Investigation How Business Work Essay

My name is Jasper and I have been asked to choose a company and investigate all about that company. The company I have chosen to investigate about is Safeway Supermarkets. In this task, I will be investigation the business objectives of Safeway’s and why they have those objectives. Safeway’s was first started in 1977 and has grown very large since than. It is in the service business where by they buy stock from manufacturing companies and sell it on to their customers and it’s also a public limited company (Plc). Safeway’s now own about two million high street stores in the U.K. alone and are now looking to opening some of its stores in other parts of Europe. The head office of Safeway’s is at London. All decision must be clarified or accepted by the people at the head office before it goes ahead. Safeway’s makes an income of 50 million pounds a year and are stills looking to improving their income. Safeway’s vision in future is to become (The first choice food retailer for all their customers’ locally.) over the past four years, Safeway have been working hard to achieving its vision and to achieve it, they have set out the following objectives. * To have the best promotional deals on the products which most of there customers regularly buy. * To have the best and most innovative fresh food offers * To have the best product availability, keeping their shelves full every hour of every trading day * And to have the best customer service, in a warm and friendly store environments. Explaining of objectives * The first objective of Safeway’s is to have the best promotional deals. If they do have the best promotion, more and more customers will buy from Safeway’s and the more the customers the more profit they make. * Now a day, people are breaking from the habits of canned food to fresh food and if Safeway’s could do this than a greater number of customers will buy more and more from them meaning they get more profits. Safeway’s sells ready prepare meals for customers who don’t have time to cook. * The third objective by Safeway’s is to keep their shelves always full so that customers don’t go to other stores when Safeway’s don’t have stokes on their shelves. * The fourth objective by safeways is to have the best customer service. If they don’t have good customer service to help customers when they need help, customer will go somewhere else and they will loss money. The functional areas of Safeway’s Lawrence Christensen, CBE, Group Operations Director, Safeway Stores plc, is the Main Board Director with Corporate Social Responsibility, which incorporates Health and Safety and Environment. He chairs the Corporate Social Responsibility Steering Group, which oversees, reviews, monitors and advises on CSR matters particularly where they are of concern to our stakeholders. He also chairs the Corporate Due Diligence Committee, which reviews, monitors and advises on due diligence matters associated with product safety, employment, environment and health and safety. Jack Sinclair, Group Marketing and Trading Director, chairs the Commercial Committee which is responsible for reviewing and making decisions with regard to Trading and Operational performance of the Company, including Promotional and Pricing Strategy, Store and Product Category Performance and Marketing, Seasonal and Range Initiatives. Liz Kynoch, Technical Director, Chairs the Executive Health and Safety Committee and has day-to-day responsibility for health and safety management as well as Product Technical Issues. Jim White, Human Resource Director, employs staff for the company and also makes sure that employees are working in a safe environment. It also dismisses an employee who does not perform his or her job properly. David Wilson, Company Secretary, Chairs the Product Policy Group Committee, which defines and refines company policy. The Board then signs these off. He has responsibility for assisting the Board to ensure compliance with all its legal obligations and to ensure that in regard to corporate governance the Board takes account of, and reflects, wherever appropriate, the standards required by the combined code appended to the UKLA listing rules. His role is to ensure that the Board follows its procedures fully and that in the management of the business, it has regard, at all times, for its duty to act in the best interests of the company (present and future shareholders), and to have regard to the interest of other stakeholders. These stakeholders are employees, customers, suppliers and any others who may be affected by its operations. He is vice chairman of the Corporate Due Diligence Committee and a Member of the CSR Steering Group. Nicola Ellen, Strategy Manager – CSR, reporting to Lawrence Christensen, is responsible for day-to-day CSR management. Which is the report sent to stakeholders of how the company is doing in teams of income and the company environment. Dr. Kevin Hawkins, Director of Communications reports to the chairman (David Webster) about the press release and public affaires. He also chairs the Charity Committee, which manages the corporate charity budget. David Webster, director of Finance chairs the finance departments. His job is to give financial advice to the company and to also calculate the profits and loss of the company. He also keeps financial records of the company. Department job roles In every functional area, there are different job roles. A job role tells determines the jobs and tasks of employee that they are being expected to do. Below are some of the job roles in the functional areas. Human Resource * Employ and dismiss employee on reasons. * Motivate * See that all employees are treated the same due on their work. Marketing and trading * To promote products * Perform researches * Good communication skills Technical * Make sure that all employees are working in safe environments. * Get safely equipments for employees * Test employees knowledge of safety incase of emergency Communications * Have good communication skills * Be very persuasive * Make sure that the press don’t release bad stuff about company Strategy * Be able to know what company need to survive * Be able to create reports (CSR) * To be able to set out company’s aims and objectives Laws, which protect Employee rights. The governments has set up laws just is to protect the employees rights. These laws are to be followed by employers or they could be put out of business. The laws are has follows. o Employments Rights Acts1996 o The Sex discrimination Acts 1975 o Race relation Acts 1976 o Disability discrimination Acts o Equal opportunity legislation The Employments Rights Acts This rights covers mostly all the other rights of the employees i.e. * The employer must give the new employee, a written statements or a contract no more than 8 weeks after the employee has started working for the company. * All employees must be given an entitlements pay slip, which shows the gross and net pay etc. * An employee asked to work on Sunday can â€Å"opt-out† by serving notice. * All females can take maternal leave and can return to work on the same terms and conditions has they were. * An employee can act has a trade union official or health and safety official and cannot be dismissed. * All employees who have been dismissed through redundancy have the rights to receive redundancy payments if they have been working fro the firm for more than two years. * Employee have the rights to take a time of on the grounds for jury service and antenatal care * Any employees that this dismissed from working on medical terms have the rights to receive payments for up to 26 weeks. The Sex discrimination Acts 1975 This act makes it illegal fro any employer to discriminate upon anyone on the grounds of gender either directly or indirectly. This act applies to the following recruitment and selection for jobs and promotion, training, the way you are treated in a job, dismissal and redundancy. The Race Relation Acts This act makes it illegal fro any employer to discriminate against on the grounds of the persons colour, race nationally, or ethnic origins whether directly or indirectly. The Disability Discrimination Act This act is concerned with the discrimination against people with disabilities in employments, when obtaining goods and service or buying/renting land or property. The disability can be physical, sensory or metal but must be relatively long tern (for more than 12 months). An employer must not treat a disabled person more favorably than able body person whether in recruitments, training, promoting or dismissal unless it can be justified. Employers must also be ready to make reasonable adjustments to the work place to enable a disabled person to do their jobs. Disabled person who suffers any discrimination can report their complains to the employments tribunals. Discrimination in this case is not divided into direct or indirect but less favorable treatments can be justified. Equal opportunities in Safeway’s Safeway’s makes sure that it follows these acts. In order not to violate any of these Acts, it states at the bottom of its application forms about the above acts. An example of safe ways employments from has been attached to this work.