COURSEWORK ASSIGNMENT

HRMP012: The Business Context

Autumn 2022

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 Table of Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................................................2

Environmental Analysis.......................................................................................................3

PESTLE Analysis of Royal Mail.................................................................................3

SWOT Analysis of Royal Mail....................................................................................5

Managing Strategic Change.................................................................................................5

Ethics and Employee Wellbeing..........................................................................................7

Conclusion...........................................................................................................................8

References..........................................................................................................................10

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Introduction

The formal name of International Distribution Services plc is Royal Mail plc. It is a
British multinational company involves in providing postal and courier services. The
headquarter of the company placed in London, UK. It is a public limited company and
this company tend to modernization since 2010 to 2016. In this report, the key business
factors of Royal Mail will be evaluated briefly (Antonini et al., 2020). The strategic
processes of the company to overcome with the challenges of changing environment and
the current context of the business will be evaluating to ensure the effectiveness and
wellbeing of the employees. This report also evaluates the implications of HR specialists
in the organization to ensure the overall enhancement of Royal Mail.

Environmental Analysis

Royal Mail Group Plc is a British Multinational company and it provides courier and
postal services in the UK. The headquarter of this company placed in London, United
Kingdom. The founder of the company is King Henry VIII in the year of 1516. This
company was known as a part of the British Governmental Framework. The Royal Mail
and Parcelforce Worldwide and the General Logistic Systems are the two most important
segments of this company. Beside these, the company also own other subsidiaries such as
eCourier, StoreFeeder and so on. The company serves its services for 500 years and it
was owned fully by the British Government. The government build iconic red pillar
boxes around the country since 1852 to ebable the peoples to drop their letters and
parcels in it (tajik et al., 2021). The company made several statutory changes in its
structure to provide service effectively to the people and in 2013 it turns into a private
company by holding 70% share privately. It is the only designated Universal Service
Provider in the UK that collects, shorts and deliver parcels and letters. One of the most
unique feature of this company is to ensure the same price in everywhere of the country.
The employee number of the company is 137300 since 2021, 50800 vehicles and 37 mail
centers and it has 11100 local collection of network. The vision of the company is to
build a more diversified and balanced parcels led, international business and provide
effective values to the consumers (Barveen et al., 2020). The mission of the company is
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to connect customers, companies and countries at the same pace.

PESTLE Analysis of Royal Mail

Political

The factors of political has impacted the business operations of Royal Mail in various
ways. The political factors of the UK have great opportunities for the business
organization as it has a stable political situation. The government of the country is
proactive and the administration is spilt into every local and national areas (Thomassen et
al., 2019). The factors that influence the operations of the company are taxation, well-
hidden corruptions.

Economic

The factors of economic also impact the current economic state of the company. The
economic factors of the company are placed in a great position to impact the company
positively. It is the 5th highest GDP holder in the world and 2nd in Europe. The economic
factors of the country have the ability to impact the disposal income of the company and
sales level by influencing the willingness and ability of purchase of the consumers
(Zhang et al., 2020). The slow recovery of economic in 2008/2009 impacted the
household income and eventually it impacts negatively the gross revenue of the company.

Social

The performances of the company highly impacted by the changing social and cultural
factors of the country. The culture and believe of the peoples and the density of the
population impact the company both positively and negatively. The willingness of adapt
the services of the company and supply of raw materials has changed and for this the
company adopt advanced technologies.

Technological

The environment of the business has changed through the invention of new technologies.
The company also invest a large amount to be in the competition and gain the ability to

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emerge as winner in parcels, letters and grow in different locations (Yu et al., 2020). The
company also involved in innovate quality skills and attributes to conduct the business in
an effective way.

Legal

The legal factors of the UK impacted the operations of the company in differently. As
example, the minimum legal standards are enforceable in a jurisdiction. Since the postal
services the company gained effective millstones if legislative and regulatory.

Environmental

The environmental factors also impact the operations of Royal Mail as the company
needs to act responsibly to shows the concerns about the environment. The company
needs to ensure to provide much value to the environment and kept its cleanliness
maintained. For this they need to be in extra careful to dispose the wastes.

SWOT Analysis of Royal Mail

Strengths Weaknesses

It has the largest and most accessible Increasing the declining of the volume of
network of letters and parcels. letter.

It maintained a strong balance sheet to Decreasing the B2B activities.

boost the confidence of the investors.

Opportunities Threats

Enhance the geographical expansion by Covid-19 occurs the high network

cross-border proposition. volatility.

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 The demand of express delivery increases Raised the prices of commodity.
due to the increases of online shopping.

Managing Strategic Change

Royal Mail has conducted a large range of transformation program between the years of
2010-2016. The delivery operations of the company during the program changes a lot.
Though there were a lot of challenges faced by the company in that time but the program
called modernization program had made much progress (Molloy et al., 2020). The
company had installed new sorting machines, reduce the cost of manual labor, and
various large operations also merged with the company. For these activities, the company
also achieved several national awards. The significance of the strategic change in the
modernization program are provided below.

The program enhanced the efficiency in letters. The company in this program reviewed
the amount of letters and parcels received by each of the office and redesign the routes of
delivering to ensure that each of the letters and parcels are delivered within 8 hours. This
strategy reduced the number of jobs on a large scale and increase the number of voluntary
redundancies.

Then the company enhanced the efficiency of sorting further by installing automated
sorting machines. The sequencing machine was able to sort the letter in the right order to
delivery effectively. It means that the indoor workload of the company had decreases at a
great level (Falisse et al,. 2019). So, the company got the opportunity to redesign the job
structure and spend less time in indoor and also then reduce the headcount.

The changing in the delivery method also impacted the company positively. The company
noticed that bikes and shoulders were not enough to deliver big parcels from one place ot
another and for this the company replaced the bikes with vans. The bikes then provided
as charity to the rural areas to help the farmers in transporting. The van was parked at a
specific location and each of the delivery guy use folding loop to delivery letters and then
come back to the van and went for another location (Reddy et al., 2020). This was a great

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transformation by the company and it fasten and improved the efficiency of the delivery
services.

The cross functional program also played a great role in driving the changes positively.
The planning manager of the company worked closely with the delivery office manager
to ensure the progress of the delivery system. The planning managers ensured that each pf
the delivery person maintained the set timeframe and use the Georoute technology
effectively.

The company also made many mistakes in conducting the changes in their strategies. The
managers of the company at first did not monitor the operations closely and for this many
errors were occurred during the time. The employees were not fully able to put the
accurate data to the Georoute system and it created much problems in their delivery
processes. The company also made mistakes in governing and put the right people in the
right places at the time. After identifying their mistakes, Royal Mail has taken several
necessary steps to overcome with the mistakes (Begin et al., 2020). The delivery office
manager lad the changes and engaged with the unit’s workforce. The technical planner
also worked closely with the worker to mitigate the issues. The technical planner ensured
the right input of parcel counts, details of the geographical address and the time period of
travelling that place.

The company took several effective strategies in that program to make a positive and
effective change in the activity. The winning in parcel is one of the strategies of Royal
Mail. The company then scored the highest among the competitors’ but in overall ranking
only managed three stars. The next strategy of the company was defending letters. This
strategy helped them to identify the location easily and it enhanced the speed of
delivering letters. The last strategy of the company was to grow their branches in the new
areas. This strategy helped the company to ensure the same price in every area and
provide effective and fast delivery to each area (Wan et al., 2019). The strategies were
enabled by focusing on reducing the costs, advancement of technology and advancement
and engaged with the workers closely to motivate them to be efficient.

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Ethics and Employee Wellbeing

Ethics and employee wellbeing are the most crucial parts to be ensured by any
organizations to gain the success in the business. The current state of Royal Mail has the
ability to ensure the employee wellbeing and ethics in business operations (Wang et al.,
2018). The HR specialists of the company has unique strengths and effective recruitment
capability to gain the development of the business.

The HRM department of Royal Mail is majorly divided into three functional areas. The
operations of HR conduct to ensure the development of people and organizational
services. The enhancement of leadership quality, diversity and enhancing the talents of
organization are the main concerned subject of the HR of the company.

Royal ensures the ethics in their business to gain the effective growth. The company
follows all the rules and regulations of the UK to ensure the legality of the company. The
company offers price that provide the consumers values for their money. The conduction
of the business operations ensures the benefits of supply chains by trading with them. It is
the only designated Universal Service Provider in the UK that collects, shorts and deliver
parcels and letters (Tajik et al., 2021). One of the most unique feature of this company is
to ensure the same price in everywhere of the country. The vision of the company is to
build a more diversified and balanced parcels led, international business and provide
effective values to the consumers. The mission of the company is to connect customers,
companies and countries at the same pace. So, the company ensures the ethics in their
operations effectively.

The HR specialists ensure the wellbeing of the employees through several activities.

 The company channelized the monetary considerations in an effective way to

enhance the motivation and perceptions of the employees and ensure strong
commitment and psychological satisfaction.

 The company provides the opportunity to pursue academic study to help them to
achieve more perfection in their position. The employees are also given paid study

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 leave and financial support to help them in improving their position.

 The company also provides help to ensure the wellbeing of the health of the
employees in relation to job, traumas, debt and so on. The HR functions of the
company consider the issues in the time of imposing the strategies.

These are the major ways that the company undertakes to ensure the ethics and wellbeing
of the employees in the organization.

Conclusion

The report aimed to evaluate the key business factors of Royal Mail briefly. The strategic
processes of the company to overcome with the challenges of changing environment and
the current context of the business are evaluated to ensure the effectiveness and wellbeing
of the employees. This report also evaluated the implications of HR specialists in the
organization to ensure the overall enhancement of Royal Mail. So, all the objectives are
covered in this report to provide the desired outcome of the report.

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References

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Hydrogen production from natural gas and biomethane with carbon capture and storage–
A techno-environmental analysis. Sustainable Energy & Fuels, 4(6), 2967-2986.

Tajik, S., Beitollahi, H., Nejad, F. G., Sheikhshoaie, I., Nugraha, A. S., Jang, H. W., ... &
Shokouhimehr, M. (2021). Performance of metal–organic frameworks in the
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Barveen, N. R., Wang, T. J., & Chang, Y. H. (2020). Synergistic action of star-shaped
Au/Ag nanoparticles decorated on AgFeO 2 for ultrasensitive SERS detection of a
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Thomassen, G., Van Dael, M., Van Passel, S., & You, F. (2019). How to assess the
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Yu, W., Liu, R., Zhou, Y., & Gao, H. (2020). Size-tunable strategies for a tumor targeted
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Molloy, J. M., Pendergrass, T. L., Lee, I. E., Chervak, M. C., Hauret, K. G., & Rhon, D. I.
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Falisse, A., Serrancolí, G., Dembia, C. L., Gillis, J., Jonkers, I., & De Groote, F. (2019).
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Wang, Y., Zhu, Y., Hu, Y., Zeng, G., Zhang, Y., Zhang, C., & Feng, C. (2018). How to
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