Human resource management and leadership

Summary of Proposal

COVID-19 has negatively affected most industries both in the process and employee management. Rolls Royce in responding to the limited demand and lockdown measures adopted the strategy of reducing the number of employees in its facilities in the UK. This resulted in numerous people losing jobs and also attempting to sue the company over the redundancy procedure followed by the company. Having many companies faced the same catastrophes like Rolls Royce, the UK government introduced furlough schemes aimed at relieving companies by helping them cater for workers on unpaid leaves. The study bases on the above to assess employees of Rolls Royce Company in the UK to develop interventions for managing COVID-19 related challenges and opportunities. The research will involve a review of literature regarding the subject and the development of a problem statement which will act as the guide for the methodology to be adapted. The research will use both primary and secondary data sources. The secondary data will specifically involve peer-reviewed articles and the online interviews will be primary data collection.

 Introduction

COVID-19 caused devastating impacts on all businesses and employees worldwide. This led to the collapse of some businesses and the loss of jobs as most companies were forced to lay off workers due to low productivity and demand. World Health Organisation declared a world emergency on the 30th of January, 2020, given thousands of cases in China (Aspinall, 2021). The UK first lockdown was announced by the prime minister on 23 th of March 2020. It is clear that the UK has lost over 100,000 people and the pandemic impacts are both economic and societal. The pandemic was associated with antisocial measures which involved staying at home, banning travels, wearing masks, social distancing, among others. As such, this devastatingly impacted business as most of them was closed leaving only those that provided essential products such as food. However, Electronic and automobile companies such as Rolls Royce, Britten Norman, and Senior PLC have encountered overwhelming retardations in demand leading to the laying off of workers and high costs of maintenance and management (Stankevičiūtė et al., 2021). Therefore, in a bid to secure future jobs for employees, the UK government introduced a furlough scheme as an intervention to safeguard the jobs of different people during the lockdown.

Background

Amidst monitoring the unpredictable and changing economic situation as stirred by COVID-19, Rolls Royce keeps on ensuring the security of its employees. Due to the reduced important activities in the aerospace facilities in the UK for a long period, the company decided to considerably reduce the number of workers. The strategy aims at enabling the company to ensure the efficiency of the COVID-19 measures adopted and also improve the processes to sustain reformed operations as well as activities for a reasonable time (Farnborough, 2021). The company expects to sue the strategy on focusing on supporting consumers and important services, comprising of air freight processes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Rolls Royce aims at maintaining critical competence that confirms airlines continue to work. The company adheres to the COVID-19 measures to guarantee the safety of employees. However, the adopted strategy of reducing workers directly affects their employment opportunities even after the COVID-19. The UK government introduced furlough schemes to enable the operation of companies but with guaranteed security of workers’ jobs. Rolls-Royce Company was involved in the shutting down of its jet engine industrial units in the civil aerospace partition because of the demand decrease accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The aerospace engine company targeted yearly cost savings to withstand the prolonged downturn instigated by the pandemic that stranded most of the local and international airlines. Rolls Royce employs about 52,000 workers internationally but redundancy is more likely to continue affecting the civil aerospace industry more than the others given the rise of the new Covid-19 Omicron variant in the UK with about 9,000 roles being redundant from the only one division. Mr Warren East (Chief executive) indicated that the UK was heavily affected by COVID-19 which created challenges in employee management and the business as well. More so, the company’s division is estimated to employ nearly 16,000 workers in the UK only. Rolls Royce’s two-thirds of all employees in the civil aerospace are situated in the UK. The company at this time furloughed almost 4,000 workers from the UK to act as a short-term approach to saving costs. The furloughing of the company employees in civil aerospace was a pre-planned tactic given that the workload was not compressed in all areas. COVID-19 forced Rolls Royce to shut down some of its divisions in a bid of saving money by avoiding operating at limited volumes which are uneconomic. The redundancy is expected to stay longer given that the projections by International Air Transport Association (IATA) show that air travel is anticipated to recover until 2023 which directly affects airline tickets demand, engine and plane orders. It is known that Rolls Royce’s aerospace profits accumulate from the aircraft companies which pay for consistent engine services. The company looks forward to enacting more employment cuts till its redundancies get finished.

Problem Statement

The main reason for good human resource management is to create strategies and manage workers and increase employer-employee relationships. Engine manufacturing companies such as Rolls Royce are taken as a significant subdivision of the economy which makes it vital for employees to support their companies for effective service delivery. Redundancy shapes animosity between employees and the organisation that is not impacted by lay-offs, hence, resulting in insecurity, high employee turnover, industrial unrest, and low productivity which may affect the profit margin. COVID-19 preventative measures created problems for companies as they had to lay off workers given the limited demand and social distance measures. Redundancy-associated challenges are a result of customary psychological contact in which workers with job security and good hierarchical career progression due to their commitment and loyalty to the company’s objectives. Therefore, employees are depressed when companies choose to break such a relationship which affects their attitude and motivation. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the degrees of redundancy which led to severe impacts to both the companies and employees. This creates the need to investigate the impact of employee redundancy using Rolls Royce Company as the case study given it encountered numerous challenges when most of its services were significantly halted.

Research Purpose of the Study

  1. To establish the impact of redundancy strategies on employees at Rolls Royce Company.
  2. To determine the criterion adopted by Rolls Royce to declare redundant employees during the COVID-19 pandemic
  3. To determine the impact of redundancy on company performance in the United Kingdom.