ASOS plc or also known as “As Seen On Screen” is an online fashion and cosmetic retailer company that was founded in London. The business started in the year of 2000 and ever since then, has gained one of the most prominent spots in the online market. As per the company’s sales, it deals with more than 800 brands as well their range of attires and accessories of their own. Currently as of now, the business exports in more than 200 countries worldwide. Despite its high success rate, the business has gone through issues from within that mainly involve dissatisfaction from the workers regarding their job roles. This report has mainly been derived from the workers who operate in the warehouse. These issues include long working hours, unadjustable shift timings, and excessive pressure from the management and constant supervision that does not allow the employees to work freely. Therefore, this report highlights the issues and some counter measures to work on the problem.
According to Zikmund et al. (2013), it is known that long working hours is one of the key issues for an employee. However, it is to be noted that the assessment based on direct experiences, an employee’s long hour is perceived by the significant departure from that of the normal working week. There are factors involve that asserts differences in employees those who work behind the desk tend to work less than the workers in a warehouse do. There are managers and professionals those who operate and assemble accordingly to their long hours, there is a significant difference in the incidents of the effects of long hour working in managerial positions. However in the case of warehouses, many businesses are concerned about the current situation. It is not only that the employees are in a hard working condition, however despite that they have to work in 37.5 hours shift every week (Lu and Gursoy 2016). The reason for long working hours is due to manual and non-manual reasons. It can due to the fact that the workers are getting paid extra for their effort or it s jus that the business is going for high rate of productivity to meet their own respective targets. In case of manual occupation, a very common reason is to highlight increase pay. Long working conditions can also be due to the fact of job insecurity, the preference of the employee and the occupational commitment along with the enhancement in their career (Jain and Kaur 2014). The research findings show that the business with an international comparison can be misleading in many ways. The average working hour in warehouses is normally more than 8 hours in 5 days and the employees do. For UK based business like ASOS, the warehouses have a high proportion of long hours than most countries that are non English-speaking. There are have many research regarding the fact business can face inter-country variations (Li et al. 2014). These would involve income inequality and the statutory regulation where the facts of long working hours are collective and contractual based on the agreement to reduce the hours. It is not possible to create a conclusive approach where long hour is beneficial towards overall effects. It is difficult to isolate the fact that reduction in working hours would affect developmental changes or new investment in capital (Mathieu et al. 2014). The review in research points how that working hours is related to the health and safety of an employee.
In the workplace psychology, job satisfaction can be considered to the most researched variable or theory. There has also been many psychological issues regarding the subject of job satisfaction, which can be differentiated from design to leadership. In a general idea, most of the definition covers the feeling an employee get towards their job. This can range from the role or even the attitudes centered around it. Two of the most known values of job satisfaction is the emotional state that would result in achieving a goal or the extent that would allow people to be interested or uninterested in their designation (Skaalvik and Skaalvik 2014). In regards to the theories involved, there is of course the need towards motivation that involves the requirements of benefit, recognition and achievement. This can involve Job demands-recourses theory of where motivation comes into place (Terera and Ngirande 2014). This theory involves the imbalance of the demands of an individual and the factors that involves those demands.
In the JD-R theory that acts as a method in order to highlight the wellbeing of the workers. This theory also states that the factors involved in the business ASOS and how the theory would highlight the factors involved in it (Cullen et al. 2014). As per the theory, the factors that are addressed involve physical, psychological, social and organizational factors. These factors are associated with physiological elements such as work pressure and demands. ASOS’s workers face many issues such as long working hours, excessive pressure from the management, which is why the performance and productivity has also decreased in the warehouses (Belias and Koustelios 2014). By using this theory is can be determined what are workplace resources and how they are related to the personal resources involved. It can be said that the effects of continued job strain has affected the health impairment process, by this method the chronic job demands exhaust an employee’s mental and physical resources which would allow him to lose interest in the job despite the fact the has a high pay scale. The workers of ASOS do not have issues with payment too much, the only issue they are facing is that the business causes strain and they are overloaded with work (Haar et al. 2014). It can be said that when there is high social and emotional demands involved, the support that the colleagues involved might get visible and gets more instrumental. The theory also highlights the fact that the workers of ASOS have shown dissatisfaction in relation to their support obtained by the interaction between job demands and the resources involved.
As for the managerial decisions, all factors regarding the mental and working conditions of the employees should be involved. The mangers should also know what are the issues the employees faces and make a survey according to it. These decisions should be based on organizational theories and cognitive dissonances.
Qualitative analysis is the factor through which the satisfaction of an employee can be determined. It is the non-quantifiable factors that evaluates the business opportunities and though which decisions are made. This method does not depend of the income status of the company, but on the factors involved for taking decisions (Karin Andreassi et al. 2014). The CEO of ASOS is the one who asserts the employees giving them the recognition they deserve. In the report, even the CEO is concerned with the harsh working condition that is faced by the employees of the company (Long et al. 2014). It is known that the employees are the roots of any business as they are the ones who give productivity. The quickest way to lose that is losing the trust of the employees.
To assert the information of the employees and the issues that were faced by them, a complete report was made which would highlight the risks and the problems that were faced by them regularly while working in the warehouse. The CEO of ASOS took the initiative as this concern was growing and the result was being reflected on the company’s revenue and productivity (Cicolini, Comparcini and Simonetti 2014). The management hired a group of 5 individuals who would conduct interview with the workers of the warehouse to know what are the key areas they are having issues. The management decided to take this step especially because the turnover of the workers has also been reported to be very high. The management is concerned that this report might be turned to the media that would ruin the reputation of the company as a brand.
As per the report from the interview, the working conditions have affected the employees at an alarming rate. There were employees who have complained about not getting time to drink water or even use the toilet (Farooqui and Nagendra 2014). There were also reports from the employees who have complained that the management does not give proper attention to the workers lives and they do not get to balance their work life culture. There were issues in regards to the shift timing that the workers are not getting enough time to take rest. There were very few employee who spoke for the company and most of the workers spoke against the business.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that the business of ASOS needs a proper management who would look after the needs of the employees. As per the survey that was conducted to know what were the problems faced by the workers of the warehouse. There were many issues related to overwork and mental dissatisfaction. What can be recommended to the CEO of the company is that there should be a designing process that is needed to eliminate the problems involved. First the management should understand what needs to be done, once that is done there should be the option to explore and how to address the problems that are identified when analyzing why the workers are getting frustrated. Over here, the main reason for dissatisfaction seems to be overwork. Therefore, the CEO can either decrease the total working hours of the warehouse or include more break time. As per the JD-R theory, the wellbeing of the employees are looked from the viewpoint of the company. However, in this scenario, the workers do not have wellbeing due to the fact they are faced with repetitive strain of work and getting burnout. For the development of job strain, interaction is the key demand and resource. Once there is a different resource involved, there is the potential of buffering the feedback along with the social support. It can be assumed that when there is the assumption that every occupation could or might have specific working characteristics. They are to be divided as per their nature. ASOS does have a brand image to it however if the workers continue to be affected by the working conditions, not only it would continue to damage the productivity but also the reputation of the company.
Job satisfaction is the most integral part of the business other than the pay check. An employee can lose interest in his work within few days if there is no job satisfaction. Research shows that even if the paycheck is low, an employee would still stick to a company if his satisfaction is met from all the ends. However even if the pay check is high and the employee gets overburden with work and does not feel that the company has the slightest attention towards him, that would cause and immediate setback psychologically. Factors such as the contentedness along with nature and supervision of the job is measured, other methods include cognitive evaluation, emotional level and behavioral factors. Once there is engagement-involved form with the management and the workers of ASOS. Over here, it is not like the workers are unable to put their full effort to the job but because of the fact that even by putting their full effort they are getting overburdened. Also what can be suggested to the CEO is to create a motivational factor that would inspire the workers to work. A business cannot turn down its productivity to meet the job satisfaction of the workers, in this case both needs to be maintained. Once there is a proper balance involved in a business, it is only then the business can take the next step.
References
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Belias, D. and Koustelios, A., 2014. Organizational culture and job satisfaction: A review. International Review of Management and Marketing, 4(2), pp.132-149.
Cicolini, G., Comparcini, D. and Simonetti, V., 2014. Workplace empowerment and nurses’ job satisfaction: A systematic literature review. Journal of Nursing Management, 22(7), pp.855-871.
Cullen, K.L., Edwards, B.D., Casper, W.C. and Gue, K.R., 2014. Employees’ adaptability and perceptions of change-related uncertainty: Implications for perceived organizational support, job satisfaction, and performance. Journal of Business and Psychology, 29(2), pp.269-280.
Farooqui, M.S. and Nagendra, A., 2014. The impact of person organization fit on job satisfaction and performance of the employees. Procedia economics and Finance, 11, pp.122-129.
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Karin Andreassi, J., Lawter, L., Brockerhoff, M. and J. Rutigliano, P., 2014. Cultural impact of human resource practices on job satisfaction: A global study across 48 countries. Cross cultural management, 21(1), pp.55-77.
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