Essay Managing Employment Relations – Law Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Task:

Assessment brief/activity
Founded almost 100 years ago, Peddie’s is a family run book retailer that last year reported a gross profit of £7.8m.  A private limited company, Peddie’s traded for many years from one large store in central London (now known as the flagship store).  In recent years it has started an expansion programme, initially in London (a further four branches) but this has now extended to include Bath and Manchester.  With a positive cash flow and healthy reserves Peddie’s is well placed to expand further and continues to explore opportunities to open new branches.  Peddie’s has around 150 employees with 15 based in Manchester and 15 based in Bath.  Operating processes were established in the flagship store and have been implemented in other stores as employees from the flagship store moved to other branches as they opened. Almost all store management positions are filled through internal promotion ensuring that the culture of the flagship store is replicated in each branch.   Head Office staff which includes operations management, finance, marketing and HR are based in offices in the flagship store.

Dissatisfaction with pay that is no longer higher than statutory minimums.
 The Manchester store, although very successful in the first three months of trading (October to December) has not lived up to expectations in the following

Internal quarter. It trades in a shopping centre and must comply with opening hours of 9:00am to 8:00pm Monday to Saturday and 11:00am to 5:00pm on Sundays. The operating costs must be cut which will mean reducing headcount. She wonders if you know of any creative solutions for the equitable handling of redundancy. Most employees were new to the company when the branch opened but a couple of employees transferred from other branches.

•  Sickness absence is also quite high in the Manchester store. Two members of staff have not had any time off sick in the five months since the store opened but all other members of staff have with total sickness ranging from four days to 35 days. Co-workers are starting to feel disgruntled at having to provide sickness cover on their days off.