Analysis of a Company: Boots Chemist

David Brine Assignment 1a

Introduction

Boots is a company, which own many different companies, which make, sell or offer different products or service i.e. Boots the chemist sells Prescriptions, medicines etc.

Product or Service

Boots the chemist supply both a product and a service, both of which are of high quality. It has seven major products and service categories, which are Healthcare dispensing, Over-the-counter medicines, Beauty, Baby, Gift, Photographs and Food.

Mission Statement

Boots the chemists mission statement is ‘our vision is to be the world’s leading retailer of products and services that help make our customers look good and feel good.’

Aims

The main aims for boots the chemists are: -

To highly compete against M&S, Superdrug and Tesco.
To provide their product and service to world-wide communities.
To expand their business internationally.
To make their sales as high as possible in order to make more profit than M&S etc to become the leading company.
To make the products they supply more high quality than it already is.

Objectives

Boots the chemist objectives are: -

To make sure they get to the top of our sales market by competeing at all times with M&S etc.
To open at least one more store world-wide every year.
To make sure their product is wanted world-wide by the use of advertising on t.vs, radios etc
To always meet our breakeven point and make a profit.
To improve the quality of every product we supply and improve the service we provide.

Where they are based

All the Boots headquarters are based in Nottingham UK.

Employees

Boots is one of the largest chemist chains in the world, they employ more than 56,000 people throughout the UK and the Republic of Ireland in the business which is based on caring for people/their customers. The boots staff will always be seen as the key element to the business. They offer an excellent service through the employment of high quality people giving them the development opportunities they deserve.

Main Competitors

Boots the chemists main competitors are Marks & Spencer, Superdrug, and Tesco. Boots have also got exemplar competitors, which are Wal-Mart and The Gap.

Human Resources Director – Deciding the overall staffing policies of the organisation. Advising senior management. Setting the HR budget in charge of all the HR functions and organisation.

Human Resources Manager – This job responsibilities are managing the HR department and staff involved with the industrial relations and trade union, negotiations implementing and organisational HR policies. They also control staff wages and ill or absent staff.

Recruitment Officer – Responsible for the recruitment and selection of suitable staff. This includes interviews, reading CV’s and selecting a suitable employee. Take charge of the dismissal of employees.

Training/Staff Development Officer – Responsible for training and staff development throughout the company. Responsible for making sure the employees are fully trained in the activities they participate in and that all the staff develops well.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995

Employers must not treat disabled persons less favourably than an able-bodied person whether in recruitment, training, promotion or dismissal, unless, it can be justified for any reason.

The Race Relations Act 1976

Employers must not treat people of the opposite race, nationality, colour or ethnic origin unfairly. Both direct and indirect discriminations apply. Again there are special circumstances in which it can be justified e.g. restaurants for authenticity, this is relatively rare.

Employment Rights Act 1996

Employees have rights, which the employer must oblige by unless it can be justified e.g. ‘All female employees are entitled to maternity leave’ or ‘Employees must be allowed time off work for jury service or ante-natal care’ and ‘Employees have the right to be dismissed unfairly, if this occurs then they can present a complaint to an employment tribunal.’

The Sex Discrimination Act 1975

This act makes it illegal for an employer/employee to discriminate anyone on the grounds of gender, directly or indirectly. Unless the employer can show a Genuine Occupational Qualification then he must treat every employee or job applicant equally.

This how equal opportunities effect Boots

The Boots Company is committed to treating all members of staff and applicants for employment in the same way, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnic origin, marital status, age, disability or religion.

This commitment includes:

The elimination of discrimination of any sort, including harassment.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The Sex Discrimination Act 1975

This how equal opportunities effect Boots

This commitment includes:

The elimination of discrimination of any sort, including harassment.
The promotion of equality of opportunity in employment.
A continuing programme of action to make the policy fully effective.
Employment policies that aim to ensure that people receive treatment that is fair, equitable and consistent with their skills and abilities.
Regular reviews of practices in recruitment, selection, promotion and training to ensure they provide equality of opportunity.
Monitoring the composition of the workforce, and its policies and procedures to ensure the Equal Opportunities Policy is being properly implemented. Staff and job applicants are expected to co-operate in this process.

The Boots Company believes that everyone benefits from a working environment where respect for the individual is encouraged, and if staff feels they have been treated in a way that is contrary to this policy the issue should be dealt with by a senior manager, or directly by Personnel.

The Boots Company will make every effort to secure a satisfactory resolution, either by informal means, or formally through the Grievance Procedure.

The HR department affects the whole of the company because it is the department that employees people, takes care of the staff needs, wages and dismissal. If there were no HR department then the business would not function properly because of the lack of employees the behaviour of employees. The business may suffer because there would be confusion between the employer and employees. The lack of customers because poor facilities/service and poor employment.

One purpose of the Human Resources department is to provide a safe working environment. The health and safety at work act 1974 exists to protect the health and safety of people at work.

This would include: -

Safe environment.
Safe premises.
All firms must provide all necessary safety equipment free of charge.
Protective clothing e.g. face masks, hair tied back, overalls, eye goggles.

Boots is a company, which provides a chemist service and provides a lot of cosmetic products.

To be able to do this they need to employ the right sort of employees. Human resources covers this category this is under is training, development and promotion. Staff training can be done manually or systematically.

There are several important reasons for providing staff with training opportunities: -

New staff need to be made familiar with organisation methods of working that may be different from their previous workplace and the health and safety requirements. There may also need extra training for their specific job- even if they have been promoted from somewhere else within the company.

Jobs change- and so do the skills of people need. For instance , the company my introduce new methods of working or new equipment or software. All staff will have to be trained to maintain organisational efficiency. Training helps people to keep update.
People are more motivated if they continue to learn and develop. They continue to train and learn whilst they are working.

Recruitment/Selection and dismissal is an important part of part of the HR department. Recruitment and selection has many parts to it. First you have got to have a one-stage interview with the candidates, which is taken by the HR staff. The next stage is a two-stage interview, which is carried out by the manager of the new employee. Before any of this happens they have got to go through the selection period. This will make the interviewing easier because instead of interviewing 40-50 candidates they will interview 5-6 candidates because they would just chose a few that they think will be suited to the job. Dismissal is a system that will dismiss of a certain employee that isn’t performing to the company’s need. This will take place if the employee isn’t doing much work or abusing the company’s rules.

The Boots Company offers recruitment programmes for general entrance, and schemes focused on school leavers and graduates. The company looks for various qualities in potential Boots employees. In addition to academic ability, we look for people with extra-curricular abilities such as interpersonal ability and team-making skills.

In addition to the requirements of individual positions, our graduate scheme also requires applicants to fulfil three key criteria:

Leading the thinking
See the big picture no matter how complex; offer and stimulate new ideas and turn complex issues into clear strategies.
When have you looked for and found solutions beyond the obvious?
How radical have you been?
In what ways have you challenged received wisdom?
When have you identified clear solutions to complex problems?
How do you manage ambiguity?
How logical are you in your approach?
Leading the pace
Understand and focus on the important, drive to deliver better performance and be decisive in a crisis.
Can you prioritise, focusing on the important issues and dispensing with others?
Do you regularly achieve standards that you set and which are beyond those expected by others?
When do other rely upon you to make things happen?
Leading the team
Act as a catalyst driving for results and restlessly seeking to win.
Do people enjoy working with you, do you create a buzz?
How do you influence others even when the cause looks lost?
Have you been able to get good results from difficult people? How did you manage it?

The selection process relies on application forms, interviews and selection centres. The company now operates competency based interviews. This is the process whereby applicants are asked to back up statements in interview with examples of personal experience, thus providing real evidence of their capabilities.

Finance.

The purpose of finance in Boots is to control the financial status of the business. The finance department allocate different departments through out the business different budgets an expect them to keep to their planned amount of income and expenditure. The finance staff would check regularly to see if they were meeting their target or not.

Boots Finance department therefore:

Keep all financial records required by the organisation stating all the receipts and payments that have been made.
Prepare financial accounts from the records.
Monitor the income and expenditure of the different departments against their budget.
Provide up to date financial information for managers about the business performance.
Pay salaries and wages to the staff.
Pay amounts owed to suppliers.
Control the levels of debts owed to the company.

The activities of the Boots finance function are: -

Preparing accounts.
Paying wages and salaries.
Obtaining capital and resources.

Finance job roles.

Production.

The purpose of the production function in Boots is to manufacture good quality goods in which the consumer would be satisfied with.

Production in Boots therefore: -

Manufacture goods in which the customers want.
Do quality control checks on all items to make sure the products are at a good standard.

The activities for the production function in boots are: -

Obtaining the resources required to produce good quality goods.
Organising the resources to produce the goods in the most appropriate way.
To manufacture the goods to a good standard.

Production job roles.

Marketing and Sales.

The purpose of marketing and sales function in Boots is to look through the customer’s eyes and identify and produce what the customer wants.

Marketing and Sales therefore: -

Make sure they take in to account what the customer wants and inform the production function.
Advertise and promote all new products

The activities of Marketing and Sales in boots are: -

Market research to find out what customers need and their opinions on proposed and existing products in the company.
Promotion to inform the customers that Boots can fulfil their needs.

Sales to provide the goods the customer thinks that he/she needs.

Marketing and Sales Job roles.

Each of the different functional areas in Boots have to interact to achieve the businesses aims and objectives. They manage to do this by communicating with each other and informing each other what the customers want, if the companies making money and if there is increased amount of sales due to advertising. This will make the company run smoothly and hopefully make the business very successful.

Communication.

Communication is a vital process in which the company need to take part in to make the company run smoothly. There are a lot of different ways to communicate through a business. They are put in to two main categories these are: -

Oral communication
Written communication

Oral communication is where you either speak face-to-face like an interview or it could be just a basic telephone call. Oral communication is the quickest way to communicate but this is does not mean that it is the most reliable way, as it may be distorted if it has to pass through many people to get to the person that requires it.

Written communication is where you write down the information. This could be a quick process but also a very slow process as it can take days for a letter to go through but then there is e-mail which sends straight away. Written communication is probably the most reliable source of communication because it gets to the occupier with out having to pass through nobody. So there is no way that the message can get distorted.

Communication within a business.

Within in Boots they would use oral communication, as it is quicker and easier than sending letters from one department to another. Some departments would rather keep information to look back on as it may be vital information, which might be forgotten.

Different examples of communication of how and why the functional areas will communicate with each other are: -

Finance would communicate with production via telephone to inform them how much they have to spend on resources in the following month.
H & R would communicate via letter to a functional area if there was a misbehaving employee within that department. They would use this method of communication as it is the sort of document you would need to keep on file because it is not a small process and they may have to look back at all the disciplinary records.

Communication outside of the business.

Boots would communicate with external contacts through letter or e-mail as it is more reliable and will probably have to travel through a few people before reaching its occupier, this way it wont get distorted and the occupier will get the exact in formation Boots wanted to supply them with. Boots would use different methods of written communication for different external contacts. Examples of this are: -

If they needed to send a customer information on up coming products they would probably use e-mail as most people are connected to the internet and it is a quick and reliable way of written communication
If they needed to order products from a supplier they would probably send them a letter/order form as it is reliable and the supplier will not get the order wrong as nothing can be changed.

Communication is important to a business to meet its aims and objectives as the different functional areas need to know what is going on around the business not just there own as otherwise the company wouldn’t function properly. There could be sick employees and know one would know, employees could be misbehaving and nothing will be done about it, the company could be in debt and production could be making this worse by over spending on resources. All this could happen if the functional areas did not communicate with each other. So by communicating the company wont go in to debt by over spending, so the company would be making money and becoming a success which is one aim for all companies.

The span of control in a flat structure is wide and a tall structure has a narrow span of control. In the flat structure there is less layers but more employees in each layer. In the tall structure there is more layers, but less in employees in each layer.

The above table shows that a main strength for Boots having a flat structure is that staff will respond quicker to any changes that the business makes. Boots will be able to react to competitors new ideas. If another leading cosmetics company put on a really good special offer. Boots have to compete with this by making their promotion better. They have very good communications and will be able to respond to colleagues quicker. This is a very good strength of how Boots work, because it is small, employees

Boots organisational structure is flat; it is flat because there are not

many layers in the structure and because there is not many people in the chain of command.

It is different to Thornbury leisure centres structure because each of Thornbury leisure centre functional area has many staff, each of who have there own particular job. Each person has a specialised job and are paid a specific salary for their job.

In Thornbury leisure centre communications become distorted as messages pass from one level to another.

In Boots, communications rarely get distorted because there are not many layers for the message to go through. Boots employees are quicker at responding to messages and tasks.