Trafalgar Company Overview Essay

The organization’s mission, vision and new business strategy:

For fifty- years Trafalgar Company had a very successful tradition of producing a popular consumer product. Its name and its product were synonymous in public’s mind due to its quality and strong market position. Its basic product is sold throughout the world and can be used in variety of applications.

Initially, the competition came mainly from American and Japanese companies and also from German and English producers. However, with its superb distribution system and centralised manufacturing, the competitors were not able to provide the wide range of quality product and consumer services.

Now the company is facing competition from worldwide producers, the quality and price of the competitive products are threatening the company’s market position. Trafalgar’s fundamental principle was to maintain the market share, as a result demanded price adjustments, due to the current market situation.

The core Mission of the company is to retain the strong market position that the company use to have before the onset of the worldwide competition by providing quality product at less than the price of the competitor and to retain the faith of its customers.

The company’s vision is to provide the market with the better quality product at more affordable price than the competitors. Create an outstanding value for the customers and the stakeholders. Regularly researching and developing new and better products. Always stay ahead from the competitors. And in achieving the vision not forgetting the man force that helped in the success of the company’s Mission.

For achieving this, the company has to make drastic changes in the current work practise in the company. It needs to reduce the personnel, find people who are really bright and competent and who share the same vision. Increase productivity by developing new cost effective manufacturing methods. Earlier, each and every product was produced internally, resulting in higher cost of production.

But now they have to look for suppliers and reduce its cost. They have to create a customer centric business model. They need to carry out customer-driven novelty and to be close to the customers. They also need to listen to their customers and associate with them and establish better customer value.

Impact of the new organizational model on the human resources strategy:

To support the organisational goal in an effective manner, the human resource department also has to make major changes in their strategy. They should move from purely transactional role to more tactical role that is accepted, appreciated and cherished by the organization. In broad summary, the new strategy should be based on the four key themes:

1. Transforming the way deferent departments does the business by:
   1. Integrating their activities more closely
   2. Changing the balance of work and head count
   3. Making worth appointments and helping those appointed to thrive
   4. Updating current systems and developing new and more effective ones.
2. Clearly defining functions, accounting and measurement systems.
3. Focusing on performance and delivery in operations. Monitoring and measuring progress by reporting system that is based on relevant and transparent performance indicators.
4. Taking the unique business and support role the departments have with the company to a higher level and occupying the logical and influential high ground in humanitarian diplomacy (Human Resource Management Strategy, n.d., Para 3)

People are the company’s primary asset and the company’s directive can only be realised through the ability, zeal and dedication of its staff. The HR practices need to be improved in how to recruit and develop staff; the working conditions the company offers; and the manner in which they readily embrace the fundamental principles and humanitarian values of the company. ((Human Resource Management Strategy, n.d., Para 5)

The HR department should make sure that all appointees should go through intensive induction and training in the company.

It should recruit, place and develop high quality international managers.

HR department should ensure that the salaries and benefits remain competitive for this purpose benchmarking exercise should be carried out from time to time (Human Resource Management Strategy, n.d., Para 6).

HR department should have strong and innovative systems, procedure and practices that should be fair, comprehensive and transparent.

Design a staffing strategy that will meet the needs of the organizations changing work environment:

Strategic staffing is the process of knowing and dealing with the staffing implications of business plans and strategies. Following are some tactics to be followed for staffing which will be suitable in the company’s changing work environment (Bechet, n.d., Para 2):

• Classify the number and types of employees who are required to execute such plans effectively.
• Knowing about the staffing resources which are currently available.
• Analyzing the supply of talent which will be available at that point when requirements have been defined as retirements, planned movement etc.
• Recognising difference between damand and supply.
• Creating and executing staffing plans which are helpful to remove talent gaps and reduce extras.

Implementing more pragmatic approaches to strategic staffing can give high quality results that organizations need (Bechet, n.d., Para 8).Following are some more ways to improve the strategic staffing process:

• Staffing should not be considered from an implementation perspective. It is also a planning perspective (Bechet, n.d., Para 11).
• Orgnisations feel that plans should be created for each and every unit but this should not be the case rather focus should be only on those areas where strategies are really required (Bechet, n.d., Para 12 & 13).
• If each unit is said to provide the same information regarding staffing where common template is being used, at the same time, in the same year, then it brings consistency to the approach. Keeping this in mind, the HR staffing manager should tailor the process for each issue (Bechet, n.d., Para 17).
• The HR staffing manager should focus on a particular position not all positions. Generally some organisations try to develop staffing strategies which include all jobs though every job does not require to be dealt with from a strategic perspective. While applying such strategy the organisation needs to be proactive and it also needs time to respond (Bechet, n.d., Para 19).
• While creating staffing strategies, the plans should be kept separate and distinctive. The HR staffing manager should create plans which are at the same level as the company’s problem solution (Bechet, n.d., Para 24).
• The HR staffing manager should define the staffing implications when there is any change expected (Bechet, n.d., Para 28).
• His focus should be on planning not reporting (Bechet, n.d., Para 30).
• Whatever data exists should be used fully (Bechet, n.d., Para 37).

Reference List

Bechet, TP. Developing Staffing StrategiesThat Work: Implementing Pragmatic, Nontraditional Approaches. Web.

Human resource management strategy. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Web.