People Management Practices Adopted In Innocent - Essay Example

? People Management Practices Adopted In Innocent Innocent Drinks is a company that is based in London which has specialized in dealing with nutritious drink and food products. The company is recognized for its wide smoothies range; the company enjoys a 75 % share of the total smoothies market in UK. Founded in 1999, the company employees more than 250 workers and its annual revenue has been approximated to be 130 million pounds. Innocent Drinks Company sales are over two million smoothies every week and 58% of it is owned by Coca-Cola Company (Hooley 2004, p. 78). The recent years in the company have been marked by an increased need to change in the human resource management functions. The changes includes more focus being put on managing people to take part in the implementation and formulation of business strategy to meet the company’s objectives. These changes have been effected in the business environment following the revolution in globalization, information technology and competition. The environmental changes have been effected on the company as it needs to quickly adapt and deal with the general strategies and practices in important areas like productivity, marketing, human resources and employment structure. Innocent Drinks management tends to direct its investment in the employees considering them as partners so as to have the business grow and gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Innocent business falls in a complex and dynamic environment. Just like most of the businesses in the market, Innocent has taken more consideration in external factors like economic, political and legal environment in an effort to keep growing and maintain its competitive advantage. One of the key management practices employed by innocent is cost leadership that is commonly associated with Porters approach of gaining competitive advantage. In addition to this, the company focusses on smoothie drinks that are healthy and fresh to people who spend a lot of time working thus have limited time (Kotler, 2000, p 24). Innocent Dinks has also come up with a lower cost strategy so as to increase its value using different activities to meet its buyer. In order to achieve market success and attract talent, the organization has to adapt better ways of valuing, engaging and leading its people. One of the key management strategies that has ensured success in Innocent is its innovative approaches to leadership, induction, recruitment development, communication and engagement. The innovative approaches have led Innocent Drinks Company to grow to the extent of enjoying an 80 per cent share in the UK market (Kotler and Armstrong 2000, p. 34). This strategy that has been primary designed to assist managers and leaders within the company to employ a new mindset for the success of the business has also been adapted in the induction, communication, cultural change and training based on team work. As a result, Innocent Drink Company has managed to bring out the best of its people through adopting unique approaches. Such approaches challenge the leaders in the organization to review the manner in which they operate. Innocent has moved to shape a supportive, informal and fun environment in its work place and has also come up with an authentic culture of respect and trust that is based on its core values. The management strategy includes the recruitment of enthusiastic, energetic and passionate people as well as engages, motivates and empowers the people to work with autonomy and freedom. The company’s strategy is an illustration of a leadership style that is relaxed and it has been managed in a manner to avoid its internal silos. Innocent’s communication strategy has been effected such that it cuts across the business and it instigates enjoyable and lively team meetings. This approach has resulted to Innocent being regarded as an engaging and attractive working environment. The basic working principle of Innocent is to produce smoothie drinks that are simply made from fresh juice and fruits, without any concentrates. Ethics has also remained a lynchpin in Innocent Drinks as it is always driven by the desire to be in a better state than the way they were found (Micheal 2009, p. 2). This is also witnessed in the way the company donates part of its profits to charity organization and communities. The most recent key management strategy is the decision of the company to broaden its demography in relation to shoppers to ensure that smoothies remain vast on their radar. Callaghan acting as the people’s director in Innocent has also played key roles in the way she runs the company. The main objective of the people’s director is simplicity and she has gone further to include that in the recruitment process of the company making it simple and sweat. The recruitment process involves the identification of the difference existing between the great and good candidates and this ensures that the company gains 95% compliance on the objective of the employees (Tryhorn 2009, p. 9) Another key role played by the people’s director is the introduction of new values that are not fluffy, soft or ephemeral. The values introduced by Callaghan have managed to capture the things the company is made up of, the things the company care about and the things that make the company successful. The same values have been appreciated to resonate well with the people and the team. The company’s brand values are natural and incredible making its products natural and unadulterated (Northedge 2009, p. 4). Her aim is to extend such values to the innocent people by being professional and bringing out the best picture of the company. According to the director, coming up with new ideas is the livelihood of the company so as to generate talkability. The relationship of Innocent with its consumers is an important consideration and the company has put in place enough measures to ensure that the customers feel well treated. She aims at realizing the direct contact value by having the company’s newsletters more personalized. The director has come up with several recommendations to better the brand of the company and they include bringing Innocent wholesomeness to skincare and clothing that are ethically produced (Steele 2010, p. 2). This initiative is to extend the company’s brand all over Europe as the director believes the company can never say never to brand extension. The company has come up with plans to emerge as the favorite smoothie company in Europe and remain as the market leader in Europe. Another recommendation is to have the company to pull more advertising campaigns like the one contracted with Pepsi. The company should also tie-up its operation with other related companies to open up its brand and market so as to have its smoothies gain more market and sold worldwide. Some of the most promising tie up is between Innocent Drinks and McDonald. Such tie ups will transform the company from being a small company with entrepreneurial startup having a marketing line that was acute. From this point, Innocent Drinks will move to a position where transition will be inevitable. The company will rise to resemble the global corporate competitors as time goes by and as it struggles to break through the competitive and lucrative market both locally and abroad. Bibliography Hooley, G., 2004. Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning, Prentice Hall, Harlow Kotler, P & Armstrong, G., 2000. Principles of Marketing, Prentice Hall, Harlow Kotler, P., 2000. Marketing Management Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, Prentice Hall, Harlow Micheal, J., 2009. A book About Innocent: Out Story and Some Things We’ve Learned, Prentice Hall, Harlow Northedge, R., 2009.” Slaughter of the Innocent? Or is Coke the real deal?”, Independent, London, Retrieved 8 January 2013 Steele, F., 2010. “ CocaCola takes a bigger slice of innocent”, The Times, Retrieved 2013-08-01 Tryhorn, C., 2009. “Smoothie operators Innocent tread familiar path to lucrative deal”, The Guardian, Retrieved 2013-08-01 Read More