HRM Issues In Redbubble: An Essay Analysis.

Select an Australian workplace for research. It may be your current workplace, or that of a colleague or relative. It is recommended that the organisation be a small one.
Determine the mission and vision, and if possible the value statement of the organisation.

Create a questionnaire that allows you to gather further information about the firm and its employees. e.g. Number of employees, whether it is a franchise or sole trader, and nature of the business and current performance. You may attempt to determine the cultural, gender or generation mix in the workforce, as well as information regarding the owners of the business.

You may wish to supplement your findings with observations (websites, reading material) and conversations with employees and employers of the firm. 
Analyse the information you have gained and summarise your findings. You may choose to place your findings in categories. e.g. Gender mix etc. 
Identify any issues that have emerged from your investigation. e.g. Financial problems, gender imbalance, excessive overtime, a dominance of casual /part-time staff, sub-contracting, lack of promotion etc.

Redbubble: Company Background

The paper will explain the current HRM issues that take place in the small firm of Australia named as Redbubble. In other words, the mission, vision as well as value statement of the firm will also be discussed in this context. Besides this, the nature of this business and its current performance in the market will be analyzed by conducting proper research. Furthermore, the paper will provide information regarding the gender imbalance of the HR issues that takes place in this Redbubble organization. Moreover, some recommendations or solution for diminishing this issue by the HR manager will also be provided that will help the firm to decrease this gender inequality issue in future.            

Redbubble is an ASX (Australian Securities Exchange) global online marketplace that provides customized printed products which are mainly based on the user-submitted artwork that is purely original. The firm was founded in 2006, and its headquarters lies in Melbourne, Australia. Their office is also present in Berlin and San Francisco respectively, and the founders of this firm are Martin Hosking, Paul Vanzella and Peter Styles (Redbubble, 2018). The company mainly operates through the internet, and hence the nature of a business is based on the internet, along with it is considered as the marketplace for artists. In the current trend, the firm connects over 400k artists and designers across the nation with millions of fans worldwide (Cole, 2016). In this firm the artist opens the website and upload their respective designs which has been incorporated in various clothes of both males and females. Thus the main products of this firms are clothes that include t-shirts, leggings, hoodies, stickers, cushions, skirts, duvet covers and scarves. About 170 number of employees till 2016 are working in this firm that belongs to the diverse culture, having both generation and gender mix in their workplace (Redbubble, 2018). The firm is purely a sole trading company, and in the current day it reaches some about two million buyers in the world, and thus its revenue reaches about Australian 115 dollars till 2016. In other words, the firm offers free membership to the designers and artists those who maintain copyrights of their work and also regulate the prices of their designs.

The mission statement of Redbubble describes the company's mission, values as well as the purpose which is determined as: "Redbubble is creating the world's largest marketplace for independent artists, bringing more creativity into the world" (Simic, Spichkova, Schmidt, & Peake, 2016).

The vision statement of Redbubble demonstrates the brand growth in concerning to the market, and hence the statement states that: “To be the global marketplace synonymous with creative individualism” (Al-Hassan, & Kharazmi, 2017).  

The value statement of this firm demonstrate that integrity, as well as honesty, must always be present in all of its dealings including with its contractors, employers, shareholders, consumers, creatives and the broader community (Luckman, 2016). Thus to maintain this they have adopted five core values, and these are- Courage, Creativity, Accountability, Commitment and Compassion, and with the help of these core values, they enable to maintain their honesty as well as integrity between their employees and shareholders respectively (Ackrill, Caven, & Alaktif, 2017).             

Redbubble's Mission, Vision, and Values

From the findings of the company background, it is clear that the firm is mainly powered by independent artists irrespective of their gender, age, caste as well as religion. It is noted that the community of Redbubble mainly consists of passionate designers and their designs are incorporated in the clothes, housewares, wall art, bags, stationery and sell these to all over the nation (Huong, Zheng, & Fujimoto, 2016). By selling these products in their online store, they gain huge profits and their creativity helps in attracting large number of customers towards their online e-commerce market. Besides this, the individual artists also get profited by working through this firm and their creativity not only attracts huge number of customers to purchase the products, but it helps them to increase their bank balance by doing the side job (Nica, 2016). It is noticed that artists mainly creates unique designs that can easily attract large consumers to purchase their designer product from this online firm.

The findings also helped to know that this firm became a three-sided global online marketplace where independent artists upload their creative works and designs and earn from the company website. The designs are only made after getting confirmation from the consumers. For this reason, Redbubble in the current days possesses more than 602,000 independent artists that show their talent to create new as well as innovative design (Tatli, Ozturk, & Woo, 2017). In other words, the independent artists individually earned a total amount of 103 million dollars through sales from the firm marketplace since its launch. Besides this, both female and male employees are working on this firm, but it is seen that some issues occur due to the gender mix employees. Apart from this issue, the firm operates 28 different production centers to fulfil about 66 different products types and hence their online store has provided services to approximately 200 countries of the world (Nemeth, 2017).                      

It has been noticed that gender imbalance in a workplace is considered to be a pervasive problem in many countries of the world. This problem has also arisen in the Redbubble Company where the male workers were found dominating the female workers, and this causes the issue for the women to work in this company. It is seen that gender imbalance revolves around the assertion of biological differences between male and female differences where male possess some advantages and female possess some disadvantages in the workplace (Ozturk, & Tatli, 2016). In this company, one of the significant HRM issues is the gender imbalance, where the male workers wanted to dominate more than that of the female workers working in this firm. Hence it is seen that in Redbubble Company the high percentage of men are working at HR senior level positions compared to that of the women. It has been found that most of the women in this firm works at lower rank and males have a belief that they cannot handle tough works (Nemeth, 2017).

The reason for this gender inequality and disparity remain become a debate, and it created various issues of the HRM team to manage this inequality factor between the workplace. In other words, due to this gender inequality in this Redbubble firm, the females are hurt by their profession, and thus in some situation, most women are willing to leave their job. Hence this causes a major issue to the HRM department as sometimes they leave a dedicated as well as talented workers from their workplace. This gender imbalance gives rise to two major issues in the HR department. One of the major issues is that the relatively high percentage of male workers in the HR profession creates a negative impact on the females’ mind which leads them not to work with their full effort in their working procedure (Gould, Kulik, & Sardeshmukh, 2018). Another major issue that few women are working in this HR department compared to that of the male one which thereby unable them to work freely in their profession (Khan, 2017).

Redbubble's Business Nature and Performance

It is noted that in some situation the higher level female staff of the HR department have to arrange meetings with their junior level male staff before taking any decision. Hence it causes a lack of dedication by the women workers, and they do not give their best for the Redbubble Company. In other words, it is also noted that comparatively higher percentage of women of this firm is working at the boardroom and executive levels in comparison to the male workers (Newman, Chama, Mugisha, Matsiko, & Oketcho, 2017). Therefore, due to this imbalance, it causes a negative impact on the whole working procedures of the firm. Hence it can be said that the company mainly follows the older traditional extent where the male is the dominant group in an organization rather than the females one. These gender imbalances may give rise to gender discrepancies such as the difference in pay structure for both male and female, and also the ongoing stereotypes possess a significant impact on both the genders.

On the other hand, the HR department of most of the firm contains the highest percentage of women (Hof, 2017). While in case of Redbubble firm, this strategy is not working nicely and according to their founder, females are unable to provide their best efforts in this online printing artwork organization, and thus they are selected only for the lower rank position. The men have the ability to works for hours whereas females are not so strong that they can physically work hard as like the other men. Due to this reason, they have less number of women executives for their HR department as compared to the male ones. Hence for this selection gender inequality generated that creates an imbalance in the workforce and the males are unable to listen to their female colleagues because they think that they are always right in their decision (Alhejji, Ng, Garavan, & Carbery, 2018). Hence it is clear that this gender imbalance issue of the HR department creates a lot of problems for the females to give their full effort as well as work freely for this Redbubble firm.

Conclusion

The paper concluded that Redbubble provides online printing artworks clothes, stationery, wall art, houseware and bags to their customers and this small firm has enhanced their business all over the nations. From the findings of this Redbubble Company it is noted that they mainly sell designer products and for this, they take designs from independent designers that present all over the world. In other words, the findings of this firm working strategy also demonstrate that this firm became one of the online-global marketplaces where all sorts of designers upload their designs and earn from them. Besides this, the firm faces the gender imbalance issue where the males are given more importance in the workplace rather than the female’s one. Due to this problem, the HR department faces the huge problem in maintaining their staff, and in some situations, female workers are willing to leave their job. It is noted that some talented and dedicated female’s workers leave their job which may lead to problems in the HR department to maintaining their staffs. Hence to diminish such gender imbalance HR issue, some recommendations are provided that are as follows:

Gender Imbalance in Redbubble

The issues of the gender imbalance in HR seemed to be a problematic approach, and for diminishing this issue, it is recommended that the firm has to appoint workers from other cultural backgrounds mainly the female’s one. This will help the HR team to diminish this issue as a diversified environment always help a native individual to learn from others, foreign workers.

It is also recommended that in every meeting the HR team has to discuss female role model which thereby help the male workers to know about the working ability of women and by this strategy their dominance over female workers will be reduced.

 The firm should build an environment where both male and female workers are allowed to equally work together, and no discrimination should be maintained. In such conditions, the females are willing to work with the men workers, and hence it enhances their confidence to work with the men. In other words, it will help the female workers to give their best in the working procedure.

Hence by following this strategy, the Redbubble firm can easily diminish this gender imbalance issues in their operational procedure.

References 

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