Important: please note that the below organisations and individuals are entirely fictitious and do not represent any real organisations or individuals, BUT you should treat it as if it exists in the real world.
Applying academic theory and drawing on your knowledge of current industry conditions (e.g. competitors, legislation, technology etc), the Managing Director of Parcel Express Ltd (see case information below) would like you to:
· Analyse (diagnose) what Parcel Express Ltd might need to change to improve its performance and why, and critically assess the nature/type of change situation facing Parcel Express Ltd. As part of this you should critically evaluate academic theory/findings to explain/justify why you have chosen the theoretical frameworks you have used to undertake your diagnosis. Whilst the case organisation is not real you should treat it as if it exists in the real world.
· Critically evaluate how any change might be best implemented as part of a cohesive and justified set of recommendations that provides a sustainable change plan. Any proposed changes must be specific to the situation that Parcel Express Ltd are in and realistic, taking into account any financial, legal or other considerations. Where relevant take into account the effects that any changes might have on the shareholders, managers, employees or customers of the organisation.
Format/structure – 3,200-3,740 WORDS
INCLUDES: any cover, contents page or in-text citations
DOES NOT INCLUDE: reference list or appendices.
FONT: Times New Roman, Arial or Calibri fonts in size 11 or 12.
REFERENCE: Harvard format. You MUST provide in-text citations to show where you have used the sources on your reference list, citations should also be in Harvard format.
Parcel Express Ltd case information
It is October 2022, the Managing Director of Parcel Express Ltd has approached you, an experienced change management consultant, to ask for your help to improve the performance of their organisation.
Parcel Express Ltd are a large parcel delivery company based in Switzerland. Their head office and national parcel sorting hub are in Geneva, whilst they have 30 small local offices with one located in towns and cities across Switzerland. Currently they deliver parcels to and from customers within Switzerland, their customers include businesses and private individuals. They offer an express service whereby parcels are guaranteed to reach their delivery destination within 24 hours of being given to Parcel Express Ltd, and they offer a standard service where parcels are guaranteed to be delivered to their destination within 5 working days. The express service costs three times as much as the standard service.
The local offices act as a place for customers to send their parcels from and where parcels have to be collected from if the customer misses the delivery driver when they attempt to deliver it the first two times (the first two times the driver takes it to the delivery address but after that the customer has to collect from a local office). When sending a parcel customers have to go to a local office. Once they arrive they have to go to the service desk, hand over their parcel to an employee who then weighs the parcel and checks it’s size, the employee then asks if the customer wants the express or standard service, and then the employee gives the customer the price the service they have chosen (if the customer is undecided they have to ask for the price of the other service), once the customer has selected a service they then pay the employee by credit card or in cash, the parcel is then placed in a bag ready for collection by the next distribution driver who comes to pick up parcels (there is no other sorting of parcels at the local office), the distribution driver takes the mixed bag of parcels to the national sorting hub, parcels are then sorted and taken by the distribution drivers back to the local offices where the parcels are then allocated to the local delivery drivers who deliver the parcels in addresses in that area. Parcel Express Ltd do not currently handle parcels that are sent to or from addresses outside Switzerland, but they are seen to be experts in their field within Switzerland and having experienced significant growth over the last 3 years are currently the market leading parcel delivery company in Switzerland. However, their performance has been declining over the last 12 months and if this continues their nearest rival Postomatic Ltd will overtake them within the next 6 months.
Parcel Express Ltd currently operate a fleet of relatively old diesel vans and lorries whose fuel efficiency is at least 20% lower than the latest vehicles and whose CO2 emissions are at least 20% higher. Each delivery van is supposed to be equipped with a breakdown repair kit containing a range of spare parts and equipment to allow the driver to repair the 5 most common causes of breakdowns. If a driver has a breakdown they are supposed to report which items from the breakdown repair kit they used to the driver who takes over from them at the end of their shift. However, if the next driver is running late the previous driver has often left before they arrive and so this doesn’t happen. The vehicle maintenance team has reported increasing numbers of breakdowns of delivery vehicles over the last 2 years and an increase in the time taken for those breakdowns to be repaired. However, the Director of Operations who has been with the company over 10 years and oversees all of the teams involved in the delivery of parcels (local delivery offices, local delivery drivers, distribution drivers, national sorting hub and vehicle maintenance) has been keen to keep the current fleet of vehicles running due to the huge cost of replacing them. This cost would come out of the Operations budget and potentially prevent them from achieving their financial performance targets for the year, which in turn would mean that the employees in that department would not get a team/department performance related bonus, which is a bonus paid to all employees in the department in addition to any individual bonuses. One employee reportedly overheard a discussion between the Director of Operations and the Head of Vehicle Maintenance in which the Director said, “… it’s my way or the highway, I tell you what we’re doing and you do it!”.
Initially the business was able to cope well with their growth but over the last 12 months it has struggled to manage the increased demand from customers. The national sorting centre uses complex machinery to process items on a sorting line and normally the employees working on this equipment as part of their regular job are fully trained before being allowed to use it. Employees work in small teams on the sorting line, with each team trained to use one piece of equipment, as a result the teams form strong bonds and often become friends both in and out of work. Training for these teams and other employees is provided by Parcel Express Ltd’s Human Resources department. As the demand from customers has grown these teams have been asked to work increasing numbers of additional hours, for which over time payments are provided. However, increasing sickness absences have meant that some new employees who are only part way through their training have been asked to work on the sorting line as have some employees with no training. Even without these sickness absences at peak times there have been too many parcels arriving at the national sorting hub for the automated sorting line to handle. Many parcels have had to be placed in the storage warehouse at the national sorting hub where they have sat for up to 5 days before there has been capacity for them to be processed on the automated sorting line. There have even been occasions where the storage warehouse has been full to capacity and distribution drivers have either had to sit and wait with their lorries for several hours until enough capacity has been freed up in the warehouse for them to offload or they have had to off load parcels to an outside area next to the warehouse, sometimes during heavy rain or snow. Managers have at times tried to deal with the increased volumes of parcels at the national sorting hub by setting up manual sorting lines which have been managed by one or two permanent employees who have overseen a team of temporary agency workers. These agency workers often arrive with no training and are given a quick briefing by their manager before going onto the manual sorting line, many of them are either students just looking for work during holidays or long term unemployed people. A number of stories have appeared in the press where these agency workers have been caught on camera throwing or kicking parcels around the sorting hub.
The Director of Sales and Marketing and Director of Human Resources are each responsible for a small number of employees and a much smaller budget than the Director of Operations, and both have only been with the company for a year.
The Director of Sales and Marketing runs the sales and marketing team and the customer care team. They recently reported that their latest market research showed them that customers were increasingly unhappy with the service being provided, often citing that parcels were either not delivered in the guaranteed time or were delivered on time but damaged. They also noted that when they were unsuccessful in bidding for a large contract to deliver parcels for a large online retailer they were told that other providers were more attractive due to being able to demonstrate that they had less of a negative impact on the environment and were more sustainable, and because they could demonstrate the capability to deliver more parcels, quicker and the capacity to take and receive international deliveries. The Director of Sales and Marketing also reported that they met the Director of Sales and Marketing of US Parcels (a parcel delivery company handling parcel deliveries across the USA and Canada) and Director of Sales and Marketing of Asia Post (a parcel delivery company handling parcel deliveries across China, India and Vietnam) at a conference recently and both were very saying how their businesses were growing and that they had an increasing number of customers who wanted to send parcels to Switzerland.
The Director of HR runs the HR department. They took over the HR department about a year ago shortly after it was reduced in size from having 10 employees to 5 as part of a drive to cut the operating costs of the organisation. The Director of HR reported that the organisation has a hierarchical, bureaucratic structure in which individuals have narrowly defined roles and they are expected to work within the boundaries of their role. Whilst the structure is split into departments and each department is comprised of different teams, employees only work in different teams if they are promoted and they never work in different departments. They also reported that the organisational culture is based on a commitment to high quality customer service and teamwork. The commitment to high quality customer service is strongly embedded across the whole workforce of permanent employees. Whilst the commitment to teamwork has seen different departments and teams/individuals within departments form strong bonds with each other, there have been problems with collaboration and communication between individuals or teams in different departments. People within a particular department tend to be focused on doing what is best for them to reach their own individual or departmental goals rather than thinking about what is best for the whole organisation. The Director of HR is also concerned about the impact that using agency workers is having.
The Director of Finance also managers a relatively small team of accountants and has been with Parcel Express Ltd for 15 years. They have been pleased to see the organisation grow over recent years which has meant the company have built up some funds in the bank but are increasingly concerned that growth in turnover is no longer translating to growth in net profits and that if sales volumes decrease the organisation may quickly find itself making a loss.
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