committees (Woolworths Group, 2020). By doing this, the Group is utilising the matrix approach by incorporating both functional and divisional chains of command into their organisation’s structure (Samson et al., 2017). This will also assist the company’s team first focus by improving horizonal communication and information distribution. By exercising this approach and changing the organisational structure to attain a diversification, and therefore a differentiation strategy (Pertusa‐Ortega et al., 2010), the Group has effectively diversified themselves by integrating a more innovative form of structure into their organisation. . By members of the board If a firm wants to develop a strategy of diversification it will probably be necessary to change the organizational structure from a functional form to a divisional one. – strategy structure and firm performance there is a return on investment for becoming more business process oriented and reengineering an organization to more horizontal structures. – looking for comp adv

Some aspects of vertically structured organizations include specialized tasks, a strict hierarchy with many rules, vertical communication and reporting systems, few teams or task forces, and centralized decision-making. On the other side of the spectrum, horizontal structure involves shared tasks and empowerment, a more relaxed hierarchy with fewer rules, horizontal face-to-face communication, more teams or task forces, and decentralized decision-making - 2010

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Traditional vertical structure or flexible horizontal structure

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t. A tall structure has an overall narrow span and more hierarchical levels. A flat structure has a wide span, is horizontally dispersed and has fewer hierarchical levels. – text book

vertical structure – board of directors and the committees – but they work horizontally through them - each director from the board works in a lower committee - “In the old days, you had to be very good at vertical leadership –

managing up and managing down. Where we want to go, you have to manage horizontally…. At a simple levels, you need to be able to work with your peers to achieve an outcome without having to

elevate it….. Most of the change will focus on us as a senior team. We need to create the right conditions for the team to make the calls.” Brad Banducci, CEO, Woolworths Group

‘human resource approach/policies”. – 320 - Group site  under heading sustainability Soft Hr approach  values employees Strategic Human Resource Management is defined as alignment of strategic business goals of the organization with human resources, so as to foster innovation and improve motivation, satisfaction, productivity, and eventually overall performance. • Considers Employees As Strategic Human Resource - Drive organisational performance

Strategic human resources management (SHRM) refers to the “pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals” (Harrison & Bazzy 2017; Wright & McMahan 1992, p. 298). This allows the organisation to enable innovation, increase motivation, productivity, satisfaction, as well as overall organisational performance (Samson et al., 2017). An organisation should utilise SHRM to establish a workplace environment that motivates employees constantly with training, appraisals and rewards (Bellairs et al., 2014). The first approach that an organisation can take in Human Resource Management (HRM) is the hard approach. This includes rational and quantitative strategies, whilst utilising labour resources effectively to achieve the goals of the organisation (Samson et al., 2017). Whilst the alternate is the soft approach, which is a humanistic approach which considers its labour force as a potential competitive advantage The Woolworths Group has made it their mission to create an inclusive workplace environment that provides support for members of their team identifying as LGBTI or members who support the community. They have established the ‘Proud Network’ which consists of 2000 people who encourage and accept equality and diversity within the workplace (Woolworths Group, 2020). They also offer support to those undergoing a gender transition, as well as guidance for that members managers and co-workers (Woolworths Group, 2020) Woolworths has also created an ‘Employment Parity Initiative’ which will entail 1600 extra Indigenous employees join the Group in the next three years. This is a part of the Federal Government’s Employment Parity Initiative, with Woolworths contract being valued at $18 million. The Group’s goal is for 2.8% of its Australian workforce to identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the next few years. (Woolworths Group, 2020). Since 2015,

Safety health an wellbeing policy Conclusion – 160 words

Reference List Bellairs, T, Halbesleben, JRB & Leon, MR 2014, "A multilevel model of strategic human resource implications of employee furloughs", Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Vol. 32, pp. 99-146.

Chan, SCH 2019, ‘Participative leadership and job satisfaction: The mediating role of work engagement and the moderating role of fun experienced at work’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 319-333. Clark, W 2017, ‘Exploring Inclusive Leadership through the Lens of a Collaborative Structure’, Breaking the Zero-Sum Game (Building Leadership Bridges), Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 103-118. Counsel, J 2019, ‘Woolworths Group’s Renae Smee: Driving transformation through inclusive leadership’, Executive Central, weblog post, 8 February, viewed 30 May 2020 < https://executivecentral.com.au/blog/transformation-through-inclusive-leadership/? fbclid=IwAR2YY-GbRvYGxYlJw58-u1OyJ6KS_C67g4BBfH8qkkDNGNB_srrHB12M_A> Harrison, T & Bazzy, JD 2017, ‘Aligning organizational culture and strategic human resource management’, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 36, No. 10, pp. 1260-1269. Magnier‐Watanabe, R & Senoo, D 2010, ‘Shaping knowledge management: organization and national culture’, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 214-227. Martins, EC & Terblanche, F 2003, ‘Building organisational culture that stimulates creativity and innovation’, European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 64-74. Pertusa‐Ortega, EM, Molina‐Azorín, JF & Claver‐Cortés, E 2010, ‘Competitive strategy, structure and firm performance: A comparison of the resource‐based view and the contingency approach’, Management Decision, Vol. 48, No. 8, pp. 1282-1303. Retail World Editor 2018, ‘Woolworths Group top for ‘Diversity and Inclusion’’, Retail World Magazine, weblog post, 11 September, viewed 30 May 2020

Samson, D Donnet, T & Daft, R 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edn, Cengage Learning Australia, South Melbourne, VIC. Seah, M, Hsieh, MH & Huang, HY 2014, ‘Leader driven organizational adaptation’, Management Decision, Vol. 52, No. 8, pp. 1410-1432. Wright, P & McMahan, G 1992, ‘Theoretical perspectives for strategic human resource Management’, Journal of Management, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 295-320. Xiaotao, Z, Yang, X, Diaz, I & Yu, M 2018, ‘Is too much inclusive leadership a good thing? An examination of curvilinear relationship between inclusive leadership and employees’ task performance’, International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 39, No. 7, pp. 882-895....