Essay Sample on The Organization of the Company

Introduction

The Home Depot is an American based company with headquarters in Atlanta (Tonner, 2016). The company was incorporated in 1978 with the ultimate goal of improving homes. The company deals with a range of products, for instance, garden and lawn products, home improvement products, building materials as well as providing various services needed in a home.

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History of the Company

The company was founded on the 29th of June, 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank with the help of Pat Farrah who was a merchandising expert, and Ken Langone, a banker (Tonner, 2016). The company operated for one year, in Atalanta, and after, it opened two more locations. Atlanta. Nevertheless, the company was customer-driven. The company did not have many employees, and as a result, it employed avid DIYers whose duty was to assist customers with their projects. Consequently, the company was gradually earning trust from its customers. In 1981, Home Depot managed to conduct its first IPO, and the shares were trading at $12 per share (Tonner, 2016).

The firm's co-founders dreamt of a superstore that would provide customers with a variety of merchandise at affordable prices as well as employ highly trained staff. The organization started as two hardware stores in Atlanta that were offering a large number of items (Home Depot, 2019). Additionally, the two stores had excellently trained associates who gave advisory services, for example, how to lay tiles, change a fill valve, and power tool handling techniques. The unique level of services offered at the company attracted a large pool of customers, and this contributed mostly to the growth of the Home Depot Company.

Further, Marcus and Blank designed a 'bill of rights,' which later became the company's philosophy (Home Depot, 2019). The philosophy entailed providing the best assortment at the right price as well as expert advice from trained sales associates. Later, the company revised its philosophy, to accommodate commitment. The organization made it mandatory to give back to the communities where their stores were located. Today, one of the company's social responsibilities is to help communities and veterans across the United States. Additionally, the two stores expanded to 2,200 stores.

Market Position

Two companies dominate the industry, i.e., Home Depot and Lowe's. However, Home Depot has the largest market share; approximately 27% (Hoang, 2018).

Company Size

The organization has approximately 400,000 associates and 22,000 stores across Mexico, Canada and the US (Home Depot, 2019). Also, the company offers more than one million products to its customers through electronic commerce business platform. According to Dennison (2018), Home Depot's value places it in number thirty-three on the Forbes top list companies. The company's value increased in 2012 when the housing market shot up. The company's growth is attributed to e-commerce, and in 2018 the company reported a sale of more than $100 billion. Based on the revenue between 2016 and 2018, the company is worth more than $80billion (Dennison, 2018). The table below highlights the company's net worth as of June 2018.

Share price for a 52-week period $144.25-$207.61

The Home Depot Market Cap $166.4B-$239.5B

Revenue as of 2017 $100.9B

2017 profit $8.6B

GoBanking Rates' evaluation of the company's net worth $88.1

Warehousing

The company deals with both the online and offline purchases. Hence its warehouse has been designed to meet online and offline demands. The company has a direct fulfillment center that is designed to support activities like store pickup for online orders as well as direct-to-consumer fulfillment orders (Bond, 2015). The centers help in conventional picking processes where they are coordinated in real-time with an objective to accomplish same-day order shipping, where the warehouses have a control system that synchronizes order fulfillment activities.

Rapid Deployment Centers

The organization has rapid deployment centers where vendors and suppliers are not supposed to ship orders to Home Depot stores (Bond, 2015). Instead, they create eighteen aggregate orders bound for eighteen North American rapid deployment centers (Bond, 2015). These facilities are responsible for disseminating items through the rest of the firm's network. The rapid deployment centers assist in the management of production runs; for instance, upon the arrival at rapid deployment centers, products can be allocated to stores based on real-time demand.

Internal Operation

Over the years, Home Depot's organizational structure has changed as a result of its global operations. The company has a divisional organizational structure with three distinct characteristics, i.e., geographic division, global functional global hierarchy (Greenspan, 2018). However, employees are expected to report to the store managers who in turn reports to the respective head of a geographic division.

The employees at the company do not receive discounts. But, those who work at an average of twenty hours a week are eligible for benefits. Also, employees receive quarterly bonuses, especially when a store has a reached plan. Nevertheless, the company prefers to promote its employees rather than hiring from outside. Additionally, employees are paid biweekly, i.e., once every two weeks.

Customer Orientation

The company has two customer bases, i.e., DIY consumers and construction professional (Worldwide Business Research, 2019). Therefore, the firm's ultimate goal is to assist the consumers and professional contractors in solving their problems. The firm builds a professional relationship with the contractors through the most appropriate channels, and for DIY consumers, the company provides them with home improvement tips. Today, the organization has expanded its omnichannel strategy to incorporate convenient pick-up and return options for its customers.

Analysis Issues

The Home Depot Company has proved successful in the home improvement industry. However, from an employee's perception, the situation is different. Employees at the company constantly complain about issues like poor pay, harassment, poor working conditions, inadequate training, and the company experiences high turnover.

High Employee Turnover

Employee turnover can be expected in any company. However, poor management can increase the rate of turnover to undesired levels. Statistics indicate that turnover can cost an organization approximately 33% of a worker's total compensation (Reynolds, 2017). The impact is not limited to finance, but also affects an employee's morale. Hence, it is crucial for organizations to reduce turnover rates. To overcome these rates, companies have to understand the primary reasons for employees abandoning their positions.

It is evident that Home Depot is experiencing a high employee turnover, and this is as a result of the management not understanding the importance of work-life balance. If I were the boss of the company, I would ensure that the work is evenly distributed across the employees. In most cases, the top management is not sure whether the employees are overworked. Therefore, the easiest way to find out would be to engage the employees directly. I would use anonymous pulse surveys to determine employees' belief on the responsibility of their work each week. If I discover that the employees are overworked, then I would hire new ones to ensure that there is a reasonable workload.

Nevertheless, the Home Depot employees link the turnover to unequal treatment in the company. Typically, when a boss's favorite employee start getting treated differently, then the rest of the employees will be angry. More so, one cannot allow specific employees to have their schedule if the rest are not given with such a privilege. Hence, as the boss, I would make it a top priority to treat all employees equally. One cannot let some employees work from home, and at the same time expect the rest to show up to the workplace.

Poor Pay

Employees at the company complain of inadequate pay as well as wage theft. The employees work for $ 11 per hour for forty hours with no overtime allowed. This means that most of these employees cannot afford basic things like a medical insurance cover. Moreover, the employees argue that the company makes a lot of profits due to their efforts, but the company fails to pay good salaries. If I were the boss, I would introduce bonuses to boost employees' morale. Besides low wages are associated with low morale, stress, and disappointment, and this can affect a company's performance.

Working in a job that does not pay enough to cater for basic needs can cause stress among employees. The pressure results in low productivity and morale. Likewise, the motivation levels drop because they believe there is no use in delivering a good job when their wages are more economical than competitor's wages. This can affect the quality of the product and services offered by Home Depot Company. Eventually, customers shifts to competitors to seek quality that they deserve. The loss of business to competitors can gradually lower an organization's profit leading to underemployment.

As the boss of the company, I would introduce pay and allowances, productivity linked wage incentive and profit sharing. The pay and allowances scheme would incorporate a primary monetary incentive for every worker as well as a continuous increment in the pay every year. The productivity linked wage would target employees involved with the production of units, where the quantum will be based on quantum against set targets. Lastly, I would include employees in profit sharing. This would help in motivating employees to improve their performance and contribute towards increasing the company's profits. The introduction of new payment schemes will motivate employees, and they will feel being a part of the company.

Harassment

According to Nolan (2018), employees at Home Depot have regularly complained of harassment, including sexual harassment. Any form of harassment at the company can jeopardize a good working environment for employees. As the boss of the company, I would strive in making sure that there is no form of harassment at Home Depot. Harassment at the organization can be in the way of sex, race, color, age, and national origin. However, employees at the company complained of sexual harassment. Therefore, prevention would be the best method to eliminate harassment. I would inform all employees that any harassment would not be tolerated.

Further, I would ensure that each employee and manager receive anti-harassment training. An effective grievance process would follow this as well as taking immediate and appropriate action. Additionally, I would encourage the management to create an environment where everyone would feel free to raise their concerns with the confidence that their issues will be addressed. Also, I would advise employees to report harassment cases at an early stage before the situation escalates. This is because an employer is liable for harassment of employees by a supervisor that results in adverse employment actions like loss of wages, job termination or failure to hire or promote. However, an employer can avoid such liability if it is proved that he or she tried to co...