BMA314 Organisational Change And Development

It has been discovered from the provided case study that Sanitarium Health & Wellbeing is a health food company in the Australian market. The brand has usually pioneered to the introduction of ready to eat cereals, vegetarian products and peanut butter in the breakfast segment. From the very onset, the brand has focused on producing healthy and nutritious products that can enhance the healthy living style of the people. In the opinion of Elsmore (2017), it can be stated that organisations that produce stable or any preservative food shall keep place its quality as the first priority. This is what the company has kept in mind and believe in the mission of spreading the community with the message of health and hope for the better living style.   The organisational culture of the chosen brand revolves around its five core value, courage, care, integrity, humility and passion. It is evident from the information highlighted in the provided case study that even the shoppers could relate with the positive culture of the brand and appreciate its vision of inspiring, leading and resourcing the genuine experience of healthy and happy living in the community.

The organisation culture of the brand also centres on adaptability as per changes required in the market. For example, the brand had once expanded its reach to the beverage and snacks, where people changed their consumption pattern and looked for products that could be grabbed quickly. The brand had been efficient in continuing similar beliefs even after changing its food pattern. Moreover, it believes in following the similar lifestyle within the organisational culture as well. Therefore, the management of the brand always maintain a positive workplace culture within the organisation and give high preferences to its employees in terms of work, compensation, healthy living, work-life balance, etc. Furthermore, the Sanitarium also maintains a culture where the employees are given required support to evolve and develop in future. The employees are backed with proper on job training and other effective measures to rise alongside the organisation.

It has been identified that the company has been decently flexible in terms of changing its business model and product lines too. Considering the statement of Waddell et al. (2016), it has been noted that it is specifically important for every organisation to change with the passage of time. As the consumption pattern of consumers changes over time, therefore, the business that can cope up with the changing trend would survive the challenging situations (Bolden, 2016).

This has been the case with the chosen organisation, the brand was usually dealing with the cereals products, however, and the consumers had changed their consumption patter all of a sudden. This has imposed a challenging circumstance before the organisation. However, the management of the brand had been evidently efficient in terms of understanding the changing consumption pattern of consumers and addressing it effectively. In 2012, the brand has experienced the greatest change, where it had to adapt to rising trend of "snackification” of the sector. Herein, people were not ready to sit down for breakfast and grab a food on the way out the door. The brand has successfully implemented necessary changes to best meet the sudden changing trends of the market. With the change, Sanitarium was specifically dealing with beverage products like “Up&Go” and “So Good” than cereals. Nevertheless, despite external pressures and changes, the bran has stuck to its mission of creating value in community, which had been highly appreciated by both the external and internal members.

Alongside the change, the brand has been successful in maintaining its internal workforce by getting their support positively. It has been recognised from the case study that it usually followed a participative culture, where employees were discussed about the change initiatives and they were involved in the decision-making process as well. This effective encouraged employees to stick to the organisation and support its changed patterns rather than resisting (Georgalis et al. 2015). Hence, the employee turnover rate has been extremely low, where employees show a positive interest in serve Sanitarium with a long run intention.

The management of the brand has been able to manage a positive and healthy working culture, which relatively impacted on the outcome of organisational change initiatives and learning principles. According to Lee et al. (2016), workplace culture creates a major influence on organisational principles and the final result. It works as a mutual process between managers and employees. Both need to be compatible with one another in understanding and addressing each others’ needs (Block, 2016).  

The employees need to identify the efforts employers or managers are making to retain them, based on which employees showcase their hard work and dedications. For example, Sanitarium has established an online performance and development system named iGro, to ease the communication pattern between employees and managers. Using this platform, both parties have exchanged their perceptions in terms of performance goals, required behaviours and developmental planning. The most important factor the organisation follows is maintaining transparency, where employees were informed of every single strategy the management would be taking in the upcoming future and its purpose behind. Hence, the ethics and principles the management of Sanitarium wanted to follow within the workplace have been widely appreciated and supported by its internal resources. This has also resulted in its retention figure, where Sanitarium’s employee turnover rate has been around 1% per year. It indicates the fact that Sanitarium has recruited the right people in the right culture.

In a similar manner, the external factor also creates a strong influence on the final outcome o organisational cultures and principles (Gifford & Nilsson, 2014). Herein, the market changes at a rapid pace with the passage of time (Fernandez-Feijoo et al. 2014). Therefore, the brands are often getting exposed to uncertain vulnerabilities and challenges. This has been the case with Sanitarium, where the brand had altered its product lines to meet the changing market trends. However, the brand has been extremely efficient in holding its exact mission, principles and beliefs even after getting external pressures. This has also influenced the external parties and customers to understand the positive intention of the organisation and stick by it with a long-term intention. The brand’s health and well-being efforts have been awarded the Best Employer of Choice award in the year 2014. This can be an encouragement for the brad to continue its existing principles at future.  

The management of the brand made a strong effort in creating a great place to work. It has made study efforts in gathering staff feedback to create effective strategies and implementing planned initiatives (Duffield & Whitty, 2015). The initiative it has taken “truly value our people” has been its foremost priority and this can be highly appreciated in the industry as well. To ensure the fact that its staff are retained effectively, the brand has called for a suite of measures, including various e-learning programs, off-site training, on the job training, retreats, workshops, webinars and peer coaching. The employees are also given the opportunity to review their salaries at the tenure of very 6 and 12 months. This has certainly created value on employees’ lives and they had been able to comprehend and related to the strong initiatives the management is making for their developments.

The management of the brand has always demonstrated his dedication towards building the right culture that celebrates and respect the value for each staff and their hard work. It has been identified that Sanitarium has also approached its cultural change and evolvement following systematic manner by using biannual surveys of its full-time employees (Duffield & Whitty, 2016). This has effectively helped the brand to identify the areas where employees are being lagged behind and the future efforts they seek to form the brand. Based on which, the above-stated learning program is designed, which effectively engaged its employees in a learning process at any given time and place. It has introduced web-based, on the job and off the job training, which means the brand has kept its spectrum wide in terms of training employees at a given place from where they can attend the most accessible training platform.  This has effective for individuals as well as a team (Sujan & Furniss, 2015).

By far, the brand has been efficient in terms of handling its learning and change process. The employees were given the right attention they require to retain their motivation at workplace. The brand has included all possible training measures necessitated for employee development. In the upcoming future, it needs to retain the specific abruptness, flexibility and spirit to ensure high employee retention having correct expertise (Haase et al. 2015). The management needs to conduct frequent engagement session, where employees would be given the change to peak free with regards to organisational culture, product lines, business models, internal operation and their compensation as well (Owens & Hekman, 2016). Survey always fails to justify employees precise expressions and feeling, thus, engagement session would allow them to speak freely (Beech et al. 2017). Relatively, managers can count on their body language and gestures as well, which would be more effective (Navimipour & Zareie, 2015).

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