Case Study on "Oasis Bicycles"

Case Study 12 pages (3412 words) Sources: 10 Style: Harvard

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Oasis Bicycles Case Study

Oasis Bicycles Human Resources Plan

The company is currently in a development and international expansion process. Given the circumstances and the rapid changes that emerge from the environment and that significantly affect the company's activity, Oasis Bicycles needs a flexible, easy to adapt HR strategy.

Although the company must adapt its HR strategy for each country that Oasis Bicycles addresses, certain issues will be applied generally. For example, the company should focus on promoting young employees in all departments. Also, the company should focus on implementing a descriptive-behavioral type of HRM. This is because this HRM model is more suited for the field of activity in which Oasis Bicycles activates.

One of the most important parts of the company's HR strategy is represented by motivation and reward management. The company's employees must feel that Oasis Bicycles values them and intends to invest in them and in their careers. This strategy will further trigger a suitable behavioral response from the company's employees.

Also, the company's continuous focus on learning and development is intended to ensure its long-term success because of the advantages it brings for all the parties involved: customers, employees, and the company.

Human Resources Strategic Plan

The company's Human Resources strategic plan for the next five years must comprise the following main stages: determining the impact of organizational objectives, forecasting the HR demand, forecasting the HR supply, elaborating plans and programs for action.

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Determining the impact of organizational objectives

Given the fact that HR planning must be integrated within the organizational planning, in order to be efficient, HR planning must ensure that the organizational objectives are attained, objectives that can only be reached if the company owns the required resources.

As a consequence, the HR planning process must take into consideration the impact of organizational objectives on the necessity of human resources in the first place (Heneman et al., 1989). In other words, the company's objectives represent the starting point of any HR planning process.

This stage of the HR planning process is even more justified by the fact the success of HR planning is determined by its relationship with the company's strategic planning, because of the fact that HR forecasting is affected by and affects the company's general planning.

Therefore, HR planning begins and continues with the analysis of the company's objectives. The influence of the company's internal and external environment has such a great impact in certain circumstances, that their detailed analysis is imposed. The exact evaluation of the external environment is very difficult to be performed because of the uncertainty that characterizes it, or because of the complexity of its dynamics.

In other words, the first stage of the HR planning is represented by collecting information from the company's external environment (economic, technological, social, demographic, or governmental information), and from the company's internal environment, information referring to strategies, business plans, existing human resources, or profits (Fisher et al., 1996).

In the case of Oasis Bicycles, the main organizational objectives that must be reached are: increasing production, increasing production flexibility by transferring some of the company's production from the Far East to the Netherlands, opening another plant in the U.S., significantly increasing marketing efforts in the U.S., developing new products.

These organizational objectives that the company intends to reach in the following periods of time require certain changes to be made within the company's structure. Certain production plants will be closed, while others will be opened in other regions in the world.

The opening of new plants will require a HR recruitment and selection process that must be adapted to each region in case.

Identifying the company's HR needs

As mentioned above, the fact that Oasis Bicycles must shift some production from certain countries to other regions means the people working in the plants to be closed will be fired. They will not be able to be hired in different positions within the company, given the fact that Oasis Bicycles will close its entire production activity in the regions in case.

Given the fact that the company is opening production plants in other areas of the world means the company's HR necessity will remain constant. Even so, the costs may either decrease in cases where the workforce is cheaper, like it is in the case of China, or increase in cases where the costs are higher for the workforce, like it is in the case of Europe.

It is expected that the increased production efficiency and flexibility that will be obtained from these changes will compensate for the increased production costs.

In each new region in which the company will open new production plants, the process will begin with the HR recruitment and selection activity. The recruitment and selection process must be aligned in accordance with the company's needs and with the possibilities of the market in case.

Evaluating the company's HR needs

The competition in the field and the modifications of the external environment that have a significant impact on the company's activity will determine the company to work towards increasing HR efficiency. The efficiency of the company's human resources will lead to reduced costs in time, which will be translated in increased productivity and lower prices for the company's consumers. This will further lead to an increased number of customers, increased customer loyalty, and increased geographical expansion.

Reward management

Reward management must reflect in the first place in projecting, implementing, and maintaining the reward systems for the company's employees that must be adapted in accordance with the continuous improvement of organizational performance (Milkovich & Boudreau, 1988).

Traditionally, this management field of activity was referred to as salaries management, but the concept is considered to be more and more limited given the requirements of nowadays HR issues and the practice in the field (Hilgert et al., 1986).

In addition to this, the managerial theory and practice have proven the complexity of this field, by using a series of terms, like rewards, compensations, retributions, remuneration, salary, wage, stimulants, facilities, advantages, privileges, and others.

When analyzing a company's rewards management, it is very important to take into consideration the components of the reward system. The main components of the reward system are divided into indirect rewards and direct rewards.

Indirect rewards include: protection programs like medical insurance, life insurance, labor inability insurance, pensions, retirement bonuses, social security; leave on pay, legal holidays, medical leave, anniversaries, lunch break; other services and rewards like facilities for spending leisure time, car provided by the company financial consulting, training programs, protection equipment, free meals, other services.

Direct rewards include: base salary, merit salary; the stimulants system comprising awards, commissions, salary increases or bonuses, stocks, profit participation, and others.

The types of rewards mentioned above must be incorporated by the company in the reward system that will be applied for its employees. However, this does not mean that each employee should benefit from each of these benefits. Each job description or group of jobs that present similar traits must be analyzed. The necessities and requirements of each job will be analyzed in order to better establish what types of rewards are most suitable for each job.

For example, top managers should benefit from annual bonuses in accordance with their performance. Holidays and anniversary gifts are a must in such circumstances, in order to permanently remind the manager in case that he is valued by the company, which expects the same type of behavior from his behalf.

Other employees, like dealers, which related directly with customers, require other types of bonuses and rewards in order to increase their performance. For example, they can be encouraged by offering them commissions on each sale, or bonuses for reaching a certain number of units sold.

Also, they can benefit from cars paid by the company in work interest, the company can provide them with cell phones, and also with other technical assistance.

The company can show its support and valuation for certain employees by offering them training programs. Such an action would have positive effects on all the parties involved: the employees would benefit from improved skills, abilities, and knowledge that would help them advance in their career.

The company would also benefit from investing in training programs for its employees. The employees participating in such training programs are likely to perform better at their job, to increase their work productivity and efficiency. This is translated into increased overall productivity and efficiency for the entire company, which further leads to increased profits based on the quality of the products and services provided by the company.

The company's customers are also likely to be positively affected by employees following training programs. Given the fact that the customer is the central part of the company's strategy, customer satisfaction is pursued by the company in each of its strategies, and is particularly addressed by the HR strategy.

A special category of employees at Oasis Bicycles is represented by people working in the research and development department. The research and development activity is very important for the… READ MORE

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Quoted Instructions for "Oasis Bicycles" Assignment:

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Oasis Bicycles Case-Oasis Bicycles is a Taiwanese-owned bicycle company but designed in the UK and made in the Netherlands *****“ a global company. The Oasis Bicycles Company is based in Taiwan and is one of the world*****s biggest bicycle manufacturers with annual sales of around USâ‚¬400 million *****“ 93 per cent outside Taiwan. According to its CEO:

*****Because of the small market for bicycles in Taiwan, we don*****t have any choice *****“ we have to be a global company. The biggest market for us so far has been Europe, which account for just over half our sales. We started manufacturing in the Netherlands because of the attractive market in Europe. We expected to sell more than 400 000 bikes by the end of 2015. That*****s out of a demand for bikes in Europe of about 15 million annually. To start with, we will be making just 100 000 bikes a year from our European factory, but we envisage this climbing threefold in the next 10 years. The main reason for transferring some production from the Far East to the Netherlands is to increase flexibility.

Fashions are changing quickly and market trends must be followed closely. Having a production base next to the market means that we should be able to satisfy our customers better. Wage costs in the Netherlands are 60 per cent higher than in Taiwan but, because we should get better productivity in Europe, this will not affect overall costs too much. We are considering opening another plant in the US and to actively increase our marketing effort there *****“ we expect to decide on this around year 2010. Our Taiwan plant makes about 1 million bikes a year out of a total 2.5 million bikes for our company *****“ including bikes produced by a joint venture in China. I expect the proportion of Taiwanese bikes to decline over the next few years as we switch production from Asia.

Developing new products is as important as manufacturing. Bicycles are as much a fashion item as a piece of machinery. We sell bikes in several thousand variations. In the early 1990s we introduced up to three new products every year. Today, however, that figure has grown to between five and ten, reflecting increased demands by customers. One of our strengths is the ability to introduce regional product lines, within the context of an international approach. About three-quarters of the products we sell around the world are the same *****“ but for the remaining 25 per cent we give our regional people freedom to specify products they think will appeal locally.

Worldwide, we have 65 designers and development engineers. We spend 2 per cent of our annual sales on design. Forty-five of the designers are in Taiwan, the rest are based in China, Japan, the US and the Netherlands. Through the global design approach we aim to pool many different concepts *****“ the people in China and Japan concentrate on commuting bikes, the designers in the Netherlands contribute ideas from the European racing bike tradition, while in the US they are more likely to be working on variants of mountain bikes. In Taiwan, we try to incorporate all of the ideas, working on new materials such as carbon fibre to reduce the weight of the frame. Our designers can talk on the phone and swop ideas using computer-aided design, but they get together twice a year in Taiwan to review their work. The common language we use is English.

Subsequently, the company has shifted some manufacturing from Taiwan to mainland China because the latter has lower costs for labour and land. China now accounts for over half the company*****s production. However, the company still believes that its Taiwanese based research and marketing teams are best placed to understand both the developed markets of the West and the developing markets of Asia.

Your strategy team has sucessfully completed a Porters Five Forces Analysis of India Market

You are now the HR Dirctor and now must propose a Strategic HR plan for the next five years.

your plan should be completed in report format and must include the following sections:

1.An executive summary(15%)

Formulate an innovative HR strategy for Oasis Bicycles.This section should emphasise the appropriateness of your HR strategy with regard to the objectives and position of the organisation, as well as its organisational context

2.A strtegic HR plan for the next five years(30%)

Formulate a HR plan focusing on HR practices in the areas of stratefic resourcing, reward management, performance management, and learning and development. This section should be supported with your research on the HR practices with in the sector

3.The application of a strategic HRM Model(30%)

You must choose one Best Fit/Best Practice Model to apply in your SHR plan.Justify the appropriateness of your chosen model in application to your plan and address the merits and limitations of the model.

4.Managing a global HR structure and system(15%)

Idetify the potential HR problem or issres for Oasis operating within an international context and across cultures.

Propose strategies for managing the organization's global HR structure and system. This section should be supported with appropriate research

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“Oasis Bicycles.” A1-TermPaper.com, 2009, https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/oasis-bicycles-case-study/626829. Accessed 26 Jun 2024.

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1. Oasis Bicycles. A1-TermPaper.com. https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/oasis-bicycles-case-study/626829. Published 2009. Accessed June 26, 2024.