HRM Assignment: Utilization of HR Practices by Treasury Wine Estate in Australia & United States

Question

Task: For this HRM assignment task, you will be required to find and research a real Australian-based company that also operates overseas.
The choice of the company is entirely up to you, but you shouldtry to select a company that you will be able to gather enough information about to effectively complete the assignment.
You should avoid selecting companies that have only cursory operations overseas, or have no employees working overseas.

Answer

Executive Summary
As evident herein HRM assignment, in today’s competitive business market, most of the organisations experience difficulties because of internal and external environmental factors. Similarly, Treasury Wine Estate have been experiencing a variety of issues and difficulties due to external environmental factors, including political, economic, natural resource, and COVID-19 epidemic. Therefore, the major goal of this study is to assess the impact of external forces upon on company and offer appropriate suggestion to make effective changes within the HR policies and in organisational operations, so that the firm can improve its operations by managing the impacts of external environmental factors.

1. Introduction
In this modern competitive business environment, every kind of organisation, whether it is small or large-scale faces an extensive impact from both internal and external environmental factors. Similarly, one of the largest organisations in the market of Australia named, Treasury Wine Estate faces numerous challenges from its external environmental factors, in which the most current issue was COVID-19, and other challenges, such as political, economic, globalisation and natural resources have almost similar impact on the organisation (Rizal, Suhadak&Kholid, 2017). In order to illustrate the range of impacts of these external environmental factors, the report will discuss the Human Resource practices that Treasury Wine Estate utilises in both Australia and United States. Also, the report will highlight the major factors that have effectively affected the company. Furthermore, another section of the study will discuss the changes that the organisation has made to deal with the environmental factors, and lastly, some recommendations will be suggested to mitigate these impacts.

2. Background of the Organisation
Treasury Wine Estates is a conglomerate Australia-based wine manufacturing company, which distributes its products all over the world. Headquarter of Treasury Wine Estates is situated in Melbourne, Australia. Formerly, the manufacturing firm was the division of international brewing company ‘Foster’s Group’.

In the 19th century, Treasury Wine Estates developed its root by establishing diversified ‘New World Wineries’ in the Australian market. Among these, Treasury established ‘Lindeman’s’, along with ‘Penfolds’ in the Australian market, where as ‘Beringer Vineyards’ was established in the market of United States. Foster’s group started to manufacture its wine from the year 1955. With the help of adequate acquisition, Foster’s established this wine division as one of the largest wine manufacturers in the world (tweglobal.com, 2021). By 2005, ‘Beringer Blass’ became the 7th largest wine manufacturer throughout the market of United states. At the same time, Foster’s acquired another wine-manufacturing group, named, Southcorp in Australia and added its renowned brands, such as Penfolds, Lindeman and Rosemount and earned a revenue of around AUS$1 billion. As of 2017, Treasury Wine Estates has earned AUS$2.5 billion with a net income of around AUS$269 million.

However, the business of wine division was not that profitable for the organisation, and as an outcome, a large amount of profit margin started to draining because of poor performance of the wine division. Due to this poor performance, all the shareholders agreed at a group meeting in 2011 in Melbourne, and Foster’s Group leave the partnership business with Treasury Wine Estates and become another separate wine and brewing company (tweglobal.com, 2021). In 2011, Treasury Wine Estate officially became a separate wine company.

3. Human Resource Policies and Practices both in Australia and Overseas Country
Treasury Wine Estates establishes a number of human resource policies, as well as practises which is applicable not only into Australia but also worldwide to all the overseas companies of Treasury Wine Estates. Firstly, the wine manufacturing company has established an inclusive and diverse cultural guideline for all of its businesses (Cletuset al., 2018). The major intention of such a policy is that it will grab the attention of extremely skilled individuals and ensure their long-term retention in the firm, which will contribute to the firm's objective of becoming the most renowned wine manufacturer throughout the globe.

Additionally, Treasury makes commercially-oriented decisions in terms of human resource policy and procedures after taking into account the various viewpoints, as well as interests of various stakeholders of the firm. The organisational human resource policy helps in attracting and retaining skilled employees by creating a positive work environment (Marques, 2017). The HR policy of Treasury Wine Estates also applies to both Australian, as well as United States business operations.

Another HR policy and practise that Treasury has implemented into its HR operations is the flexible work facility, which provides a competitive benefit throughout the market of Australia and United States. Flexibility in majority of organisational operations is included, from hiring employees to operations to everyday processes, performing training, along with development for achieving global aims is the major policy and practice, which is involved in human resource practises of Treasury Wine Estates (Berkeryet al., 2017). Nonetheless, throughout the market of United States, Treasury Wine Estates performs in a more face-to-face, as well as direct way throughout Australia, which focus on business operations that assists to rapidly attract the interest of the customers (Goldsbyet al., 2018). As a result, the human resource department at the headquarters must pay special attention to the nationality issue. Furthermore, the Treasury Estates Wine Company prioritised health and safety issues, and well-being before profitability in its human resource management practices for all of its global activities.

4. Impacts of External Environmental Factors on the Organisation
Most of the countries have experienced critical issues at the beginning of 2020 because of the sudden outbreak of COVID 19 epidemic. In diverse global activities, the corporation encounters several difficulties related to client needs, safety, and marketplace (Lioutas&Charatsari, 2021). Thus, in addition to the economic, as well as political difficulties, a variety of other external elements, such as political and legal, cultural, economic, natural, promotional, rivals, demands and many more have a substantial impact on the organisation and its success. Regarding these, Treasury Wine Estates started a two-year “Climate Scenario Analysis (CSA)” in order to assess the extensive risks, as well as opportunities which will occur due to climate change (Wassmannet al., 2019).

The wine manufacturing company has both direct and indirect relationships with the government of both the countries regarding rules and regulations, as well as trade associations in order to advocate on a wide range of problems that affect the firm's business operations. Recently, in the beginning of 2020, the global epidemic of COVID-19 has had a significant effect on the peoples’ lives and work, as well as on the global activities of Treasury Wine Estates (Kniffinet al., 2021).

Additionally, external factor, for example product delivery or distributors and suppliers have a crucial role within the business performance. It requires to understand that companies should be well conscious of their significance as regional employers, manufacturers of local raw materials, product distribution, as well as service distributors. There are a few numbers of external factors apart from COVID-19 that affect the business of Treasury Wine Estate in both Australia and United States’ market. These are:

I. Fluctuation of Price and Product Service:An organisation sometimes become unable to determine the appropriate and appropriate price for their products in accordance to their location. As Treasury Wine Estate vary from Australia to America, pricing policy fluctuates on a daily basis (Seccia, Santeramo&Nardone, 2016). As a result, given the complex nature of the items, addressing this issue is moderately difficult.

II. Location of the Consumers:Location of the consumers is another external factor that sometimes creates an issue for the organisations. As the wine manufacturer operates its business both in Australia and United States; thus, a large number of customers are required to manage in these two different locations. In that case, if due to some reason, Treasury Wine Estate becomes unable to deliver its products to its customers in different locations within an estimated time, it will hamper the brand image of the organisation.

III. Size and Complexity of the Business Market: Having the strongest market position throughout the marketplaces appears to be critical for majority of the firms. The scale and complexity of the marketplace creates obstacles for Treasury Wine Estate's activities throughout the United States' market. It cannot be described as a single market within the United States where businesses can promote, as well as sell their products. As consumers' behaviours, expectations, and preferences differ from state and location; thus, because of differing legislation in different locations or regions, the wine manufacturer experiences a variety of obstacles (Jost, 2017). For consumers with diverse preferences, buying behaviour, methods, and norms, the United States is building a variety of demographic and geographic marketplaces.

5. Recent Changes in the Organisation in Response to the External Environmental Impacts
External factors offer both advantages and disadvantages since they provide the organisation with both risks and possibilities. In that case, the initial priority should be to make adjustments within the organisation as it will deal with external environmental issues, as well as it will make appropriate adjustments in order to turn obstacles into profitable possibilities. The following are a few of the changes that Treasury Wine Estate has implemented recently in its operations:

The corporation has currently organised a direct and effective relation between appropriate administration and its role in managing the impacts of external environment. The wine manufacturing company has redesigned its Human Resource policies, processes, including practises to assure that it can handle difficult situations and maintain continual improvement while also adhering to environmental regulations and licensing restrictions. Treasury Wine Estates also has a comprehensive and climate-adaptive corporate strategy in place to help to reduce the effects of climate change on the organisational operations (Wassmannet al., 2019). This entails obtaining grapes from various regions. In addition, during the scenario of weather or climate change, such an innovation will eliminate supply difficulties.

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, all local and international companies have lost a significant percentage of their credibility and such a situation has made it difficult for them to be in business in 2020. Based on the consequences of COVID-19, Treasury Wine Estates has continued to develop and modify its well-being and security policy that focuses on safety leadership, risk minimisation, as well as system development (Lioutas&Charatsari, 2021). The organisation also provided COVID-19 psychological health and wellness webinars to help workers in navigating the personal and professional obstacles brought by the epidemic.

Through this manner, the organisation makes ongoing changes to its policies, procedures, and plans in order to counteract the effects of external environmental factors and turn them into advantages for the development and growth of the manufacturing firm.

6. Recommendations
I. Treasury Wine Estates should assist individuals who are most disadvantaged as part of the COVID-19 programme. The manufacturing firm should work on the development and rollout of enabling system services over the years (Kniffinet al., 2021). Also, the manufacturing company should increase paid leave coverage throughout the United States, as well as COVID-19 endorsing programmes.

II. Furthermore, it is required for the firm to implement a risk mitigation strategy for the existing and potential external environmental factors. In order to manage impacts of external factors, Treasury Wine should build a comprehensive and systematic enterprise-wide strategy.

III. Furthermore, the wine manufacturing company must recognise and evaluate the hazards associated with climate change during the course of the year, which will aid in future preparedness. Following the implementation of sustainability standards, Treasury Wine Estate corporation should have taken an extensive measure in decreasing the environmental effect related with the manufacturing, transportation, and disposing of its wine as well as packaging (Seccia, Santeramo&Nardone, 2016). As a result, it would become the standard through which the organisation will distribute and provide their products throughout the market of United States. In order to ensure support the transformations and also to take advantage of opportunities, Treasury Wine should provide training, comprehensive leadership training, privilege knowledge and many other activities.

IV. The manufacturing company spends less money on product distribution throughout Australia than it does within the United States since establishing the strongest brand presence is the first step toward success in United States. For instance, whether doing business with other businesses or with consumers, it is unlikely that if the corporate brand gains prominence in Australia, it will also gain prominence in the United States. As a result, the specific measure will aid in addressing the previously mentioned distribution-related concerns.

7. Conclusion
With the help of above-mentioned statement, it can be concluded that environmental factors play a significant role within any organisation; however, it is not mandatory that the impact is always beneficial for a business. There are several negative impacts environmental factors possess that can detrimentally impact the business, which is currently observed in the scenario of Treasury Wine Estates’ business. This conglomerate wine manufacturing company operates its business in both Australia and in United States, and due to a massive difference between these two marketplaces, the firm experiences different of impacts due to its external environment. Major issues that the firm has been experiencing is because of political, economic and other issues, along with COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, Treasury Wine has changed its HR policies to develop the business and to mitigate the risks of environmental issues.?

Reference List
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