Introduction
The Jacob’s Bakery Limited is a biscuits manufacturer based in Aintree, Liverpool. They make products such as crackers, savoury and chocolate biscuits and have been established since 1911. Due to volume sold at Christmas, the nature of the business is very seasonal.
The Jacobs Bakery Ltd’s business strategy is to increase its competitiveness through the use of temporary staff to allow increased flexibility in a seasonal market.
Due to the seasonality of the business and the decrease in the food manufacturing sector in Britain, there has been a dramatic shift from full time employees to seasonal temporary employees.
“Around 750,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1997, highlighting the ‘dramatic’ decline in the industry.” (www.manchesteronline.co.uk, 2007)
Situational Factors
Workforce characteristics
The manufacturing workforce within Jacobs is an aging one, that has had no full time recruitment for 12 years. Within the next five years Jacobs will loose through retirement 20% of its full time work force. This gives the organisation a good opportunity to reduce the core staff and replace with temporary employees. The current staff level within Jacobs is 400 employees, this increases to 1,000 in its peak times and these extra 600 are made up solely of temporary employees.
The level of education of the temporary workforce is generally one of two things, they are either younger students looking for a temporary job whilst they work their way through college. This type of employee can be highly motivated, however sometimes unreliable due to their commitments to education, and can often leave without any notice.
Jacobs absence policy ensures that any employee with persistent absence problems is ...