1.0 Introduction
This report looks into how the company can win its employees to support its corporate social responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility is essential to the organisation as it helps in boosting the brand image of the company among potentials customers. It also provides the brand with increased brand awareness and recognition among potential customers which makes the brand highly favoured among the consumers. The organisation of interest in this report is Foxcomm which is a company that specialises in manufacturing electronic components for export. The company is of interest to this report because the company has got high levels of employee turnover and employee dissatisfaction. Every year a number of employees leave the jobs for better jobs or for competition which negatively affects the company. Therefore the aim of this report is to identify how Foxcomm can implement successful CSR strategy by preparing the hearts and minds of the employees to accept the changes. To do this the first part of the report is the introduction followed by a brief company profile. The third part discusses the proposed Foxcomm’s ethical practices as well as the rationale for the initiative. The four section discusses the barriers likely to be faced by the implementers of the proposed ethical initiative. The fifth part evaluated how the barriers of this project could be overcome. The sixth part discussed the implementation plan of the project and it included the timelines and project budget while the seventh section highlighted the strengths and weaknesses and the last part was the conclusion.
2 Foxcomm overview
Foxcomm is a fictitious Chinese based company that is headquartered in Beijing. The company specialises in the contract manufacturing of electronic products and it is contracted by major manufacturers from countries such as United States, Germany and United Kingdom. Some of the companies that have contracted Foxcomm recently include companies such as Nokia, Intel, Xiaomi, Microsoft, Helwett Packard and Dell. Due to its huge volume of contracts the company has over 1.3 million employees in its factories. In order to make profits the company usually contracts low paid workers who work long hours in its factories. The company is reputed for having poor working conditions due to long hours spent in the factory by the employees. The company has revenues of about $136 billion which makes it one of the major information technology companies in the globe. Except for China, the company also has operation in Brazil. Foxcomm uses functional organisational structure. In this structure the authority rests with the mangers who make critical decisions concerning the organisation. The authority flows from the shareholders to the board of directors then to chief executive officer of the organisation, then to the functional divisional heads who head various departments that are organised according to their core specialisation as shown by the figure 1 below.
The main advantage of this structure is that it allows the employees to specialise in one task which makes the employees experts in their specific area of operation. This creates efficiency in production and reduces production costs because the specialist employees can perform tasks with speed, and efficiency thereby saving the company costs of hiring additional employees (Jacobides, 2017). However, functional structure has its share of challenges because various departments receive instructions from different departments which create conflicts between the departments. It also increases misunderstandings as each department strives for autonomy from each other (Lim, 2017).
3 The CSR practices in Foxcomm
3.1 The specific CSR practices to be implemented
One of the CSR initiatives that the company embarked on is a human resource initiative that was meant to improve the working condition of the employees. As part of the CSR initiatives the company has an initiative of reducing the number of hours which the employees worked in the factories. From the survey it was evident that employees in countries such as China were more comfortable working long hours compared to those in Brazil. This means that more effort would be needed in China to convince the employees’ to work for fewer hours than they have been used to. The initiative aims to reduce working hours from fifty to sixty hours per week in China and from fifty five hours to fifty hours in Brazil.
The other major activity is employee training and development. As per Jones (2010) employee training and development would assist the employees to have the requisite skills and capabilities that are required in the manufacturing plant. Employee training and development equipped employees with skills that make them feel that their jobs are secure. Employees feel that their career has advanced whenever they receive training. With the technology and innovation phasing out jobs employee training is the only guarantee that the employees will have their jobs (Tu, Lin and Chang, 2014). Therefore as way of engaging in internal CSR, Foxcomm will train its employees with new skills especially the technical skills that are required in equipment manufacturing. This would enhance employee engagement and enhance employee commitment to the organisation.
To reduce the high level of stress in the workplace that leads to suicide, the company will introduce flexible work arrangement where employees work for a specified number of hours when they are at their best. This can help in ensuring that the employees do not work when they are stressed and that the employees have high level of work engagement while at work (Glavas and Godwin, 2013). It would also help in reducing the mistakes and poor work quality among the employees. The other strategy that can be included in flexible work arrangement is having additional part time employees. These are employees who are employed to work part time or to work during peak seasons when the company requires high level of productivity. The part time workers help in dealing with the overload and ensure that employees in the factory employees are not overworked. However, this strategy would require the human resource department to be allocated additional amount of fund to fulfil this objective (Roussel, 2013).
To reduce the resource spent on employee training, the company will also build partnerships with colleges and universities to provide apprenticeship opportunities to the students. Students will work as apprenticeship (Jonker and De Witte, 2006). The company will have partnerships with universities such as University of Beijing where student will be given free apprenticeship and employment opportunities once they have finished the apprenticeship.
To create an enjoyable work environment and good relationship between the employees the company will have canteens where meals and snacks will be provided for free to the employees. This will ensure that all employees relax and interact with other employees to reduce stress and overworking (Jones, 2010). In addition the company will have a fitness centre where the employees will be exercising once they have finished their jobs.
3.2 The rationale to implement the CSR practices
There are several factors that have necessitated Foxcomm to have CSR initiatives. One the factor is that Foxcomm has high level of employee suicide rates. This attributed to the long number of hours spent by employees at work which trigger stress and dissatisfaction resulting into high levels of employee suicide.
Foxcomm has a negative brand image. According to Carroll (1991) having a positive brand image ensures that the company attracts quality employees and retain them for a long time. On the contrary companies that have bad image are unattractive to customers and have to pay the employees higher wages to retain them. They also have to keep on training new employees every now and then which leads to wastage of resources. To avoid this having CSR activity that improves the image of the company is essential.
The CSR practices are known to improve the motivation and productivity of the employees. Having the CSR practices such as employee training would boost the morale of the employees and increase the employees’ performance (Jacobides, 2017). It would also reduce mistake in the production and manufacturing process that minimises wastage of resources used in quality checking and in eliminating defective products.
The other effect is that it makes the company have increased goodwill from the local community who consider the company as part of the community. There is increased need for the company to be considered as a company that respects human rights (Rupp et al, 2011). Consumers in various parts of the globe especially the main markets for products made by Foxcomm respect for workers rights (Jones, 2010). Customers want products that have been made by employees who were paid well because they do not want to feel as if they are part of customer exploitation. This has made the manufacturers to consider having conducive work environment in order to have attractive reputation among their customers. In addition, the China and Brazil governments require the local companies to abide by labour law. When violating the relevant laws, there will be penalty. The following are the stakeholders of the Foxcomm’s CSR programme as indicated in the stakeholder diagram in figure 2 below:
3 The barriers to the implementation of the initiative
One of the main barriers to implementation of this initiative relates to the cultural differences between the two countries (Williams, 2014). The managers will experience problems in pushing employees from Brazil to accept the changes and to implement them quickly mainly because the Chinese culture is long term oriented (Associated Press, 2011). While the Chinese management may see the project as having long term advantages on the company, the Brazilian counterparts may consider the project as having huge financial implication in the short term which may discourage them from implementing the initiative (Varvouzou, & Zasepa, 2013).
The other cultural difference likely to be experienced regards individualism and collectivism. In Brazil the employees consider such projects as belonging to the leader who is implementing the project, while in China the initiative may be viewed as the company’s project which may gain approval of all the employees. In Brazil projects are seen as personal initiatives of the manager and therefore may not have full support of the employees and middle level managers because they feel that they have no collective stake in it (Fleury, 2017).
The other cultural difference likely to be experienced is the masculinity/femininity inclination. Chinese culture is more masculine than Brazil. This implies that the employees in China are more competitive than those in Brazil (Kirkman, Taras and Steel, 2016). This is likely to affect the implementation of the flexible work because the Chinese workers are very competitive which make them to work overtime and additional hours compared to those in Brazil.
The other barrier that is likely to be experienced is that of language (Jones, 2012). The two countries have very different languages. It would therefore be difficult for managers and employees to coordinate the employees and the initiative.
The current organisational structure is also a barrier to the CSR programme. The major barrier from the organisational structure is that the structure creates conflicts between the departments. It creates two centres of power that influences the employees hence making it difficult to implement human resource based changes as the production managers’ report to the production managers and not to human resource manager (Glavas and Godwin, 2013). Also the issue of improving the workers welfare lies on the human resource department which is different from production. Therefore lack of clear command and control centre to implement the task is major barrier to the initiative (Chand, 2011).
Employees are also likely to resist the implementation of the initiative. Based on Lewin’s theory of change, during the unfreeze stage of change implementation, employees resist changes as they are inclined towards maintenance of status quo. This is because employees fear change (Jacobides, 2017).
4 How to overcome the barriers
One the ways in which the barriers can be overcome is through cross cultural training and seminars. The content of the training will include language training, business language training and etiquette training of Brazil and China employees. Specifically, the training will focus on bridging the differences in masculinity/femininity and which are very high between the Chinese and Brazil culture. This will be done by training the employees to work in cross cultural teams that have Chinese and Brazilian team mates. Such training will help the employees to learn the cultural differences between the two cultures and therefore foster mutual understanding between managers and employees of the two countries (Zoeller and Bicudo, 2010).
The other recommendation is that the employees can be served with tea and affordable snacks at the company. This is to encourage the employees to relax and build relationships with each other. This avoids stress and frustrations among the employees.
To minimise employee resistance towards flexible work arrangement, the organisation will organise Wechat forums where the management will communicate to the employees about flexible work arrangement (Rupp et al, 2014). The aim of the forum will be to listen to the employees views and concerns about the flexible work arrangements. This will help the management iron out differences between the employees and make the employees embrace the initiative with positive attitude (Piepenburg, 2011).
In addition, the company will conduct monthly meetings with the interns and the employees to help them train the apprentices from the colleges and universities (Stimpson & Joyce, 2017). This training will help the employees to accept the partnerships between the company and the technical colleges and universities.
To make the initiative successful, the company will change its overall organisational structure from a functional organisational structure to divisional organisational structure.
The divisional structure allows decentralisation of power from the headquarters and allows the divisional heads to make decisions that are favourable to the local stakeholders (Lim, 2017). It minimises conflicts between the departments by providing autonomy to each division to make functional decisions related to marketing, human resource management and production.
Employee resistance will be avoided by providing the employees with the information concerning the initiatives and the advantages of the initiative. This will involve having a counselling session for the employees where the employee will consult with an expert of human on the effects of the changes on employee welfare (Jacobides, 2017).
5 The implementation plan of the project
5.1 The financial implications of the project
This project is expected to be costly to the organisation as the company will have to incur costs of training the employees, hiring part time workers and funding partnerships between the company and the colleges. The details of the project budget are as shown in the table 1 below.
5.2 Timeline of implementing the initiative
The following chart shows the activities and the duration within which the initiative will be implemented as shown in table 2 below.
6.0 Strengths and weaknesses of the initiative
This initiative to create flexible work arrangements, employ part time employees and well as have partnerships with colleges and universities had its strengths and weaknesses. The major strength of this initiative was that it will result in increased employee engagement. Employees will be happy to work in the factories because they will be working for fewer hours than they have been used to (Gross and Holland, 2017). In addition, the company will not be having tired and frustrated workers which will improve the quality of products as there will be fewer mistakes and defective products. This will reduce the cost of manufacturing significantly.
The other implication is that the employees will now prefer to work for the company thus reducing levels of employee turnover which made the company to have increased staff training costs (Kimmich, 2012). In addition the partnership with the universities will provide the company with a pool of well equipped new employees which will reduce the company staff training and development costs.
However, this initiative is expected to be very costly for the first few months and years. This is because the company will incur additional human resource costs such as training more workers, hiring part time workers as well as having spending resources on the partnership between the company and the organisation (Phillips & Gully, 2012).
7.0 Conclusion
This report has strived to analyse why the ethical initiatives to be undertaken by Foxcomm are necessary. It was noted that mass suicides experienced by Foxcomm employees can be attributed to the poor working conditions. To improve on these working conditions, the company needs to embark on ethical initiatives that will help it to solve this problem in China and Brazil. This will be done by reducing the number of working hours spent in the factory by the employees through flexible working arrangements. In addition, there will be part time workers employed by the company as well as apprenticeship opportunities for college students. However, these initiatives are expected to face challenges such as cross cultural differences between China and Brazil and the current organisational structure. In addition, other barriers may include employees’ resistance to the changes as well as language barriers. To overcome these barriers there will be cross cultural trainings as well as consultative forums to hear the employees’ opinion on this initiative and to influence them to accept the initiative. It is expected that the initiative will be expensive in the short term but profitable in the long term.
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