HRMN $4830$

Final Exam Case Study

April $9,2024$

ASAP Shipping Case

Amna and Sami Atwal are two entrepreneurs who have created a parcel delivery company in Kamloops $($ASAP Shipping$).$ They assist foreign companies who deal in difficult$-$to$-$ship or unique goods that are hard for large package delivery firms like UPS and FedEx to handle. ASAP receives goods at their Vancouver distribution centre and arranges services such as transport, returns, and customer support for Canadian customers.

ASAP Shipping has grown from $2$ to $60$ employees in just three years. Their workforce has three main groups. The first consists of a call centre in Kamloops that deals with customer issues $($delivery issues, package returns, etc.$)$ and with representatives of the foreign companies they ship on behalf of$.$ The second group are warehouse and package transport staff at the Vancouver distribution centre who deal with shipments as they arrive, receiving deliveries, logging them into inventory, and arranging deliveries with shipping and courier companies. The third is the small group of professionals in the Kamloops office who handle accounting $($including payroll and HR policies$),$ marketing and customer relationships. There is a small management team, consisting of the Distribution Centre manager, the Call Centre manager, and Sami and Amna who share the roles of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer.

For the most part, the work of their three employee groups is quite separate. Customer orders and issues are dealt with by the call centre staff and supervisors. For most routine orders, communication to the distribution centre occurs through an online tracking system. Customer Care Representative's $($CCR$\text{'}$s$)$ set up an account with purchase and tracking numbers, and the warehouse staff receive package instructions via the tracking system. When there are complex issues, Senior Shipping Techs and Senior CCR$\text{'}$s may communicate to resolve them, but otherwise there is little contact between the groups. The professional staff may also get involved if a situation is escalated due to high priority or complexity, but most significant problems get resolved by the management team.

Even though the work is quite separate, Sami and Amna look for all their employees to balance $3$ key priorities: Quick Responsiveness $($whether it be package delivery or customer calls$),$ High Quality and Integrity. Integrity, for Sami and Amna, means doing work in an ethical manner, a safe manner, and looking for every opportunity to deliver their services in an environmentally sustainable fashion. Sami and Amna try to ensure that they are an attractive employer by providing competitive salaries and benefits, by treating employees with respect, by selective hiring to ensure they have the right skills and the right attitudes, and by providing a safe workplace. Their quick growth has caused them some issues in trying to be consistent and in having to stop being involved in everything, but they recognize these issues and work hard to be good leaders.

Their growth has meant they have been working hard on their Human Resource programs too. Their first area of focus was on ensuring they are paying their staff properly. When they were a small startup, they paid whatever they had to for staff, and there was little in the way of

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