Get Assignment Help Online-Assessment Brief Enterprise ‘RENT-a-Car’ Case Study Help
2. Assessment Brief
Enterprise ‘RENT-a-Car’ Case Study
Enterprise Rent-A-Car (Enterprise) was founded by Jack Taylor in 1957 in the basement of a car dealership in St Louis in the USA. The business began with only seven cars. Today, Enterprise is the largest car rental business in North America with more than 7,000 offices in the USA and more than 900 in Canada, Puerto Rico, the UK, Germany and Ireland. In 2007, Enterprise had 728,000 rental cars in use, employing over 65,000 people with an annual turnover of over £4.5 billion.
There are four operating units: Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Enterprise Fleet Management, Enterprise Car Sales and Enterprise Rent-A-Truck. Whilst customers within each of these markets need different products, all customers, whether business or private, need a speedy, convenient and reliable service.
The car rental market is increasingly competitive. Enterprise continues to expand its range of services to meet customers’ needs. In addition to business rentals at airport and city locations, it also provides replacement cars for accident repairs, courtesy cars for garages and short-term holiday rentals for breaks or special occasions. Enterprise also offers a collection service to take customers to their hire cars.
Maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction is a key driver of growth for Enterprise. Enterprise emphasises delivering first-class customer service, regularly winning awards for its efforts in this area. Its small, local office structure and entrepreneurial team working means its employees are able to make decisions independently to achieve their goals.
Challenges ahead are foreseen with increasing competition, the move from high polluting vehicles to electric cars planned in many countries in the future and the new demands of technical knowledge required to support this at every level The HRM function has an additional HRD function. This is dedicated for the development of employees at all levels as well as taking on organisational development responsibilities to support changes in business strategy. This includes plans for changes that will affect its future staffing development needs. For example:
• the business may grow into new markets, such as Enterprise moving into truck rental
• it may use new technology which requires new skills e.g. global positioning equipment
• staff may retire or be promoted, leaving gaps which need to be filled.
There may also be external changes in the labour market, meaning that there will be fewer skills available or too many in a particular area. In a tight recruitment market, the skills and behaviours required by Enterprise in its employees may not be readily available, which could impact on standards of customer service if action is not taken.
HRD monitors all of these things in planning development strategy. This places the HRD function in a central role in the business because all managers use their expertise to develop their staff at all levels in the organisation.
Enterprise offers a top-class employee training programme, developed by the HRD team and this is delivered in-house and on-the-job by the relevant line managers. It is modular based and requires employees at all levels to complete a range of mandatory and additional modules, based on their individual role. It is paper based and there is a significant cost to the business. This is considered worthwhile as it is committed to developing all employees through both legal (compliance) and customer service training.
Each year, Enterprise recruits an average of 1,000 staff into its graduate recruitment programme in the UK and Ireland. To achieve its aims and objectives, Enterprise needs staff who are motivated and who possess initiative and drive.
Promoting managers and offering career opportunities from within the company has a positive effect on Enterprise. Employees remain happy, will stay longer and give their best when they see such personal development. However, with growth and diversification there is always a need for external recruitment to provide new skills or increase the business capacity for expansion, which means additional training and development is required
New recruits can enter the business and be trained in different ways.
• An ‘internship’ scheme is available for first and second year university students. This gives students an opportunity to work with Enterprise. Students gain valuable experience and there is the possibility of becoming a full-time employee after graduation. Interns participate in an initial classroom-based training session. After this, they work in a branch office where they begin on-the-job training.
• Interns take on the same responsibilities as management trainees and learn about sales, marketing, customer service, business management and administration support.
• The Enterprise Graduate Management Trainee programme offers graduates a fast-track career path with opportunities for self-development and quick progression.
• Within as little as 8-12 months, they can move up to a Management Assistant then on to Assistant Manager. The role includes providing a great customer experience, marketing the business and selling the service, as well as dealing with business partners such as insurance companies, dealerships and auto body shops.
In addition to supporting employee, management and graduate training and development, the HRD team also deliver organisational development interventions such as those to support diversity at Enterprise, as outlined in the company website statements below:
Diversity is a central goal in all areas of our business, and our commitment extends to every employee, customer and business partner. We strive to celebrate the many differences that make us unique as they help make our business a successful one. It’s our aim to create a culturally aware workforce and a culturally competent organisation that mirrors the makeup of the communities we serve. Or as Andy Taylor, our chairman and chief executive officer puts it:
Enterprise is fully committed to providing every employee with an inclusive workplace that offers the respect, training and opportunities to succeed. That’s simply who we are as a company, who we are as individuals and how we will continue to build our success in the 21st century.
We also want to ensure we’re able to support local businesses and larger companies owned and operated by a diverse range of people. For these reasons, we’ve forged relationships with key organisations that help us continue to develop our approach to diversity.
Through relationships with organisations like Business in the Community, Opportunity Now, Race for Opportunity, Stonewall and Minority Supplier Development UK, we’re able to meet and share best practice with like-minded companies and individuals, all of whom recognise the importance being a diverse company plays in individual performance and business success.
Our UK and Ireland Diversity/Career and Family Focus Group helps us recruit, retain and develop our work force. We have 10 local teams throughout the UK and Ireland that complement the work of our national team by helping individuals, groups and business units achieve local diversity goals. These teams identify opportunities and recommend any improvements so that we can meet the needs of our employees and help them balance their career and personal commitments.
Diversity leadership training
We offer diversity orientation training for all our employees as well as diversity leadership training for managers. It’s designed to help create better leaders and managers. Many of us volunteer to act as mentors to students and new managers in our organization.
Supplier diversity programme
We work hard to make sure that our supplier base reflects the diversity of our community as a whole, especially by working to identify opportunities for minority-owned and female-owned companies to do business with Enterprise. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is a founding and charter member of Minority Supplier Development UK, which is a private sector led organisation.
References.
Enterprise Rent a Car. (2016.) About us – Jobs at Enterprise. [online] Available at https://www.enterprisealive.co.uk/about-us/ [accessed 2nd February 2018]
END OF CASE STUDY
2.1. Questions
Using the Enterprise Rent-a car Case Study:
1) Analyse the current role of HRD and HRD practice at Enterprise, benchmarking practices at Enterprise with the wider world of HRD in business. THEN evaluate the impact this has on employee and organisational development (20 marks)
2) Analyse three key HRD practices, with consideration for what the HRD team would need include when planning their HRD strategy. (30 marks)
3) Identify and explain two ethical issues that a HRD function might need to consider when operating in an organisation such as Enterprise. (20 marks)
4) Apply the principles of HRD and make two recommendations, based on the findings in Q1-
Q3, to ensure the HRD function is able to resolve potential business problems. (20 marks)
PLUS Use of relevant structure, introduction, contents tables and Harvard referencing (10 marks)
2.2. Assessment Submission Structure
• BPP cover sheet, fully completed.
• Title Page.
• Table of Contents.
• Introduction (brief)
• Q1. Evaluate HRD in context
• Q2. Analyse three key HRD practices
• Q3. Explain two ethical issues
• Q4. Two HRD focused recommendations
• Conclusion (brief)
• References
• Appendices (if required and necessary)
