Courtenay HR
HR Resourcing
"Wisdom is a comb given to a bald man."
Case Study 2 - Argos
Business Activity: The UK’s largest catalogue retailer
Interim Role: HR Project Manager - Trafford Park, Manchester
Author: Jill Samuels
Due to the very significant growth of the Argos Direct business the company had identified the need for an additional warehouse operation to meet the customer promise. It had been agreed that the site, a ‘brownfield’ location, would be developed and run by a third party on behalf of the company. However a later decision was taken to bring the operation in house and, given the timescale to opening, there was an immediate requirement for an HR Project Manager to handle the HR start-up for the site.
I was introduced to the company following an earlier meeting with Courtenay HR where we had discussed my previous experience and explored the characteristics of assignments that I was interested in.
The assignment was particularly attractive to me as there was a high level of autonomy and an extremely tight deadline, since the site was due to be operational within 14 weeks of my commencing the project. The only HR activity that had commenced was the placing of some external advertisements in the local press by the third party company, and acknowledgements which had been sent to applicants. The deliverables for the project were:
- To recruit the management & support teams
- To plan and deliver team development activity
- To organise the training for the site
- To influence and develop the culture for the new site
The immediate requirement was to identify the HR activities, prioritise, delegate and action plan in order to provide the site with the resource required to meet the operational deadline.
Initially all the activity was focussed on progressing the recruitment/selection of the management team and particular specialist roles, followed by the support team (approximately 45 people in total), and finally the volume recruitment of team members.
Once the management recruitment was in progress I recruited the Training Advisors for the site which enabled me to delegate much of the practical activity needed to put the team member training in place. I then considered the options for team development and, following an internally run day for the most senior members of the team, we utilised the services of an external company who ran some very successful team days for the total management team. These were focussed on developing a real sense of common purpose for the entire team prior to them splitting into the smaller teams required to cover shift patterns.
Significant effort was put into the creation of a unique culture on site focussed on principles such as open communication, participation and ownership.
During the course of the project I also had the opportunity to input to the development and implementation of a new and unique partnership agreement with the chosen union.
The project was particularly challenging due to the timescales and proved to be extremely rewarding as we built an excellent team for the site and created a unique cultural experience for everyone who works there.
Feedback from the client throughout the project was very positive.