The situation in Sonoco, a consumer packaging company reflected inept Essay

The situation in Sonoco, a consumer packaging company reflected inept human resource management activities - Essay Example This essay explores the situation in Sonoco, a consumer packaging company reflected inept human resource management activities. The ineptness of the human resource management activities owes to its mismatching with the operational activities of the company. Sonoco as a consumer packaging company was found to gain a high amount of growth rate both in terms of market and financial value. The situation of the company turned grave after the period of 1990s when national crisis like decline in export volume or financial crisis in the Asian market made its sales to decline by around 6 percent during the period 1995 to 1999. This decline in sales volume from $2.7 to $2.5 billion resulted in the company revising its operational structure to reduce the amount of expenditure. Thus the operational strategy devised by the company management was required to focus upon generation of increased sales volume while effectively managing the cost structure of the concern to evade undue rise of expenditu re. Sonoco in the previous periods acquired huge amount of growth by acting on strategies like acquisitions where it is recorded that in the period pertaining to 1990s around 60 companies were acquired on a global basis. Large consumer product companies like Nestle, Gillette, Kraft and Procter and Gamble belonged to the consumer profile of Sonoco. The company also worked in the development and rendering of growth opportunities of the employees of the company. This helped in the development of team work in the company.... This concealment of the underperformers in the company is considered to be one of the important factors that triggered the decline of business for the company after the 1990 period. Diagnosis of the Problems The problem being identified in the above segment this part calls for a steady diagnosis of the same. The diagnosis or analysis of the problems can be made based on the analysis based by Cindy Hartley, the newly appointed Vice President of Human Resources operations. It was noted by Cindy that the existing human resources management practices of the company were set on a very decentralised and traditional note. This decentralisation of human resources functioning in the company failed to effectively address the needs of the concern pertaining to the different departments. Further the role played by the human resources managers pertaining to different departments were found to operate based on a tactical note and thus failed to render any type of strategic decisions. These human r esources managers cooperated largely with the general managers pertaining to the different divisions by means of direct reporting activities. However in that responding to the calls of the corporate manager pertaining to the human resources department the same is reflected to be conducted in an indirect fashion. Human resources functioning in the company were considered as back end process with no such relation to the operational activities. Thereby no such planning was made to enhance the potential of the human resources working in the concern. Again in regards to the corporate manager of human resources in the concern it was found that the manager