Managerial style and HR policies - Case Study Example

Managerial style and HR policies Not much is said in the case study about NEXT's human resource policies, apart from the company's encouraging employees' participation in presentations, and offering them a variety of bonuses and other means of motivation, such as free parking and opportunity to become company's shareholders. However, corporate culture presupposes good and developed systwm of interrelations within the teams and groups. The source of these relations is manager, or leader. Thus, it is up to the manager to create within the company the working conditions under which each member of the company will feel a personality.

For this, the atmosphere of mutual respect should be created, as well as workers' realization of their own value for the organization. It can be recommended to the manager of NEXTr to show more interest in his employees' work and solve all the problems which may appear. NEXT's system of training personnel, including e-learning, is very important as well. It is vital to pay attention to creative people with leadership skills. Leaders determine the company's strategies, generate and group ideas (though this should preferably be done together with the employees) and integrate the company motivating its workers and influencing their performance.

Leadership is interconnected with the organizational culture. However, according to Kotter, leadership cannot be restricted to only one person, all other workers being mere executors of his will. The leader should be assisted by his supporters. Interpersonal relations in any company are of stable emotional character. The more intensive and productive interpersonal communication is and the stronger emotional ties are, the higher is the company itself evaluated by its employees. It should also be kept in mind that material methods of motivation (including financial ones) are not the only ones which can bring employees to commitment.

It is worth while searching for new ways of attracting and retaining personnel, developing people's creativity and business logic. Such non-material motivation methods as empowerment, flexible working schedule, self-realization beyond work (combining work and hobby), developing the feeling of belonging to the company, encouraging workers to take initiative, improving interrelations within teams, accepting each worker's personality as the most treasured value of the company can be recommended as the most efficient from the viewpoint of boosting creative spirit in groups.

PR and branding NEXT should continue emphasizing its "socially responsible" image by participating in different campaigns and other events so that to attract customers. As people's preferences are determined nowadays not only by price and even quality of the product, but by the image of the company that sells this product, it is crucial to boost the company's reputation and therefore boost its image. Apart from that, NEXT should spend more funds on PR and branding, as it will help the company develop internationally.

With customers preferring socially responsible companies nowadays, it might be a good idea for NEXT to try using non-standard models for their billboards - i.e. those who look more like "real" people who are going to wear their clothes. Whereas NEXT has special lines of out-sized and petite clothes, the models in its advertisements still look glamorous. Product development At the beginning of its activity, NEXT was predominantly oriented towards business women in their late twenties, however later it started targeting other groups of consumers as well.

As the clothes retail market in the UK is extremely saturated and competitive, it might be recommended to NEXT to try targeting some particular group of customers - e.g. overweight people, or vice versa, those with petite sizes, offering them trendy clothes of appropriate cut. On the other hand, the company should pay more attention to the promotion of its brand and monitoring changes in customer demand, employing the best designers able to comply with the tastes of modern people and fashion tendencies.

In terms of advertising, NEXT could try to popularize active lifestyle depicting in its ads and commercials healthy and vigorous people of different ages and builds.