Business growth post COVID-19 through Human Resource Development
Background to the company
Finance Your Way (FYW) has evolved slowly over the last five years but was beginning to find a strong foothold in the market just before COVID-19 erupted. FYW specialise in smaller loans generally ranging from £1,000 – £5,000. The original business model was that customers would call into a local branch to discuss their loan options with a financial adviser. If they met the lending criteria they would be asked to complete and sign paperwork which would then be sent away to be checked at a Head Office. On acceptance, the customer would then be contacted and asked to return to the local branch to collect their loan in cash. Customers then had the choice of repaying their loan via direct debit or paying in person each month at the local branch.
Current situation
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the company has had to adapt their business to operate on a more remote platform. With customers no longer allowed into branches, loan applications are now only taken on line, money is transferred electronically and repayments are only made via direct debit. The cost of these changes and the pandemic in general, has affected profit levels of the business. Despite this, the company has realised that the current way of working is a lot quicker and offers a better service and intends to adopt this business model permanently.
The relaxing of lockdown restrictions has brought a new confidence to the market which the company wants to benefit from and they now want to build the business back up again. It can be rebuilt in three ways. Firstly, new customer growth will increase the amount of loans they sell. Secondly, targeting existing customers to refinance can increase loan value. Finally, more timely repayments need to be made to prevent losses through arrears.
In order to re-establish the business, the company has identified three strategic goals to be met over the next two years. These goals are:
1. To grow the customer base by 2% each month
2. To refinance 5% of current loans each month
3. To reduce debt by 2% each month
At the same time, the company is aware of the fragility of the customer base so wants to ensure that excellent levels of customer service are also maintained whilst meeting these new targets.
Current issues
Many employees were good at dealing face to face with customers but they were happy for the customer to make initial contact. The business now needs these employees to be more proactive in attracting customers through telephone marketing and COVID safe recruitment days open to the public. Success of these activities requires a high level of sales skills which the employees don’t have.
In trying to establish themselves in the market FYW would often overlook a missed payment if the customer could continue as planned afterwards and would even write off the last few payments to help customers. This way of working is not accepted anymore. Employees must pay attention to missed payments and recoup every penny that is due to be repaid. This requires a new skill set which again will involve telephone calls to establish reasons for non-payment and negotiation skills to set payment plans in place. These are difficult conversations which the employees are not used to having and generally don’t have the skill set to conduct.
Whilst a more aggressive stance is therefore needed on sales and collections activity, this must still be done within the legal and regulatory boundaries. In addition, employees must still display high levels of customer service to maintain the good reputation built over the last few years. FYW cannot afford the time or resource to employ people who have the required skills so must develop their current workforce to be able to meet these challenges.
Your task
Sales, communication and customer service skills have been highlighted as the areas which need to be developed as a priority.
You must design a training session which addresses one of these priority areas. You must include a session plan in the appendices which provides a full overview of the activities you will include in your training session (this does not count towards the word limit).
Your 1,000 report must explain why you have designed the session in the way you have. With reference to the activity on your session plan, you should critically analyse the following;
• Strategic Human Resource Development
• Learning styles and learning preferences
• Principles of adult learning
• Blended learning
Task specific guidance:
• Avoid description of the content of material referred to in the case study – critical evaluation is required where specified.
• Seek formative feedback on partially completed drafts only.
• Do not rely solely on the reference list on Brightspace, this is for guidance only and should be supplemented by independent reading
• Refer back to your tutorial work and notes where you have covered key issues and developed critical argument that is relevant to the requirement of this assessment.
• This is a report so must be written in report format making use of a title page, contents page, headings and sub headings were appropriate.
Note the following is guidance and should not be taken as a definitive and specific list of what to cover. You should interpret the brief in light of the material we covered during the module. The following points give you an insight into which area to think about.
• Include a very brief introduction to the company and identify what changes have occurred. Put this into your own words.(approx. 100 words maximum)
• Address strategic human resource development to indicate how your session plan meets the new needs of the company. Here you must critically discuss SHRD and refer to the external context the company is now operating in along with the internal reaction to this (approx. 200 words)
• Critical analysis of learning styles and learning preferences will require you to provide general critique and then indicate which of these styles and preferences you have adopted in your training session (approx. 300 words)
• Principles of adult learning should outline the differences between pedagogy and andragogy and explain how you have taken account of Knowles six principles of adult learning in your session plan (approx. 200 words)
• Consider the advantages and disadvantages of blended learning and explain how you have accounted for these in your session plan (approx. 200 words)
