Corporate culture
The culture that guides Home Depot, Inc. encourages its employees to have the passion to serve customers with utmost value (Bianchi, 2009). Home depot has employed a strategy in which employees “live their values every day.” The values act as a guide to Home Depot, Inc.’s approximately 300,000 associates.
The associates have to work on the “orange-blooded” culture that insists on serving customers with utmost respect, passion, and total inclusion (Roush, 2009). These values are adopted within the organization, in the outside world, and into all the life aspects of the employees. Eight core values guide the home depot employees as listed below.
Excellent customer care services: Like any other business, the customers are the most important stakeholders of any business. At the Home Depot, the employees are obliged to offer their customers with excellent value and knowledge of the products and services they offer. Common customer-care services exist in every retail store; however, Home Depot, Inc.’s employees go an extra mile.
They work hard to ensure they offer incomparable value to their services. The employees advice their customers of the usage of different products to ensure they obtain maximum benefits from the products they purchase.
Building strong relationships: At the home depot, all stakeholders, customers, associates, shareholders, the suppliers, and the entire community are treated with utmost integrity. The Home Depot, Inc.’s employees ensure that they stick on nothing but the truth in their deals with the different stakeholders. This stand creates trust and thus, the relationship between The Home Depot, Inc., and its stakeholders strengthens day by day.
Social Corporate Responsibility (CSR): Apparently, the employees, customers, suppliers and all other stakeholders belong to the surrounding community. Home depot strives to ensure it gives back to the community, and thus, it strives to take care of the environment and the people in it. Home Depot contributes to social projects that help in the growth and development of the community.
The Home Depot Foundation coordinates all the community involvement procedures (The home depot foundation, 2009). A volunteer force invests their time, talent, resources, and hands-on services to meet the needs of the community.
Building a favorable business environment: The Home Depot, Inc. clearly understands that the business associates are the key people that contribute to the success of their business. Therefore, the Home Depot, Inc. ensures that all the associates feel valued. The organization ensures that all its stakeholders access the opportunities for their growth and development.
Home Depot, Inc. ensures that it leaves a reasonable profit margin for their suppliers. In case there is a conflict between the Home Depot, Inc. and its associates, the matter is handled in a professional manner, and this leads to satisfaction of all the involved business associates. Further, the organization helps all its associates to manage and save their money for the rainy days.
Some of the programs that Home Depot, Inc. offers to build financial security for their employees include the 401(k), the Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP), the spending accounts, health saving accounts, the direct deposit accounts, and the credit unions.
Doing the right thing: The activities at the stores are structured in a way to ensure that Home Depot, Inc. does the right thing; accepting responsibility of all their actions. The business environment ensures there is mutual benefit for all involved stakeholders, and all the business associates seek to diversify and catch up with the evolving world.
Home Depot, Inc. values diversity as it paves the way to serve the increasing number of customers, suppliers, and all associates, and it is the only way to do the right thing. Moreover, the Home Depot, Inc. does some very extraordinary things that are just right.
Home Depot provides fulltime paid athlete jobs, where, the company only benefits during the athlete’s training for the Olympics. Interestingly, Home Depot, Inc. also offers aerobics trainings, dieting classes, and classes to help people to quit smoking.
Appreciating employees: It is noteworthy that Home Depot, Inc.’s employees invest their time, talent, and energy to the success of the company. Therefore, Home Depot, Inc. has the obligation to appreciate its employees. The company does this by giving incentives and diversified employee benefits. The Home Depot, Inc. offers all the company associates with a peaceful mind as they serve the company.
Firstly, the health of all the company’s associates is fully insured. Unlike other companies that will restrict the medical benefits, the Home Depot, Inc. offers full medical cover, dental and vision covers for full-time associates. The company goes ahead to offer the family with the needed protection in case of illnesses, accidents that may cause disability or even death.
Generally, Home Depot, Inc. offers a life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment Insurance, indemnity insurance, critical illness protection plan, homeowners insurance and even the veterinary pet insurance.
Home depot employees are assured of full time payments during off days, vacations, holidays, personal leaves, sick leaves, and during the bereavement leaves. This insurance covers, work and life benefits enables the Home Depot, Inc.’s employees to offer the best of services without all their might without any fear.
Creating shareholder value: Like any other business, shareholders are the most important people as they finance the entire business. The best thing that a business can do is appreciate and ensure the shareholders obtain value for their investment. The company accesses every investment opportunity to ensure they invest in worthwhile opportunities.
The managers ensure that they invest all the company’s finances wisely, and thus obtain enough profits. The profits are divided wisely to serve in re-investing, servicing the daily expenses, paying employees, and giving reasonable dividends to the company shareholders.
Entrepreneurial spirit: The Home Depot, Inc. encourages all its associates to adopt and adapt creative ideas from those companies that offer similar products and services. The associates are always urged to know of the new developments that have taken place in the world.
The new ideas enhance creativity and innovation of ideas of how to serve customers for the betterment of the business. Every stakeholder at the Home Depot possesses the entrepreneurial spirit by default because of the influence of the company-working environment.
Corporate resource
Home Depot, Inc. has seen its resources transform into capabilities. The various efforts in marketing, incorporation of technology, research, and development are some of the factors that have resulted in the growing capital of Home Depot, Inc. over the years. The various corporate resource strategies are discussed below.
Marketing: Home Depot, Inc. has invested heavily in marketing. The heavy investments in advertisements have enabled the retail shop to gain a lot of popularity. It is worth noting that Home Depot, Inc. expresses expertise in the customer care services as well as the DIY consumer.
Home Depot, Inc. achieves this marketing strategy by letting the most qualified and knowledgeable employees to provide the services. These approaches, plus the highly quality products and the considerably low prices has enabled the company to obtain new customers and maintain the loyalty of the old customers.
Finance: Home Depot, Inc. has maintained a good relationship with all its shareholders who help in financing the whole project. Over the years, Home Depot, Inc. has maintained growing profit inventories, and this factor has encouraged the shareholders to freely buy shares and provide funds whenever the business needs to expand.
The finance and top management departments have worked tirelessly to ensure that they always bring worthwhile financial figures on the table. The two departments have always made the necessary adjustments in the financial figures to ensure the stock prices are attractive to the investors.
Research and development: Research plays a very great role in enabling a business to know exactly where it heads. Home Depot, Inc. has been able to identify its main competitors through research, and it has identified the way forward to deal with the competition (Bianchi, 2009). Through research, Home Depot, Inc. identified its strengths and weakness, and employed various strategies to improve on its weak areas.
Feasibility studies enable Home Depot, Inc. to identify business opportunities. The company is able to put up new stores in strategic areas to meet the demand of the customers as well as ensure it makes maximum benefits out of the new stores.
Currently, Home Depot, Inc. has grown, and it possesses more than 1,500 stores across Mexico and Canada. These developments, expansions, adoption of new technologies, and the increase of the Home Depot stores results from the efforts employed in research and development.
Logistics issues: Home Depot employs logistics to ensure that there is a strong internal network structure among the employees. Moreover, the employees are entitled to considerably high wages and benefits. The satisfied employees deliver the best services that add value to Home Depot, Inc. products and services (Bailey, 2001).
Further, home depot employs strategies that place the company at a better competitive advantage against its competitors. Home Depot has developed direct alliances with leading manufacturers. This strategy has enabled Home Depot, Inc. to obtain its products cheaply and in an efficient manner. Home Depot, Inc.’s most interesting strategy is the one that seeks to capture all classes of customers.
The company has standard format stores and small shops that are fully equipped with Villager’s Hardware brands. These stores are able to capture the customers who are interested in buying common items instead of a huge range of items.
Operation issues: Shelf stocking is an operation that takes place frequently in a busy store like Home Depot, Inc. The Home Depot has created a SPI (Service Performance Improvement) program to combat the inconveniences created by the exercise. To make the shopping experience more convenient, the employees re-stock the shelves after the store hours.
This operation helps in reducing messes in the aisle; therefore, customers are able to move freely from one shelf to another without much difficulty. To ease their operations further, Home Depot, Inc. has opened new transit facilities and import distribution centers that have played a great role in facilitating the movement of products.
The enhanced path of the distribution of Home Depot, Inc. products ensures the availability of products wherever and whenever wanted. This very important aspect enables the business to obtain trust and loyalty from the customers. Customers are always sure that they will obtain whatever they desire to purchase at any Home Depot, Inc. store at a considerably cheap price.
Another very important operation that has placed Home Depot, Inc. at a very high position above its competitors is the self-checkout system (“Dramatic change at Home Depot,” 2002).
The system allows consumer to save much time as they self-check themselves without necessarily having to wait in the queues to be served. The self-check registers have enabled the customers to have self-empowerment and some sense of self-control.
Human resource: The human resource department ensures that employees are satisfied with the positions they hold in the organization. Recruitment is done whenever a new store opens, and the existing employees are promoted depending on their experience level. Everything in the human resource department is done openly to everybody’s satisfaction.
Employees who qualify to be on the management team are highly skilled and experienced because they are chosen on merit. The board of directors comprises of very competent individuals who guide the company towards the right direction. The human resource department works exclusively to bring utmost value to its employees by giving them decent wages, investing in their training, and helping their families.
Information system: One of the greatest features that place Home Depot, Inc. at its high standards is the highly upgraded information system. Home Depot, Inc. has an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technology that enables the employees to serve thousands of customers within the shortest time possible.
The highly esteemed technologies in Home Depot, Inc. enable the retail store to track inventory records, keep accuracy, and prevent fraud cases. The company’s main aim is implementing the latest technology in all their stores.
Research and development have played a great role in constructing improved technological infrastructure (Bianchi, 2009). Overall, the information system at the Home Depot has condensed the company’s operations through the implantation of a digital business system.
IFAS table
Home Depot, Inc. keeps a stringent analysis of its internal factors as shown in the table below.
From the IFAS table, it is noteworthy that Home Depot Inc. responds to its internal factors accordingly. The human resource department has done a great job in ensuring there is employee satisfaction. However, more approaches are needed to enhance further employee satisfaction. Since Home Depot, Inc. is one of the leading retailers of home improvements, it ought to invest heavily in Research and Development (R&D).
The IFAS table indicates that Home Depot Inc. doubled the amount spent on R&D, and therefore, the amount should triple in the subsequent year. Training has the least score as indicated in the IFAS table. Home Depot, Inc. needs to recruit new staff and train the existing staff to ensure that the staff offers high quality services to the customers.
References
Bailey, M. (2001). Business & Industry: The Home Depot. Atlanta, GA: Georgia College and State University.
Bianchi, C. (2009). Home Depot in Chile: Case study. Journal of Business Research, 59(1), 391-393.
Dramatic change at Home Depot: success to further success: How Nardelli sustained a culture change to keep the giant growing. (2002). Strategic Direction, 22(9), 8-10.
Roush, C. (2009). Inside Home Depot. New York: McGraw Hill.
The home depot foundation. (2009). Habitat for humanity international and the home depot foundation announce national expansion of ‘partners in sustainable building. Science Letter, 23 (5), 3349.