The environment of Australia Post
Discuss about the Integrating The Organizational Change Literature.
It is necessary each and every organization to have a clear understanding of the environment in which they are working and the needs and preference patterns of the consumers. They must realize that with the arrival of the new changes in the environment they have to develop and upgrade themselves in the terms of technology. They have to realize that in order to thrive in the long run they have to incorporate many changes in their ongoing organizational setup and pattern. Fr an instance the company Australian Post has also started taking many changes for the dynamism of their services and for enhancing their customer satisfaction (Auspost.com.au. 2018). Some of the changes that they have incorporated are the future ready change and the other change is the turning post offices into retail shops. These changes have helped them sufficiently to increase their customer base and also increase the rate of return from their business (Kaufman 2017).
Each and every organization must have a thorough understanding of the market conditions in which they are operating and the kind of environment they are dealing with. There are mainly the two kinds of environment that they have to deal with. The two kinds of environments are the al environment and the general environment. The general kind of environment mainly deals with the external general factors like the demographic, the social, environmental, socio-cultural and other such factors. All these factors are very necessary for the overall working of the Government (Truck.net.au 2018). As far as the postal services are concerned they are largely dependent on the technological advancements. So, the technology affects the company a great deal (Postalandparceltechnologyinternational.com 2018). For an instance, bringing to the innovation of the e-commerce activities in the business is a good technological advancement. The Australians of the modern day are tech save people and it is natural that they demand services that are suitable as per the standards of living and the works that they do. So, they want rapid services. They have invested about $2 billion dollars in the last five years for bringing the Australian post and the Star track together. This had resulted in creating a place of the digitalized and the e-commerce activities that would help the customers with the e-commerce activities like payment, logistics, supply chain and the parcel delivery activities as well. They have also created a digitalized app like the My post that will help the customers to manage their deliveries and make their payments very easily and very quickly. As a result of this, the customers are getting more advantage and their attraction towards this company Australia post is increasing. They also offer the facilities of using these apps on the android phones like My post digital box, Parcel send, Parcel app and many other such apps. However, there is also a significant threat that there must be some breach of security and the customers might feel unsafe (Spears et al. 2018). This can bring a negative impact on the reputation of the company. Apart from this if any competitors bring more technological advancement then it might hamper the goodwill that they are enjoying. They also have to abide by any changes that take place in the Government rules and regulations. They might also get involved in the price war with their customers. The customers might get attracted towards some new plans and policies started by some new private postal service companies and they might get the impetus of switching their attention towards the other competitors. So the company needs to stay aware of these factors that might have harmful impacts on their success (Auspost.com.au 2018).
Changes at Australia Post
Then there comes the task environment. These mainly include all the internal factors like the suppliers, customers, competitors and the suppliers. They can face a very tough competition from the other competitive firms like the HP Inc, Palo Alto Networks, and other such competitors. They pay due importance to the suppliers. They encourage in bringing the indigenous and the aboriginal people (Nguyen et al. 2018). The social trader is their national community partner. They make sure that all their suppliers are abiding by the Supplier code of conduct. As far as their customers are concerned they do not ever compromise with their welfare. They try and take many new strategies for the proper welfare of the customers (Shirazi and Henze 2015).
This company is very much dedicated towards the interest of their customers. It is for this reading that they have decided to make some changes to their existing business model so that they can follow the policy of betterment and that of constant improvement (Auspost.com.au 2018). The changes that have been incorporated are the future ready and the turning of the post offices in the retail shops. The first intervention that is the system of making the company future ready is a kind of strategic intervention and it helps in making the making the company ready to meet all the future needs and demands of the customers. This new trend came into force on July 1st in the year 2010. This change was incorporated mainly because of the fact that the customers are living in a modern and rapidly advancing world and they are looking for some very unique and better facilities he is the age of digitalization so the company thought of digitalizing their service and making their applications very user-friendly. They have developed the app called the MyPost that helps the customers in to keep a proper track of all their payments and the transactions. Australia posts also allow the customers to use this app easily with the help of their smartphones on the Android or the ios. Apart from this the digital channels that have been established by them also help in making the services very user-friendly. They also provide many applications through the smartwatches like the watch. The customers can easily use the applications like the parcel receive app, parcel send app, Australia posts mobile, digital mailbox and other such useful applications. They have also become one of the first companies to develop a particular kind of app in the apple watch that would help the buyers to get the status of their transactions like being able to get the status of their parcel delivery or delivery alerts. The shoppers can now easily be able to track their parcels just by one single tap of their fingers (Kim and Shin 2015). They have also started a new and fresh business idea called the locker system. These parcel locker systems will be working for about the entire day. They will be working on the 24/7 hour basis and will be very convenient for the customers. The parcel lockers will provide the clients the opportunity of picking up their parcels at the desired place and time. This facility is at present available at 6 different places and there are also plans that there will be many more with time (Babb 2015).
Strategy
The second intervention is transforming their outlets into the details so that they can be able to bring much more variations and increase the range of their products. The retail services unit helps in proving a variety of products in the retail outlets. They will be bringing more changes so that they can get the support of more and more number of companies. They will thus be able to allow the customers to get a wide range of services. The 7S framework model of organizational behavior can be used for this purpose because it is a holistic model and it contains about 7 very important and key elements that will be the best key indicators of measuring the success of the organization as a whole (Sheedy and Moloney 2015).
Their strategy was mainly directed towards creating a five-year business renewal programme that would help in making the business, future ready. Their major strategy is advancing themselves technologically as it will help in making it more usable for the customers. They can use the most services and the other smart services as well. The foundation of the e-services is the most significant marker in the path of their strategies (Crew and Brennan 2016).
They are trying to create a new and a flatter business structure that will help in making a reduction in the duplication of the efforts. The departments or the activities that are having almost similar functions are being grouped together. Apart from this, the number of hierarchal posts is also being reduced. This is because there is the urgent need for maintaining the costs properly and there is the need for reducing the cost. As a result of this, the numbers of staffs are being reduced. However, the staffs that are being reduced from one post are being added to some other posts (Huffman et al. 2015).
The old system will surely undergo some or the other kinds of changes. As they have started undertaking many new approaches to creating digital marketing platforms, e-commerce systems, and other such aspects there will surely be some of the other kinds of changes in the existing system of their operations. This surely will require a large-scale training of all the employees. Apart from this, the company must also start making some new schemes for rewarding their employees (Auspost.com.au 2018).
As the organization is about to bring some of the other changes in the existing organizational structure, they will also bring some changes in the staff system as well. The number of staffs is being reduced from some of the posts. This might create some problem and dissatisfaction among the employees. However, the company has to make such arrangements so that they can open up new employment opportunities for all the employees.
The company culture is one that promotes proper welfare within the organization. However as they are trying to reform the kind of model that they have and the kind of operating system that is going on within the organization, they will need to downsize the employees. They might feel that they are being neglected. So, it is for this reason that they must try to motivate their employees so that they can keep up their morale (Delimiter 2018).
The value that builds up this company is mainly working for the welfare of the people, helping people and the communities by delivering a better and a bright future for them. The main components of their values are being safe everywhere, helping each other, respecting each other, delighting the customers, improving each and every day. However, as they are trying to reduce the number of employees from some of the posts they might feel very unsafe. The downsizing if the staffs might initially create a negative impression on the employees. In order to check all these companies must make sure that they are incorporating the values properly within the industry.
Different employees working in different companies require different specialized knowledge. However, as they are following the method of downsizing their employees, then it will also need a better and a new kind of skill training system that will help the process of downsizing without harming them much. There has to be a new system of training and management that will help the employees to gain the new and the better skill. The communication has to be properly built within the organization so that all the goals and objectives can be properly communicated. Proper training has to be conducted so that none of the employees face any problem within the context of the organization. The company has to make sure that the skill training system must be incorporated so that the employee’s that are being reshuffled between the posts are able to carry on with their work properly (Shucker et al. 2018).
The interventions that have been incorporated into the business are for the overall welfare and the benefit of the organization. The strategy of turning the shops into retail centers is very interesting and is also a good strategy that will help in adding more variety to the range of products that are being used. The other strategy is to make the business future ready. Both these strategies are very useful but there are some safety measures that are to be maintained by the company. It is evident that the company is trying to analyze the HR structure and is trying to reallocate the employees. However, this has to be done in a very cautious way. In the beginning, the company must try o create some new job opportunities rather some posts where they can place those employees whom they are removing from the old existing posts. They must not fire those employees from a job only for expanding their business. They must not be harsh towards those employees. They have to be respectful towards them. It is also their duties to keep in mind that if people are vesting their faith within the company that they will require proper service. As they are adopting many new digitalized systems, they are taking proper care of the security. They have to keep in mind that they are maintaining a proper kind of cybersecurity threat. They will also have to maintain the process of constant improvement as it will help in upgrading themselves. They must also follow the method of a rigorous research and technology. This will help them in knowing the trends in the knowing the changing needs and demands of customers. They have to upgrade themselves constantly so that they can outrun their competitors very easily. They might also enter into some collaboration with companies like the IBM Security, Raytheon Company, Cisco and many others that help in providing a total security to the digital and the e-commerce venture that they are undertaking. They have to also expand the area of their business. They will have to focus more upon their advertising as this will help people know about their services living far across the country. They must also make sure that they are helping the poor and the backward people like the aboriginals and the other less educated people. It is not possible for them to understand the highly mechanized digitalized systems. They will have to depend on the system of emails.
Conclusion
So, it can be concluded that these strategies are directed towards the overall welfare of the people. It is for the welfare of the customers that they are trying to incorporate these changes into their organizations. However, proper measures have to be taken so that these changes do not create any harmful impacts on the staffs or on the consumers. They have to make sure that there are no security breaches. They have to provide complete security to all the new digitalized apps.
References
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