Hong Kong Furniture Company - SWOT Analysis - Case Study Assessment Answer

At the time of Melbourne office opening the most significant issue was that Patrick (YK’s nephew) had t perform all the functions related to HR and accounting. Another issue was to appoint Patrick as sales representative even after knowing that he is naïve. After this many issues came in the path of the company such as miscommunication between Australian employees and employees working in Hong Kong office. There have been many conflicts and huge stress among employees. This lead to immense stress to Patrick and due to that his productivity decreased and this further affected the sales. The relations between YK and Patrick were also affected. In this manner there have been numerous issues that have resulted in the failure of the sales branch.

Lack of managerial experience is the foremost issue that resulted in failure of the company. With that other contributing reasons are local environment and flaws in the policies of the company (Festing, Budhwar, Cascio, & Dowling, 2013). The underlying reasons behind the failure of the company will be discussed in detail in below sections. The sections deal with SWOT analysis of the company before establishing Melbourne office and now, analysis of HR policies of the company before establishing Melbourne office and now and external and internal environmental factors that have affected the company.

SWOT analysis of the company

The SWOT analysis helps in ascertaining the Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a company. Given below is the SWOT analysis of the company:

Prior to the opening of the Melbourne office

Now

List of selection criteria to be used to choose a person for the position of manager of the Melbourne Office

While selecting an employee for a particular position there are some selection criteria that makes the selection procedure efficient. The selection criteria are prepared from the job description for that particular position. The job description is prepared from the requirements of that position and it contains all the necessary information about the job and the candidate who will be eligible to perform that job. The selection criteria for the position of manager of the Melbourne office are given below:

Education qualification: The candidate must have a master’s degree in management with first class grades from a renowned institute. Other professional courses and degrees will be added advantages. During the Master’s degree course the candidate must have studied Human resource management, accounting and marketing. These three aspects are must for the candidate to apply for the position of manager.

Work experience: The candidate applying for the position of manager must have pervious work experience of at least 3-4 years in the firm with similar background. The work experience in marketing field will be preferred.

Communication skills and other requirements: The candidate must have sound English written and oral communication skills. Along with that the candidate must also possess leadership skills. Leadership skills are required in a manager so that he/she can lead the employees efficiently and the employees shall have someone to guide them properly. The candidate must also have strong convincing power so that he/she can establish strong business network (Coetzee, Schreuder, & Tladinyane, 2014). It is also desirable that the manager shall have negotiation power to negotiate with suppliers and other stakeholders. The candidate who has skills to work and operate internet and computer are also desirable for the position. The candidate shall have sound knowledge of Australian labour market and other governmental policies and practices important for the business.

These are the requirements from the side of the client. Along with that the company shall also have preliminary screening criteria using various tests and written examination. The selection procedure will be based on psychometric testing that will help in determining the intellectual skills of the candidates and then matching them with desired skills. The written examination will also check the mental ability and competency of the candidate and matching t with desired criteria (Burnes & Cooke, 2012). In this way the right candidate can be selected for the post of manager for new office in Melbourne.

Advice as a HR consultant

This section deals with advising YK (the CEO of Hong Kong furniture) about the HR policies and practices of the firm. A HR consultant is more professional in approach and will give advices that result in efficiency and effectiveness in business practices.

For YK before establishing Melbourne office

The details in the case suggest that there is no HR department in the company. The company do not even have written policies for human resource practices. This simply suggests that all the practices related to human resource management such as recruitment, training, selection, induction, counselling, performance management, etc. are done in an informal manner due to the lack of proper framework and formal policies. It is advised that the CEO shall first of all establish a HR department. There shall be a human resource manager with proper experience in the field who can control and direct human resource practices. It is important for every organisation to have a HR department so that all the functions related to HR can run properly (Budworth, Latham, & Manroop, 2015). HR practices are very significant for an organisation and due to that their proper implementation is very necessary.

It is observed for the case study that the company hires employees from family. This suggests that even non-competent employees are being hired by the company. There shall be a proper selection criteria and job description for all the positions so as to make the selection of employees efficient. A proper recruitment and selection guideline shall be prepared by the company. There is no mention about the training in the case. Training is an integral activity that shall be performed compulsorily. Thus YK shall also design a training programme with the help of a HR professional. The most significant HR issue is that the promotions in the company are based on loyalty of the employees. This is not a good criterion for the promotion. YK shall undertake performance management practices and make promotions on the basis of various aspects such as job performance, achievements and skills (Best, 2014). In this manner YK is advised to work on preparing a HR policy framework that can guide employees as well as HR department to work as per that so as to ensure that HR functions are performed efficiently.

For YK now

After opening Melbourne office the HR practices of the company are still inefficient. First of all the company shall give responsibility to perform HR functions to someone who has the knowledge of human resource functions. At present Patrick is performing HR functions and he does not have sound knowledge about the HR activities. YK is also required to prepare selection criteria for the employees in new office. The company is selecting employees only on the basis of their enthusiasm which is not a good selection criterion. There shall be a proper job description for the positions in the company and the employees shall be selected on the basis of that. So, the first advice to YK is to work on recruitment and selection policies. The company shall also make uniform policies for all the offices that will ensure proper functioning. The company shall also make arrangements to motivate employees so as to boost up their morale (Ashford, 2011). A proper and efficient system for performance management and performance appraisal shall also be preset in the company.

Internal and external environmental factors that have affected Hong Kong Furniture

The Hong Kong Furniture is affected by a number of internal as well as external environmental factors. Following is the description of the factors that affected the company:

Internal factors:

The internal factors are those factors that exist within the company and the impact of these factors is described in this section. The centralised structure of the company is an issue because it hampered the employees’ creativity. Employees of the company were not able to initiate something. YK always controlled the employees and organisational structure very strictly. The lack of strategic planning and policy formulation is also a factor of the management of the company that has a huge impact on Hong Kong furniture. Along with that the HR policies of the company were also weak and due to that the practices of the company got affected. For an instance the basis of promotion is loyalty rather than performance and this has resulted in affecting the morale of many employees who were worked hard. This has an impact over the productivity of the company. The company was not able to establish a proper communication among the employees in Melbourne office and employees in Hong Kong Office. After establishing the Australian office the company’s operations were affected by many factors. The company did not do proper market research and the result was unsuitable furniture designs. This suggests that the marketing team of the company is inefficient (Andrews & Kenneth, 2012). There were conflicts among employees and it created unhealthy working environment. Lack of managerial experience in the sales representative Patrick was also a significant issue.

External Factors:

External factors are those that prevail outside the organisation. The external factors that affected the company are described here. There were a few entry barriers in the market and due to that the company may have to face tough competition. The Lack of strategic planning might have resulted in incompetent management of the company (Aguinis, Edwards, & Bradly, 2016). Due to failure of the present designs of furniture in Australia there is big threat on the existence of the company. There are many external factors that affect the company and these factors are social, political, economical and technological. There are threats to the business from governmental policies. Even a survey also found out that the company used timber from a forest protected area. The company is also threatened from goodwill spoilage in the local market because of bad mouthing among customers about the brand. This ultimately leads to the threat of business closure in near future (Adeyemo & Sehoole, 2014). Along with this the entry of European Furniture Company is also a big threat to the company. Thus competition is also a dominant external environmental issue.

Conclusion

The above analysis suggests that Hong Kong Furniture Company is itself responsible for the decline in the business. The company had more internal issues than that of external issues. The most significant aspect is lack of strategic planning and policies in the company. The company performed very well initially but it did not change according to the external environmental changes and due to that its progress stopped significantly.