JJ Report Outline

Project description
Discuss the effectiveness of the approach to managing workplace commitment and engagement at Jinnikins Jeans. that is the topic that you have to focus on.

You then have to write an outline REPORT of 500 words (excluding references, models etc)
Your references need to be in the correct (Cite them right) Harvard format with an accurate reference list.

Please dont create a bullet point list and this doesnt allow you to explain your thoughts fully.

Your formative report should cover:
Structure: the logical sequence in which themes and ideas are presented using the summative assignment marking criteria as guidelines.

Appropriate key theories applied: although some of the taught sessions covering the assignment choices are later in the semester, with some advance reading you should be able to identify at least a basic sample of 3 key theories which support your chosen topic. You should be able to identify why these theories are relevant to your chosen topic.

Outline of analysis and evaluation of the JJ case study with examples from that case study: This is where you demonstrate how you are going to use theory to explore the case study, by using relevant examples (with page references) from the case study to illustrate the key points you are making.

Outline action plan/policy content: this section offers an opportunity for you to briefly indicate actions and/or policy content might need to be taken based on 2. and 3. above. Its important that practicality and relevance are identified.

JINNIKINS JEANS

1.     HISTORY and COMPANY BACKGROUND

Jinnikins Jeans was established in the early 2000s by two brothers, George and Trevor, born and raised in the East End of London.  As teenagers, their original business was selling highly fashionable items of girls’ clothing from market stall sites throughout London and then Birmingham.  The items were sourced from India, using local and ‘value for money’ labour.  By the end of the 2000ss the business was considered a model of youthful entrepreneurism, the brothers were modern business icons and the darlings of the media with their exciting business, personal exploits, innovative use of the Internet for marketing.

The business struggled with the setting up of their business on a more formal basis, claiming that ‘It did not suit their business style’. But with a combination of their hallmark entrepreneurism, design creativity and determination they pulled through, and are now thought to be a real commercial force again. Expansion up to the mid 2000’s was accelerated by buying up existing textile businesses and converting the factories to their own product lines.   However, since 2008 like most high street retailers their profit is down (see Appendix 5), and their online marketing activities seems to generate less response. At present they have no direct online sales facilities for the general public.

Their turnover is rated in the multi- millions, and over the years they have invested heavily in a purpose-built, state-of-the art ‘high tech’ headquarters in Moseley, Birmingham, England. The new headquarters building accommodates: the Chairman of the Board, the Managing Director, the Finance Department, Marketing ( but not the regional sales offices), Human Resource Management (HRM), IT, Distribution and Fleet Management, Design and now Production.  Previously the Production Director had been based at one of the underwear factories in Leicester, now closed. (See Appendix 1)

The current staff on the payroll is 252 full-time (see Appendix 2) and a floating population of agency temps, part-timers and casual labour to cover for sickness, new posts and periods of peak demand. There is no manufacturing at all in the UK; it has now been out-sourced to overseas manufacturing bases.  The company has a strong tradition of an ethnically diverse work-force that helps to contribute to the highly creative and innovative profile of the organization.  The gender balance is not quite so even-handed; with the exception of the HRM Director, all the directors are men and among the senior managers only the Senior Designer and one of the regional sales manager’s are women.

This is very much a family business with nearly all the directors and senior managers related to the brothers or are close friends from the ‘old days’.  Although there are ‘directors’, ‘senior managers’ and ‘managers’ their jobs all differ widely in the extent of responsibility and salary levels; these are titles rather than descriptions of function or corporate responsibility (see Appendix 1).

There had been considerable IT investment; the design studio has the latest in CAD (computer aided design) packages and after a very slow usage start, the designers find that it allows them to generate endless style, colour and fabric ways without the huge time wastage of pen design.  Everyone feels that it has been a really good investment to the point that more terminals are needed to allow designers’ access to the programme.  However, the Marketing department wants to expand and develop their web site to make it more in line with those of their customers and competitors  such as ‘All Saints’ and ‘Gap’. The marketing department is also very keen to invest in direct online sales to the general public, but the design and set up costs are thought to be very high. The financial planning programme is running well, but it needs more input from the marketing division, but it is hoped that the new Marketing Director will sort that out.

Elsewhere the implementation of IT has been less warmly welcomed; in the warehouse, the new centralised distribution system seems to create more problems than it solves – late deliveries, deliveries to the wrong address and misplaced orders.  The biggest problem seems to be in the receipt, processing and then dispatch of new product orders for new customers (that is customers who don’t already have an established customer file and number) sent in by the sales force.  (See Appendices 2 and 6)

2.    PRODUCTS AND MARKETS (SEE APPENDICES 4 AND 5)

Their own brand of jeans ‘Jinnikins’ continues to generate volume sales mainly through departmental stores in major shopping centres and some larger leisure and specialised ‘young fashion’ outlets. Some thought is being given to opening a chain of their own shops in order to increase their market share from its current 9.75%, but there is debate whether or not the company should pursue a more aggressive online direct sales approach.  Overall gross turnover is down by a huge 31%, but no-one is clear why this is. No-body is panicking as the core denim/jeans business is internationally acknowledged as a market leader and continues to perform well. Further, the current trend in high street sales is downwards, so they are conforming to the overall trading conditions and this drop is no worse than say ‘Gap’ or ‘New Look’.

However, the jeans-wear and denim leisure-wear are very crowded market-places with plenty of competitors, ranging from M&S own brands (the biggest selling jeans in the country) through to ‘couture’ jeans – brands like Armani which retail at £280 per pair.  ‘Jinnikins’ has always positioned itself in the teen to twentysomething market; as a brand they like to compare themselves with Levi,, Wrangler, and Pepe.

In an effort to steady the cash-flow the company has recently branched out in to making ’own brand’ ladies leisure-wear for a big name ‘high street giant’ – All Saints Ltd. This has not turned out to be the money-spinner as hoped, as All Saints is still struggling to re-position itself in the market after a period of low sales and boardroom rows.  All Saints is increasing the pressure on its suppliers to trim their profits in order for All Saints to maintain its own profit margins and keep costs down for its own customers.  In an effort to increase profit margins from both All Saints and their own brands Jinnikins Jeans has responded by outsourcing all its garment manufacturing to overseas factories and closing its entire UK manufacturing base.  The income generated from the sale of the UK factory sites was used as a ‘start-up’ fund for some of the overseas factories, and perhaps could be used for some of the web-based marketing and sales innovations..  The salary savings through redundancies allowed Jinnikins to further reduce its price point on its product offerings to All Saints.  No factory staff were offered alternative jobs within the company. No staff at the Moseley HQ were laid off; in fact the closure of the UK factories led to an increase in the recruitment of temporary staff to handle the increase in queries and complaints.

A lot of the staff at the Leicester and Nottingham factories had worked in the same factories since they left school.  Everyone understood the business argument, but given the number of temps at Moseley, some said that at least some of the support staff could have been re-employed. There is no formal redundancy policy, they followed the ACAS Code of Practice and paid what the law said.

All manufacturing has now been relocated to Morocco, Sri Lanka and China – all countries that offer skilled, non-unionised and educated work forces. These factories are all operated through a series of local ownership and Jinnikins partnerships, in which the local owners have a controlling interest.   Jinnikins has no permanent staff presence in these factories but sends out ‘know-how’ teams from the remnant of the previous Production Department to help with the factory start-up.  When new ranges are about to go into production, a project team will fly out with the template patterns for the manufacturing of the new ranges.  There are a number of continuing unresolved problems attached to this long-distance out-sourcing: language can sometimes be a problem with the machinists.  Sometimes the project teams find that the expensive computer systems set up to help manufacturing, supply and information for the UK are not used effectively.   This is creating some quality challenges, sizing differentials and on one epic occasion the wrong fabric was used.  Several of the senior production staff from the now-closed UK factories had offered to work as self-employed contractors in the new overseas factories to help sort out the problems, but the brothers preferred to carry on using the project team system.

The company’s focus is on, its ‘designer led’ status.  The design team is encouraged to go off on research trips to Milan, Paris and New York to check out what is hot on the ‘cat walks’.  Asha, the Senior Designer, feels that the customers really appreciate the amount of time and effort put into this level of research; last year she spent about 8 design days perfecting the look of some tricky top-stitching on some denim shorts. Trevor, in particular, encourages attention to design detail and has been known to join the design team on their research trips.   Asha is on the Management Team and is very influential even in areas not directly within her control, such as sales and marketing.

One of the areas of greatest pressure in production and design, is the increasingly fast turn-around times required by the high street retailers. 10 years ago the pace was more leisurely with ranges being presented seasonally, but these days with the advent of ‘New Look’ and its ‘instant’ fashion’, they now have to turn everything around in three/four weeks max. from design studio to high street sales point.  Asha has tried to counter this by recruiting more designers, but it appears that yet again the catch –point is quality and speed of delivery. At present all shipments are made to Jinnikins from their manufacturers and then Jinnikins re-dispatches onwards to their customers.  Again to counter this, distribution and warehousing have increased their staffing to 36 including recruiting more HGV drivers for deliveries, plus using temporary and agency staff as when required.

3.    PEOPLE ISSUES (SEE APPENDICES 1, 2, 3, 6 AND 7)

The Management Team

George is the Chairman of the Board; he sees his role as the ‘business brain’ and insists on a daily review of all production, delivery and sales figures.  He receives weekly status reports on all facets of the business; he has been known to contact customers personally.  He is a well-known figure on the business lunch circuit in the City, and is well-respected for his business acumen and ability to drive a hard bargain.  George sees himself very much in the Steve Jobs mould; crativecreative, focused, dynamic and with a clear corporate vision .Trevor, George’s younger brother, is the Managing Director; while this is meant to be an operational role, George’s constant day to day involvement can create conflicting pressures for the staff.  He is very popular with the staff as an easy going, sociable and approachable person.  He has a strong instinct for popular design and will powerfully argue a case for maintaining the creative approach. He regularly appears in ‘Hello’ and ‘Heat’ magazines usually emerging from a club after midnight with a group of friends

The rest of the Management Team include the Production Director – Lionel, but as production is now sourced overseas he feels increasingly marginalised and uninvolved to the point where is preparing his c.v. for a head-hunter.  He feels very concerned that the overseas sourcing decision was taken without considering the implications for managing a long distance and diverse manufacturing operation.  He spends most of his time on the telephone trying to explain how to do things to people who don’t understand the design and manufacturing briefs…  He feels that the best way of handling the quality issues is for some sort of direct UK control over the overseas factories.  He secretly feels rather responsible for the wholesale removal of the manufacturing base overseas because it was a report of his a few years ago about the embryonic unionisation movement at a couple of the factories which triggered an almost panic response by the brothers, both of whom have overly-dramatised memories of previous union encounters.

Dan is Distribution Manager and is responsible for the Warehouse/Distribution Centre; he was brought in 8 years ago to run the company’s fleet of lorries, but since then has been promoted to his present job. With the computerisation of the distribution system he now sits with the directors as a member of the Management Team.  He feels that they are all blaming him for the problems over distribution and he wonders if he is really up to the job.  He relies heavily on the Warehouse Manager for support and troubleshooting the constant IT problems.  He really likes the company and thinks the products are great, but the stress is killing him and he wonders how long he can hang on, but the money is fantastic and he has some really heavy financial and domestic commitments.

Sandy, the new Financial Director, was appointed in 20132 (this was grudgingly agreed to by the brothers under direct pressure from their bank who have supported them through the up and downs on the last 15 years), until his appointment the company had a financial controller, Eric, who is still with the company. Sandy is an MBA from Oxford Brookes University, with several years at Unilever and just recently spent 3 years developing the financial package for a new brand image at Gap. He is very enthusiastic and committed, and under his prompting for the first time the company has a 5 year ‘Strategic Vision’ (see Appendix 7) that covers not only the finances, but new product development,  website developments, quality control and customer care. After much discussion and debate, Sandy and the rest of the ‘top team’ persuaded the brothers that a statement of organisational objectives would be a useful ’summary’ of the company’s developing commercial and design aspirations, and would signal their commitment to a dynamic future:

‘Jinnikins Jeans offers the world cutting edge design and fashion manufacturing at prices every one can afford, by the imaginative and creative
management of all its resources: people, systems, products, services and processes – only the best is good enough for our customers and their customers’.

Sandy wants George to persuade the brothers to consider succession planning issues; at present they are both adamant that they plan to go on ‘until they drop’.

Etty, the HR Director, is related to the brothers, but is also their loudest critic. She is very dominant at the Management meetings, sometimes to the point where Dan does not feel he can contribute. She has plenty of ideas, such as introducing online for recruitment/selection, setting up a graduate recruitment programme; making Jinnikins a corporate member of the CBI, rewarding staff with incentive trips to the Milan, Paris and New York Fashion Shows, and offering staff opportunities of job rotation in different departments, but dislikes what she considered to be the administration element in her job and so tends to leave what she considers the dull bits. She is able, popular with the staff and a good communicator, but is not professionally qualified. She feels that Sandy might be patronising her because of her lack of formal qualifications and her kin relationship with the brothers. And she is wary of his missionary zeal in wanting to establish policies and procedures, which, in her view would harness the company’s unique creativity and adversely affect staff morale.

Asha, the Senior Designer on the Design Team, strictly speaking should not be on the Management Team, but her design talents are seen to be a vital part of the company’s success and they don’t want to lose her. She has been with the company since she left college and is fiercely loyal. She wants the title of Design Director, but Trevor feels that design is his overall responsibility so is reluctant to promote her.  It is an open secret that she has been having a tempestuous affair with Trevor for a while.

Currently there is no Marketing Director.  Dinash recently resigned after being headhunted to run the marketing division of one of their biggest UK rivals. The Marketing Director is responsible for marketing strategy, new product development, website developments,  the sales force with four regional sales managers, and for customer service. The Marketing Director has personal responsibility for liasing with his/her opposite number at All Saints Ltd.

The sales managers are responsible for all accounts and sales in their areas: corporate accounts, i.e. departmental stores, and individual accounts, i.e. high street and other shops for all product ranges. The Regional Sales Offices with a Regional Sales Manager, office administrator and customer service assistants are located in: Acton, London W3; King’s Heath, Birmingham; Mary Anne Lane, Cardiff and Haymarket, Edinburgh.  There is a deliberately fostered culture of intense sales team rivalry which supports the sales figures.  However known to the sales managers but unknown to the Marketing Director this is generating some explosive tensions between the leading sales ‘stars’ and the lesser performing sales personnel.

The New Product Development Manager – Liam, (who reports to the Marketing Director) is currently Acting Marketing Director and he expects to be confirmed in the job. However, George is looking outside the company for a replacement – George is handling this personally as he does not want anyone to know.

Corporate Culture (SEE APPENDICES 2 AND 7)

A particular characteristic of the brothers and the people they recruit is to deliberately avoid a ‘Business School’ culture with everything being done by the book – emphasis is on collaborative creativity.   Staff are encouraged to see themselves at the cutting edge of fashion design, to be people with a fashion-mission.  The emphasis is on casual, youth, informality and being laid-back.  With few exceptions most people in the company are well-below 35, apart from the brothers.

‘Hot Spots’

At the various departmental meetings there is real tension between ‘the creatives’ – those who designed the garments, and the ‘bean counters’, those who have financial or administrative responsibilities. This lack of dialogue is causing log-jams in information flow between design, marketing, production and delivery.

The brothers – George and Trevor, are very keen to keep close central control over all facets of the business. The brothers make virtually all decisions, large and small.  In order for any new idea to be implemented it has to have their agreement and support.  This means that all decisions take a long time, both in preparation and research (the brothers love detail and always ask the ‘what if’ question) and then waiting for the brothers to get round to thinking about it.

Morale is patchy among the staff: they are paid well above the industry norm for their work, and the year end bonus is always worth having; but some people say that they want a personal performance bonus like the sales force, particularly the designers who feel that they should have individual performance bonuses..  The brothers make sure that they know everyone by name and like to say ‘that we are all one, big, happy family’. But there is still some lingering doubt/guilt about the factory closures.  Some staff worry that it might happen here at HQ. Most of the staff know each other pretty well and there is lots of after-hours socialising at the pub.

The continual problems with customer complaints about quality beginning to affect staff in the Regional Office, HQ Customer Services and Distribution Centre; they feel that no-one listens to them about the issues.  Further, because there is no specialised IT manager directly in charge of IT, apart from Sandy the new Financial Director, the computer problems are always handed to outside consultancies to sort out, with some very variable results.

In particular the continuing  economic pressures  has led to anxieties about the continued levels of business performance by their customers and therefore the impact this may have on JJ.

An issue which faces all departments is the headache of getting rid of staff who are either under-performing or who don’t in some way conform to the corporate view of creative achievers.  The brothers firmly believe that ‘dead wood must be pruned’ and are keen to start this as soon as they can.  However, Sandy, and to a degree, Etty, is firmly convinced that without some sort of reasonable redundancy policy they will quickly find themselves facing all sorts of tribunal trouble, and further, a skills gap will be created by the loss of these staff.  Etty’s solution is to offer all potentially redundant staff huge packages, and then recruit a batch of graduates whom they can train and mould as they wish.  Sandy’s more cautious approach is to establish a reasonable redundancy policy with particular attention to selection; and then manage any potential skills’ gap by a thorough Corporate Skills Analysis and then engage in an intensive multi-skilling programme for remaining staff.

4.    MANAGING PEOPLE  SITUATIONS (SEE APPENDIX 3)

Recruitment and Selection

Etty has worked hard to convince George and Trevor that they must consult her before appointing staff; several new sales staff, including some fairly senior managers, were appointed because of whom they knew, rather than what they knew (just like Etty herself).

Staff Attendance

Etty is also aware the company needs to be clearer on issues such as punctuality and absenteeism, but doesn’t want to ‘cramp managers’ personal leadership style’. Often offices seemed almost deserted even by 10.00 am; staff have always been allowed to make up their hours if they came in late, but this increases the communication issues between some of the departments, and with the factories overseas. At present managers either ‘work it out’ for themselves or just don’t bother.  This means that there are a variety of different approaches on absenteeism, punctuality, unpaid leave, disciplinary and performance issues.  Staff often seem unsure or vague about the precise objectives of their jobs and their key functions, but they work hard and seem very committed. (see Appendix 3). Etty knows that the brothers prefer not to tie people down with ‘bits of paper’ and will think that such regimentation might stifle people’s individuality and creativity.

Reward

The brothers sometimes offer salary increases to anyone they feel might be a bit de-motivated, but Etty wants to develop some sort of pay scheme to overcome this ad hoc approach. She feels herself, as the most senior woman in the company, to be paid well above comparable industry norms, but she is not sure, for example, if the female merchandising staff should be paid the same as the male (or female) sales staff. It’s easy when people are in exactly the same jobs, but it’s the parity question she is not sure about

The current standard package is:

a)    Salary review after six months
b)    Annual salary increments based on of a  basic  percentage 28 days holiday a year for the first five years, 32 days thereafter, plus all UK statutory public holiday AND personal religious festivals
c)    Car loans for all staff.  Senior managers and all sales personnel have a company car
d)    Year End Bonus for all staff calculated on a percentage of company profits, usually between 2-5% of annual salary
e)    All marketing and sales personnel receive a personal Performance Sales Bonus that can be up to a 100% of basic salary if all targets are exceeded in addition to the Year End Bonus

Some of design team feels that they too should have performance bonuses instead of the Annual Bonus to bring them into line with the sales force with whom they work closely.

Communication

Etty is not concerned about  moves by some of the staff to have a ‘Works Council’; in her view they are very well-paid, with superb benefits in a kindly organisation, so collective bargaining and interference by the staff in senior management matters is not useful to anyone.  The one point made that has caused her to think deeply is the comment that all communication seems to be ‘top-down’, there is no process for the views and opinions of the staff to be channelled up to the ‘top team’ and the brothers.

The easy-going culture of the organization encourages plenty of two-way feedback, at least between leaders and teams. Managers and team leaders are expected to have plenty of conversations with their teams, which usually take place in the local pub.  Managers and team leaders take an active interest in their people and really try to put some of their leadership training into practice.

Training and Development

There is a major investment in training and development programmes; Etty, with the brothers’ support, spends a considerable amount of her time and company money in sending people on various training programmes usually on personal or leadership development topics.  Etty collects the various training brochures and then sends out a ‘Training Newsletter’ with the course descriptions inviting staff members to apply for whatever they want.  There is no correlation between training and perceived organizational or individual need, nor is there any feedback or evaluation about the training afterwards. There is no Training and Development Policy as such as Etty feels that everyone knows what they have to do get some training either by looking in the ‘Training Newsletter’ and booking through the HR Department, or by getting in contact with Etty directly if they want something not currently advertised.

SOME NEW DEVELOPMENTS (SEE APPENDICES 6 AND 7)

Sandy is concerned that the computerised programme of centralised distribution is not really worth the investment.  He is not sure but he thinks the problem might be the skills level of some of the staff. IT is one of his responsibilities, but he never really has time to focus on it; he is relies more and more heavily on external consultants to handle the IT ‘trouble-shooting’ for him. He’s well aware of the marketing department’s increasingly urgent demands for much more investment in their internet presence, both as a marketing tool to their corporate customers and a platform for direct sales to the public.

He is also concerned that the staff overtime figures for the marketing and distribution departments are much higher than for the rest of the business. At least 30% of the warehouse staff have been with the company since its early days; they don’t like to use the computerised centralised stock ordering/dispatch systems, preferring to use their own methods.  Some of the jobs had really ceased to exist years ago after computerisation had been introduced.  This is a really sensitive subject in the company as the computerisation of all its systems was the personal ‘brain-child’ of Trevor’s brother Brian, who helped write some of the programmes himself.

The absence of formal historical data makes it hard for Sandy to get a precise idea of the staff turnover figures, but recently Etty and he had a conversation about the sudden increase in staff turnover in the marketing department especially in the sales force for the Scotland Region:  two sales personnel walked out within days of each other without giving notice.  Their sales figures had been OK and according to Sal, the Regional Sales Manager for Scotland, there had been no problems ‘other than the usual ones you get with salesmen working for a woman’ was her view.   Customer Service has a mixture of temporary and permanent staff that are in the front line in handling customer complaints.  They have a newly promoted supervisor – Kate, who was a first class customer care assistant which was the basis on which she was given this new job.  Kate is based at the Moseley HQ, but at present is spending a lot of time travelling to the regional sales offices to support the hard-pressed customer service staff in the locations.

APPENDICES

1.    Senior Management Team                12

2.    Staff Profile: age/gender/department            13-14

3.    Summary of Key Staff Functions                15-18

4.    Product Ranges                        19

5.    Product Sales by Product Ranges            20

6.    Overtime by Department                21
7.    Strategic Business Vision – Main Points            22

APPENDIX 1

SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM

GEORGE – CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
+
TREVOR – MANAGING DIRECTOR

Etty                 Sandy            vacant                         Asha
HR                 Finance                   Marketing            S