Business at Work - Hays Plc

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Daniel Rose

Unit 1

Business at Work

Hays Plc


Table Of Contents

Terms of Reference        

1. Who are Hays?        

2. Ownership E1        

3. Objectives E2 C1        

E3        

4. Functional Areas E4        

5. Management Style and Culture E5 A1        

C2        

6. Communication E6        

C3        

7. Production and Quality E7A3        

Conclusion        

Appendix        

Bibliography        

Company Structure leaflet        Back


Terms of Reference

To: Mrs Cornelius

From: Daniel James Rose

Subject: Unit 1 Business at work

Date:

Synopsis: This report breaks down and examines the Ownership, Objectives, Management style and culture, Communication and the production and quality process of Hays Plc (Here and afterwards Hays) it also show the interrelation and the effects of these processes compared with the value of the services.

1. Who are Hays?

Hays is Business services company which offers a range from Specialist Mail Services, Specialist Logistical Services / Storage facilities and Personnel Services. They have split these up to three main areas; Hays Logistics, Personnel, Commercial. They supply over most of the world from France to China. Logistics supply regional distribution services to large companies like Waitrose, KingSpan and a import centre B&Q and also manufacturers like Phillips, Kerry Foods, Vauxhaul, Orange, Vodafone They also have a control solutions (Control and Washing of Crates) for Sainsbury's, Wal-Mart, Waitrose, Safeway, Co-op and Aldi. Also Bulk Packaged Chemicals for large names like BP, DuPont, ICI, Procter & Gamble, Shell and Dow Chemicals. It also gives these services in USA, China, Poland, Spain, Iberian, and Italy.  It also has the centre for the storage of the Lord Chancellors Department, which is situated in Birmingham and has over 37Km of shelf space. The man who started the company Mr Frost, who recently retired, was posted the 158th richest man in Britain.

2. Ownership E1

        Hays is a public limited company. This means the company has a main benefit of limited liability, so only the capital invested in the business no matter how big the debts are.  It’s also incorporated so the company has a separate legal identity from the owners. This means the owners have no chance of losing their own property (unless given as capital), because it’s public this helped the business to obtain more capital and expand through the different markets and regions and also to diversify. The problem with being a Public Limited Company is that the mangers can’t give up trying to increase the profit margin for other things like helping the environment, although many companies do admit to helping the environment in order to increase the profitability by making people aware of this and so they have a better image of the company and this makes the company ‘better’ than its competitors. Another is the amount of shares and shareholders: The number of new shares sold by Hays in 2001 is an astonishing 4,025,284, while the biggest shareholder is Mr R E Frost (Ex Chairman - Retired) who holds a total of 4.61% in the company. This is minuscule amount and even he would have very little say in the companies affairs which could be seen as a constraint to the shareholder. But it makes the last disadvantage of being a public limited company a bit less likely, since anyone can buy shares in a limited company then anyone can take-over the company. This isn’t likely to be a person but another company since the cost would be enormous to buy 51% of the shares.

        Hays operates in the private sector but is employed by certain public

Organisations (e.g. Police, South Warwick Council) and in an international way through out Europe

3. Objectives E2 C1

A popular quote for marketing is:

“’Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ Asked Alice.’That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the cat ‘I don’t much care where---.’ ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.’ Said the cat. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

This shows just how important it is to plan. Not just to know where you’re going but to show others where your heading to which they might be of some assistance. Remember ‘Columbus didn’t just sail he sailed West’ another saying is ‘Reach for the stars! You may not get many, but you are less likely to end up with a hand full of mud.’ A lot of people have realised you need objectives just to start with a structure.

        Hays’ main Objective is that “ All Hays divisions should operate as leaders in each segment addressed”

        The shareholders want each segment of their business to be the best, if this happens they are likely to gain more sales and the company will have the largest share of the market. This will also gain them publicity in certain Magazines / Newspapers etc. This is critical to enable the group to earn the optimum return on investment (ROI). For each division, and the segments within, this is the first priority and currently Hays are reviewing their plans to ensure that this objective has either been attained or can be achieved.

Others Aims include:

Standard Aims of most businesses;

1.        To stay ahead or just to hold their own in the market

2.        To produce as much profit as efficiently as possible to satisfy shareholders with a healthy return in the form of dividends

3.        To ensure their employee satisfaction which is essential to retain the best quality service in the market, providing a competitive advantage

Hays Plc Aims;

  1. To provide services that are non-comparable to other business in the market

Each of Hays’ objectives is justified by a reason, which would give higher sales/Profit in the long term. They wish to stay ahead in the Market so they need to stay ahead of their competitors and this also involves keeping sales ahead of the competitors. They also say they may want to ‘just hold their own’ in the market which means that if sales start to fall dramatically then they will try as hard as possible not to give in to the spiralling fall. They then say they want to produce as much profit as possible this would satisfy the shareholders and the directors since that is what the business is there for. Efficiency is important in businesses since the more they can save or the more they produce from the least raw materials means the profit margin will be bigger. Employees are important to any business especially Hays since they need a good service from the employees they do the work and if their not motivated then they will not produce as good quality, they also won’t work at a efficient speed which would destroy the number 2 aim and this would mean they would decrease their public image and thus retreat in the market and then they would soon be trying to hold their own in the market. The excellent quality of their employee’s means that they are immediately differentiated from the market by having employees that want to work there and like their job.

        Obviously every business wants to stay ‘alive’ in their market if they don’t they go into dissolution as with profit all companies want as much as possible, while paying out as little as they can, but Hays wants to do it while giving the customer as good as service as they can. Employees must be happy wherever they work, if not, they have no incentive to create the product or complete the service. Hays has a brilliant scene to help employees, their personnel dept. Is one of the best, providing ways to even invest in their workplace by buying shares this ensures them that the company is still receiving capital and gives them reassurance that their jobs are safe.

 

In 2001 Hays became a member of Business in the community, which strives to keep an close eye upon the area in which they operate and to suite this scheme they have implemented a new policy which strongly supports the environment and community in where they function because of the ‘Good Neighbour Policy’ they communicate with local shareholders and key members of the community to discover where they are needed and what projects they can get involved with in there community. In 2001 a total of £86,014 was donated to charitable funds with no payments being given to political parties.

        I asked people in the public if they knew Hays and what they do or have ever heard of it and 68% said they’ve never heard of it while only 13% actually knew what they do. (8% were associated with Hays.) The last 19% said they have saw the Hays lorries so came to the conclusion that they are a delivery firm and had no idea of Hays Personnel or Hays Commercial.

This information shows Hays has a limited advertising or public eye. Hays only advertise to the Business markets and so ordinary people have never heard of the company. While Hays has only a small public image the image of the people who know of it is very high with people referring to it as the ‘best’ or ‘one of the Best’.

        Hays use many techniques to allow performance indication and these all help to show weather or not Hays is meeting them. So far as I can see in Britain Hays has achieved its objectives and seems to be outdoing them. The fact that Hays is always updating the advanced aims (Those other than the main ones above e.g. environmentally) to give a better service recently they added that they need to produce less toxins or release less into the atmosphere and thus help the planet, a lot of research is going into this and will be placed into effect as soon as possible. As far as aims is concerned Hays can’t be specific with their aims because of the size which some may see as a limitation for them. Their aims are suited to the Whole Company and if they specify on a certain thing then some segments may not be able to live to those aims, which would look bad on the books and might decrease their good image. So from this I see Hays’ aims are very good and they’ve been debated upon and resolved to produce this framework which each segment adds to. I see all UK Hays segments have achieved their own objectives as well as the personal segmentive ones. Their shares continue to rise and this is also indicator that they must be achieving their aims since this is forcing the demand for their shares to raise because they are wanted in the stocks & Share market.

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E3

Items collected by Hays to measure success:

Each contract is measured separately to allow the separate measuring of each. The things that are used to measure the performance and success of each contract are:

 

  1. Documentation (What, When, Where, Why, How) is important to Hays to allow the chance of going back and seeing what went wrong if mistakes do happen So the efficiency of the Documentation is given a number of 1-5
  2. Number of Complaints to that contract- to see how much goes wrong
  3. Mishaps reported by the employees- ...

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