Waitrose and Its Organizational Behaviour Structure - Case Study Example

Waitrose Waitrose started as a single grocery shop at 263 Action Hill West London in 1904 by Wallace Waite, Authur Rose and Dravid Taylor, becomes one of the UK's leading food retail chain having more than 187 branches and employing around 39,000 people. Moving into the partnership with The John Lewis in 1937 opened its first super market chain in 1955. Waitrose shops and supermarket are throughout England, Scotland & Wales. These shops and supermarkets are present in each and every type of locations ranging from high streets to edge of town sites and vary in size of just 7000 square feet to more than 56,000 square feet. Last year, Waitrose registered gross sales up 251.6 million pound which is 6.8% to just under 4.0 billion pound. Waitrose operating profits (excluding property profits of 8.6 million pound) has increased 38.3 million pound which is 22% increase to 212.1 million pound. It is likely to grow at the rate of 3.6 % (excluding Petrol). It has the market share of 3.9% and has registered growth in operating margin by 5.4% (excluding property profits). Waitrose sales have growth by 47% in last four years. Its market share of the UK organics market stands at over 18%. Sales density of Waitrose has increased by 2.3% to 1,038 pound per square feet. Due to its higher product quality, Waitrose achieved 13 out of 18 quality standard industry awards. Waitrose has maintained its long-term relationship with farmers and suppliers and committed to support and sell only British farm products. Waitrose is providing specialized services to provide knowledge of the products to its customers. So Waitrose aims to combine the convenience of supermarket with the expertise and services of specialist shop and offer price commitment to ensure its customer to get good value for money at Waitrose. These are the sole reasons why Waitrose voted as the most favorites. These are the sole reasons why Waitrose voted as the most favorite grocer of U.K (All the data has been extracted from the website www.waitrose.com ). Individuals as an employee are motivated through the fulfillment of their desires & needs, and is the base for the fact that why people behave in a certain way to achieve their personal goals. The two factor theory (sometimes also called motivation-hygiene theory) was proposed by psychologist Frederick Hertzberg. According to Hertzberg, the factors leading to job satisfaction are separate and distinct from those that lead to job dissatisfaction. Therefore, managers who seek to eliminate factors that can create job dissatisfaction may bring about peace but not necessarily motivation. They will be placating their workforce rather than motivating them. As a result conditions surrounding the jobs such as quality of supervision, pay, company policies, physical working conditions, relation with others and job security is characterized by Hertzberg as hygiene factors. When they are adequate, people will not be dissatisfied; neither will they be satisfied. If we want to motivate people on their jobs, Hertzberg suggested emphasizing factors associated with the work itself or to outcomes directly derived from it, such as promotional opportunities, opportunities for personal growth, recognition, responsibility and achievement. Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory based on five needs, first two lower needs and later three upper needs (Physiological, Safety, Social, and Esteem & Self Actualization) has received wide recognition, particularly among practicing managers. This can be attributed to the theory's intuitive logic and ease of understanding. In the later years, Alderfer has reworked Maslow's need hierarchy to align more closely to empirical research. It is revised need hierarchy is labeled ERG theory (Alderfer, 1969). Alderfer argues that there are three groups of core needs- existence, relatedness & growth. The existence group is concerned with providing basic requirement, which Maslow considered to be physiological and safety needs whereas relatedness considered Maslow's social needs and the external component of esteem classification. Finally Alderfer isolates growth need includes the intrinsic component from Maslow's esteem category and the characteristics included under self-actualization. Here ERG theory has been thought as improved version of Maslow's theory. One of the important theories of needs has been developed by David McClelland (1961). The theory focuses on three basic needs: achievement, power and affiliation. Now if we analyze all the motivation theory we can find that employees in the Waitrose have been more satisfied and motivated due to fulfillment of their needs. Waitrose purpose/aim is the happiness of all members through their worthwhile, secure and satisfying employment in a successful business with success measured by its ability to sustain and enhance the position as an outstanding retailers and a thriving/live example of employee ownership. More recent research has demonstrated that attitudes significantly predict future behavior and confirmed. Festinger's original belief is that the relationship can be enhanced by taking moderating variables into account (Ajzen, 2001). The most powerful moderators have been found to be the importance of the attitudes, its specificity, its accessibility, whether these exists social pressures, and whether a person has direct experience with the attitudes (Ajzen, 2001). Important attitudes are ones that reflect fundamental values, self-interest or identification with individuals or groups that a person values. Attitudes that individuals consider important tend to show a strong relationship to behavior. Job satisfaction refers to an individual's general attitudes towards his or her job. A person with a high level of job satisfaction holds positive attitudes about the job and the organization as a whole. The most important factors which ultimately create job satisfaction are mentally challenging work which provides proper opportunities to use employees skills and abilities and offer a variety of tasks, freedom etc. Waitrose continuously emphasized on longstanding commitment and relationship with employees and improving workplace conditions. Waitrose aim is to attract, and retain best of the employees who share its values. Employees at Waitrose are always ready to offer each customer a high quality experience every time and to provide such an experience, employees are equipped through training and development and facilitated to have change in their attitudes, behavior and skill, apart from training which is one of the motivating factor is the reward policy of Waitrose for the employees. Their reward policy is market leading and providing competitive pay according to requirement of the market and individual skill and performance and a range of benefits which are truly distinctive and include leisure benefits and provide the much needed work life balance. Waitrose is committed to providing an environment to its employees which promote health and well being of the workforce. Employees are known as partners, now as coowners of the business they have access to all the activity of the organization and have a sense of belongingness. They are ready and motivated enough to take the responsibility and accountability and perform their jobs with complete satisfaction. All employees have been provided and equipped with the best of knowledge through training and development. This is one of the motivating factors for employees. The key issues to improve personality are several in which the first one is Self-esteem. Self-esteem is an individual's general feeling of self-work. Individuals with high self-esteem have positive feeling about them and believe that their strengths are more important than their weakness. Achieving success could increase self-esteem. High self-esteem is generally a positive character and the people who take the appropriate challenges and opportunities and succeed have high self-esteem. This high self-esteem always has positive impact on the personality of a person. During the job if any employee become disabled, Waitrose provide them respectable rehabilitation and training. Those factors enhance the self esteem and motivate employees as well as improve their belongingness/attachment for the organization. Employees have been provided salaries, national insurance costs, pension costs and cost of other employment benefits such as company cars, private medical insurances and termination payments. Apart from above benefits, management participate in the partnerships long leave scheme, which is open to all employees and provide up to 6 months paid leave after 25 years services but there is no proportional entitlement for shorter period of service. This encourages employees to maintain long term relationship and retention within the organization. Due to improved and well implemented health and safety policy Waitrose has succeeded in decreasing the number of accidents per 100 fulltime equivalents (FTE is) by 5% with 318 accidents, a rate of 1.44 per 100 FTE's. It has included a new work related stress policy to monitor and piloting an online accidents reporting and management system. Apart from these policies, Waitrose is providing an occupational health offers in which occupational health officers advice on health issues raised at recruitment and on any necessary adjustments to ensure that individuals will not be harmed by their work. They undertake risk assessments and support the active management of short and long-term sickness to Encourage successful return to work and provide partners (employees) the information they need to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Beer et al. (1984) gave an approach to achieve commitment by developing career ladders. They emphasize on trainability and commitment as highly valued characteristics of employees at all levels in the organizations. They highlighted a need for a high level of functional flexibility with less rigid job descriptions, reduction of hierarchies, ending of status, differentials and heavy reliance on team structure for disseminated information, structuring work and problem solving. Competitive advantage will be achieved by organizations that develop policies promoting continuous learning, teamwork, participation and flexibility (Dertouzos et al. 1989). Waitrose emphasize on the honestly, respect and recognition as well as enterprising and working together as a team and achieve as a team. This type of team building and relationship between the employees as a team, facilitate business relationship with long-term commercial success and satisfying work environment. Basically Waitrose vision is to be an employer of distinction. Kabanoff (1993) have categorized organizational culture into four categories: elite culture, meritocratic culture, collegial cultures and leader focused culture. High performance cultures are customer oriented, provide environment to use knowledge skills and focus on freedom and flexibility with minimum bureaucratic burden and insists on equality. The greatest challenges in organizational life are to create cues and processes that are mutually aligned and coherent with the goals of the business. As part of the vision of Waitrose to developed and create an organizational culture which understand and respect diversity of culture and values among its employees as well as customers & suppliers. This develops an innovative and creative culture. Wood and Albanese (1995) refer to career ladders, training, flexibility, reduced hierarchies, team, jobs with upgraded skills, job security, new forms of assessment and payment systems and a focus on quality as elements high commitment. Waitrose provides equal opportunities for all in employment, regardless to individuals' differences like gender, ethnic origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, social background, religion and beliefs. Discrimination of any kind in Waitrose has not been tolerated and dealt with the Fair treatment policy. This shows the commitment of the organization and its basic responsibility of providing health & safety to the employees. Time to time revision and evaluation of risk assessment and investigation of present health and safety measures provide us the scope of improvement. In continuation to its past, during 2008/09 Waitrose is planning to take proactive approach to health and safety measure of employees. Waitrose has clearly defined the internal code of the ethics and has taken extensive steps to reduce the risk for fraud through clear accounting processes and auditing and reviewing its internal audit department. Waitrose as an organization recruit people with disabilities to suitable vacancies on merit. People are more likely to enthusiastically accept and commit to an individual whom they admire or whose knowledge they respect, the effective use of expert, referent, and charismatic power should lead to higher employee performance commitment and satisfaction (Wilson, 1995). Power and its distribution within the organization always play an important role in deciding the relationship within the organization. The partnership rules and principles encourage the widest possible sharing of profit knowledge and power by all partners. Mintzberg (1979) specifies 5 distinct types of ideal structural forms: Machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, divisional structure, simple structure and adhocism. The greatest challenges in organizational life are to create cues and processes that are mutually aligned and coherent with the goals of the business. Partnership phenomenon conforms to the spirit of combined code in a manner framed to suit its democratic ownership structure. Waitrose structure shows the balance of authority between chairman and his management team. For its partners, Waitrose has amended recruitment and retirement policy in light of age discrimination legislations. They are providing diversity awareness training for managers continuously. They are introducing benefits statement for partners. In light of the new work & families maternity paternity arrangement has done by Waitrose. Being employer with distinction Waitrose has provided four elements to its employees that are work/ life balance, competitive pay and benefits fulfilling potential and fair treatment. This distinction of being an employer, defined its culture. Waitrose has the policies and leisure benefits which have been designed to help employees to balance their working and home lives. This situation has resulted into improve commitment to long-term careers for employees. This work life balance includes flexibility working, career breaks, long leave, a flexible retirement policy and number of discounts, opportunities and benefits. Waitrose is paying its partners fairly and competitively. It has devised its compensation and reward policy as such that it is one of the highest paying organizations in its industry and it has been decided by the conditions of the market. Organization culture and environment of the organization is always encouraging its partner sat every level of works to fulfill their potential at work. Organization provides new challenges to develop the management career of its employees. Major thrust and specialty of the Waitrose is to provide latest knowledge and skill training to its employees so that they could deal with customers properly. The type of training programme relates to customer relationship management skills, behavioural training, product training etc. Waitrose provide an opportunity for the employees for their long term growth with clearly defined promotion and career path. They are more inclined to recruit the most suitable candidates, change responsibility time to time, have learning environment etc. As an organization, Waitrose has clearly defined the rights and duties of workers and promote an environment and culture of mutual respect. It creates the culture of values, ethics and be diversified to attract more and more customers. Waitrose is an organization which provides its customers organic and wholly British food catering the nationality feeling among its customers and community. It promotes the culture of innovation and be creative all the time. They encourage the organizational environment and culture in which individual respect each other follow honesty and fairness. Employment policies of the Waitrose completely dependent upon fairness and equal opportunities for all regardless age, gender, ethnicity, social background, religion disability or sexuality. It also respects the communities and has good relationship with customers and suppliers as well. Basically, Waitrose is a strong organization powered by distinctive culture based on democratic based on democratic structure and principles. It depends on the trust of its customer, suppliers and employees as well. In the local community and in the nation in general, Waitrose has a place. Waitrose defined behavior of its employees on the basic principles of be honest; give respect; recognize others; show enterprise; work together and achieve more. Due to these qualities Waitrose has been accolade as supermarket of the year 2007. In a wider perspective, Waitrose has been at the forefront of the fulfillment of the corporate social responsibility. In this direction, Waitrose has developed community element to its British marketing guide which involves and under stands local community needs working with local organizations and developing effective community involvement planed for their own area. To fulfill social responsibility Waitrose has a foundation called Waitrose foundation which mainly works for community development projects. It is the way to passing back some profit back. It involves improves the lives of workers at large. It is working towards environment and dispose waste and pollutant in an efficient, safe and environmentally responsible manner minimizes energy usage and abides by the local, national, international sector codes of practice concerning use of chemical products, including pesticides. It has been evident from the practices and overall culture of the organization that Waitrose is one of the best organizations from almost every aspect and from all the stakeholders' point of view. Waitrose partners and suppliers has also recognized it as one of the best organization for its good all round practices. References: 1. Ajzen, I., Nature and Operation of attitudes, in S.T. Fiske, D.L.Schacter, and C. Zahn-Waxler (eds.), Annual Review Of Psychology, vol. 52 (Palo Alto, CA: Annual reviews, Inc., (2001), Pp. 27-58. 2. Alderfer, C. P., An empirical test of a new theory of human needs, Organizational Behaviour and Human Performance, May, (1969) Pp. 142-175. 3. All the data and information about the Waitrose has been extracted from the website http://www.waitrose.com on dated 15th May 2008. 4. Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, R. Managing human assets, (1984) New York Free Press. 5. Dertouzos, M. R., Lester, R., Solow, R. Made in America: Regaining competitive edge, (1989) Cambridge: MIT Press. 6. Kabanoff, B. An exploration of espoused culture in Australian organizations, Asia pacific journal of Human resource, (1993) 31(3): 1-29. 7. Mcclelland, D.C., The achieving Society, (1961), New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. 8. Mintzberg, H. The Structuring of Organization, (1979), New Jersey: Prentice-hall. 9. Wilson, P.A. The ethics of politics and power on the organizational commitment of federal executives, Journal of Management, (1995), spring, pp. 101-118. 10. Wood, S. and Albanese, M. Can we speak of high commitment management on the shop floor Journal of management studies (1995), 32(2): 215-47. Read More