The Office

Furniture
Organization Change & Development

21BHRM10H

Ramy Amr Abdelsabour 179082

Mahmoud Ahmed Abdelmoneim 181723

Hana Atif Mohamed 179054

 Ahmad Alhadary 182060

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 Assessment title: The Office Furniture

Due date: 5th December 2021 Number of pages: Word count (if appropriate):

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The British University in Egypt
Faculty of Business Administration, Economics and
Political Science

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We confirm that the work submitted under this title is our own work and that we contributed to the project as indicated
below.

Name/ID of Contributor Description of contribution (in words)

1. Ramy Amr Abdelsabour 179082 Task 3

2. Hana Atif Mohamed Sherif Fouda 179054 Task 1

3. Mahmoud Ahmed Abdelmoneim 181723 Task 4

4. Ahmad Al Hadary 182060 Task 2

*kindly note that formatting, numbering and/or referencing are not considered individual work.
The weight of the group work is 40% while the weight of the individual
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1 ………………………………………………………………………… Date
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 Organisation Change & Development Marking Criteria-21BHRM10H
The Total project grade per student will be divided into:
40% for the group work, 60% for the individual work.
Company Name:
1st 2nd
Weight
CW Marking Criteria Marke Marker
(100%)
r
Group Contribution (40%): Introduction, Conclusion, references & 40%
formatting, project coherence, additional shared comments and
collective recommendations.

Individual Contribution (60%):

Each member of the group must complete One Task separately
without overlap with other tasks.
60%
1. Description of the selected company and its organisational chart.

2. Exploration of the challenging roles and matching skills/competencies 60%

of its OD practitioners’ / change agent teams to meet the challenges they

faced amid COVID-19 crisis. With real examples and illustrations.
60%

3. Analysis of the type of intervention(s) that were undertaken amid this

crisis to adjust business continuity plans and implement synergy between

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 people, process and technology.

60%
4. Recommendations of future scenarios for post COVID-19 recovery
pertaining to people, processes and technology. In addition, discuss future
plans aiming towards the institutionalising of the changes and the
development sustainability.

Group No. Student ID 1st 2nd Agree

Name Marker Marker d Mark
Grade Grade
(out of (out
100) of
100)
1 Ramy Amr 17908
1 Abdelsabour 2

Hana Atif Mohamed Sherif Fouda 17905

4

Mahmoud 18172
Ahmed 3
Abdelmonei
m
Ahmad Al 18206
Hadary 0

Comments:

7|Page
1st Marker’s Signature: 2nd Marker’s Signature:

Table Of Content

Introduction________________________________________________9

Description of the company and its organizational chart__________10

Exploration of the challenging roles and matching

skills/competencies of its OD

practitioners_______________________________________14

Analysis of the types of interventions__________________________18

Recommendations of future scenarios for post COVID-19 recovery_21

Conclusion________________________________________________25

Interview Information Evidence_______________________________26

Reference_________________________________________________27

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Introduction

This paper discusses how The Office Furniture coped up with the difficulties that came

up with the pandemic and how they overcame it with the help of a few key points, which

include: downsizing, working from home, and the use of CNC interface to help with the

production of their products. Moreover, it mentions how the teams in the company dealt

with many challenges that required immediate change in how they operate. And how

they managed to salvage the situation by applying the interventions. Lastly, it mentions

recommendation on how the business could recover from future Covid-19 scenarios.

This paper was made possible by the help of our interviewer Dr Tarek Seif, CEO of the

company

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Description of the company and its organizational chart

The Office Furniture is an Egyptian based furniture company that produces and sells

furniture like office desks, sofas, chairs, among other office goods. The company was

founded in 2012 after the decision of splitting the mother company “Adenoplex” into two

companies. Their mission is to be able to deliver high quality designed and functional

office furniture at an acceptable price. They are able to make this possible through

optimizing their value chain by being able to have a stable relationship with their

suppliers and investing in highly advanced machinery that helps in production. Their

vision is to provide other businesses with high quality and comfortable products with

after sale services. They operate at four different locations which are in Mohandseen,

Dokki, El Nozha and 6th of October. Moreover, they own two factories that process

wood used for making their products. These factories include machinery like CNC

machines which are used for cutting and moving materials such as wood. Some of the

major competitors that The Office Furniture need to compete against are Wood & Plexi,

Future Office and Riadco

SWOT Analysis

STRENGTH

 As the company spent many years in the furniture industry, they have higher

level of expertise when it comes to production and company management

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  They have the upper hand when it comes to competition as they have unique

machinery like the CNC machines which help in optimizing the product effectively

and efficiently.

 Thanks to the professionalism of the company, they were able to secure 60

percent of loyal customers which includes the well-known chain of hypermarkets

known as Carrefour. They have been serving Carrefour for about 10 years and

still going.

 Not only were they able to secure 60 percent customer loyalty but also, they

managed to achieve inhouse loyalty that led to very little number of employee

turnover.

 Their quality control and assurance standards are very high making their

customers feel safe about repeatedly purchasing their products. Moreover, their

after-sale services are unique in their competitive market.

 As said by [ CITATION DrT21 \l 1033 ] they have hired great problem solvers in

their team to help deal with complex challenges.

 The pricing strategy used by the company is the market orientated pricing by

which might make the prices cheaper from the citizens to buy locally than from

other companies abroad.

OPPORTUNITY

 [ CITATION DrT21 \l 1033 ]mentioned that there were no reports to prove their

ranking in the market, but he believes that they are considered from the top 10

furniture companies in Egypt.

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  The Office Company has a department specifically for tender projects. Tender

projects include two types Open tender and Selective tender. In the Open tender

the government allows anyone to offer a tender to supply their goods and

services at a specific price. However, in the Selective tender the suppliers are

allowed to submit their offers if they get a special invitation. [ CITATION 4Ty19 \l

1033 ]

 They know they have an advantage between other competitors as they are

called for Selective tender very frequently.

 The market share is calculated through the tender projects they up take with

other big companies in Egypt.

WEAKNESSES

 Since the company does not extract their own raw materials, they are not in

control of the raw materials’ prices, and they can vary from time to time.

 Another major weakness in the company is the workforce. It is hard to find a well-

trained workforce to hire, instead the company provides them with training which

can be quite costly. Unfortunately, some of the employees tend to take the

training experience and leave the company which can result in a loss.

 To avoid any employee turnovers, they provide loyalty programs that include

paying employees even though they do not go to work daily due to COVID-19.

However, [ CITATION DrT21 \l 1033 ] mentioned that the Egyptian workforce has

very high expectations compared to what the company can offer. That can be

considered a major expense for the company leading us to the next point.

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  There is barely any financing provided by banks during the COVID-19 pandemic

to support the company. The banks refuse to provide any loans unless the

company make certain number of profits, but that may be difficult to achieve due

to their expenses.

THREATS

 A common threat that most of the companies share is the sudden changes that

happen in the world that require change in the company to happen. A live

example is the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 The ability to immediately adapt to change is proven to be difficult. An example

provided by [ CITATION DrT21 \l 1033 ] was, to be able to compete with their

competitors they needed to always keep an eye out for modern technology that

will help them make their production bettor or even unique. Acquiring this

machinery can be complex as they need financing on their own and can be hard

to find sellers.

 Due to COVID-19 there is a delay in the decision-making process in Egypt. This

led to customers canceling their orders as no exact time or expectations were

provided by the country.

 Moreover, due to the restrictions that occurred like the lockdown. People were

forced into looking for jobs that require working from home. It is difficult to

implement this in a furniture production company.

The Pace of Technological Change due to the Pandemic

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The Office Furniture made sure to make some changes in their work environment due

to the governmental rules that were set. The company were able to make their

employees control their machinery through the CNC interface remotely. Moreover, they

needed to update their office technology. For example, [ CITATION DrT21 \l 1033 ]

mentioned that they stopped using the finger scanner for employees to clock in, instead

they started using facial recognition technology and access cards to allow contactless

experience. Furthermore, they decided to switch part of their teams like their customer

support and marketing team to work remotely, because of that they were forced to

conduct their work meetings online instead of in person. Lastly, for the teams that

needed to be on site, the company stuck to the regulations by implementing social

distancing protocol.

The Organizational Chart

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 CEO
Dr. Tarek Seif

Vice-President of
the Council Deputy Quality Control Manager Financial Manager
Prime (abd el meseeh) Hesham Oraby
(Hissham Aly)

Factory manager Managing Director Sales Manager Account Manager

(mansour el said) (Mostafa) (Ahmed Bakry) (ashraf abas)

Metal department
Dokki Branch manager cost accounting
manager
(maha el said) (Ashraf Ezzat)
(sameh)

Joseph tito Branch

carpentry manager daily accounts
manager
(mohammed) (Mrs.Enas)
(Aly)

Upholstery department Mohandseen Branch

Customer accounts
manager manager
(kareem)
(ashraf sobhy) (kareem)

Injection department
October Branch Manager
manager
(kareem)
(nasser)

Exploration of the challenging roles and matching

skills/competencies of its OD practitioners

To work on the analysis of the difficult duties and skills/competencies required of its OD

practitioners or change agent teams to meet the obstacles they faced during the

COVID-19 crisis, there are some points you must recognize. Firstly, the key job or key

roles starting with the motivating change. The Office Furniture CEO Dr. Tarek Seif said

that over the last few decades, numerous researches have been done to investigate

employee motivation[ CITATION Tarek2021 \l 1033 ]. To examine the data, 277

questionnaires were issued out of 200 complete surveys received. The findings show

that there is a substantial positive correlation between variables and that it has a

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favorable impact on employee engagement. The CEO gave HR directors and managers

helpful feedback on how to turn employee motivation into commitment. During the

Covid-19 crisis it was normal getting into a depressive mood, so The Office Furniture

used motivation to overcome this depressive mood of their employees[ CITATION

Tarek2021 \l 1033 ]. The question here is how they motivated their employees. The

CEO mentioned that the furniture used a process for sterilization to make their

employees safe as possible of Covid-19, and if any employee got Covid-19 they

covered all the costs of his/her treatment. Dr Tarek also mentioned that they increased

the salaries of their employees and stopped hiring employees to make the current

employees feel safe. They began by processing huge batches of things at a maximum

rate based on expected demand, then sending them to the next downstream process or

into storage, regardless of the actual pace of work in the following phase. The smooth

flow of work from one process to the next, which is the hallmark of lean production, is

almost hard to achieve with such a system. All this was a replacement for the pull

production which is a form of production control in which downstream activities alert

upstream activities to their requirements. Pull production is one of the three key

components of a full just-in-time manufacturing system, and it aims to eliminate

overproduction[ CITATION Tarek2021 \l 1033 ]. In pull production, a downstream

operation, whether within the same facility or not, informs the upstream operation,

usually via a kanban card, about what part or material is required, the quantity required,

and when and where it is required. The upstream supplier process produces nothing

until the downstream customer process indicates a demand. Secondly, the change in

management, almost 90% of the employees/workers resisted any change in their

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position, and they also enforced some regulations such as the obligation of having a

mask on, in addition to the sanitizers distributed by the furniture. Regarding the creation

of a new vision The Office Furniture created a new department called “crisis

management”, which made the engineers design sterilizable materials which made a

boom in their profits. Dr. Tarek added a comment on the political support they had

during the crisis that when it comes to gaining political benefit, executives must decide

whether to promote their own companies' interests or to support industry-wide

initiatives. Because political activism is costly, only large firms can consider pursuing a

corporate goal[ CITATION Tarek2021 \l 1033 ]. The core skills/competencies needed in

organizational development may include organizational skills, people skills, direction-

setting skills, and process skills, so starting with the organizational skills The Office

Furniture use three things. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) which have

progressed dramatically in just a few years. They've evolved from three-letter monsters

into ready-to-use software for organizations of all shapes and sizes, since they've

become far easier to learn, deploy, and pay for. A customer relationship management

system (CRM) centralizes all customer contacts across all channels. Businesses may

improve customer experience, satisfaction, retention, and service by managing

centralized data. CRM enables companies of all sizes to increase revenue and profits.

Yes, they're still mostly for sales, marketing, and customer service departments.

However, they now do a bewildering array of additional things, including as assisting

users in managing relationships among team members, vendors, partners, and

collaborators. Number two was the ERP, and ERP stands for enterprise resource

planning, and it is a sort of software that businesses use to handle day-to-day

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operations like accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and

compliance, and supply chain operations. Enterprise performance management

software, which helps plan, budget, predict, and report on an organization's financial

results, is included in a complete ERP suite. The third system was KPI, and a

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable statistic that shows how well a firm is

accomplishing key business goals[ CITATION Tarek2021 \l 1033 ]. Organizations use

KPIs at many levels to assess their progress toward their goals. Low-level KPIs may

focus on procedures in departments such as sales, marketing, HR, support, and others,

whereas high-level KPIs may focus on the overall success of the business. The Office

Furniture knew how to use a system with people skills that includes the capacity to

create processes that promote trust and higher productivity. That process was all

through the employees for example when there is a sale, they send to the production

team. The capacity to analyze a company's approach to leadership and overall vision,

according to the direction setting skills was the vision. Their vision is to make every day

better for all businesses with our innovative furniture, and their primary goal is to deliver

qualified and comfortable products at affordable costs, as well as dependable after-

sales support.  The Office Furniture is a decentralization company, and decentralization

refers to a company structure in which decisions are made at different levels of the

organization. Decentralized enterprises are typically broken into smaller parts or groups

to make it easier to monitor the company's and individuals' performance within each of

the sub-groups. Finally, Dr. Tarek stated several recommendations they had, such as

the fundamental challenges, which producers in the solid wood sector face when

making the transition to automation. CNC machines aren't the only way to solve this

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issue[ CITATION Tarek2021 \l 1033 ]. Similar issues emerge in all automation projects,

independent of the product or equipment portfolio. CNC machining has become a

necessity across the board. However, in solid wood machining, the issue of clamping

device diversity, as well as material handling issues before, after, and during the

machining process, arises. In intralogistics, stack building and stack handling, as well as

component tracking and quality control in manufacturing, are all fascinating

topics[ CITATION Tarek2021 \l 1033 ].

Analysis of the types of interventions

Intervention is defined “as a set of sequenced and planned actions or events

intended to help the organization increase its effectiveness. Interventions purposely

disrupt the status quo”.

[CITATION Sei21 \l 1033 ] stated that the Covid-19 pandemic has called into

question the way businesses operate [ CITATION Sei21 \l 1033 ]. Although the Crisis

management team should be able to predict a crisis before it occurs, no one could have

predicted this worldwide pandemic nor have prevented the negative impacts that

affected, not only the firm but the entire world. It is safe to say that despite how much

they invested in crisis management department in terms of resources and experience,

this reality, that is likely to happen once in a lifetime, is not something that you can be

prepared for. In fact, there is only place for learning from it and adjusting as you go.

One of the first steps Dr. Tarek took in response of the pandemic was to

schedule a meeting every Sunday morning with the crisis management team, consisted

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of the top management level only, instead of every couple of months. This new way of

operating allowed the team to keep track of the situation, therefore making it possible to

react more quickly to scenarios that arise.

To assure safety at work Dr. Tarek had to oblige the employees to wear masks

at all times during working hours. The collaboration of the team was needed and

despite this upsetting and difficult situation, those who did not comply with the

pandemic-specific rules and procedures got warnings and some got penalties. In

addition to the safety measures taken, he bought a sterilizing device to sterilize all the

workstations. At the full expense of the company, all employees were given sanitizers

and masks. To assure a safe social distancing between employees and customers,

some behaviours that seemed harmless before had to be changed, for instance,

handshakes weren’t allowed anymore. The company also provided the office with

disposable cups and spoons.

One of the key strengths of the office furniture are loyal employees. To keep the

employees as much satisfied as possible despite the impact of the situation, Dr. Tarek

called for a large group intervention in which the employees were given two choices. He

asked them if they would rather have their full salary, which consists of no one getting

fired, however, their salary would remain the same for the current year. Or, they have

the possibility to see their salary increase in the current year, but that would result of

reducing the staff. After considering the choices, the employees agreed on keeping their

full salary failing to see a salary increase. Dr. Tarek Seif explained how being a CEO of

a company may ask to make drastic decisions. Some of these decisions may results

from democratic actions, but autocratic ones as well. The health of the company lies in

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the hands of the CEO and although some decisions are not to everyone's liking, they

are made in favor of the employees.

Even if he does not have to increase the wages of his employees this year, the

company still suffers from a significant financial loss. One of the actions he took to

overcome this situation, Dr. Tarek decided to close the Dokki showroom that resulted in

a decrease of its rental costs. In the same direction, Dr. Tarek decided to stop hiring

new people to avoid, as much as possible, any other unnecessary expenses without

affecting the current employees.

Motivating the employees was significant and he would often encourage them by

saying “Yes we are in a crisis, but we can overcome it together”. Not only Dr. Tarek

gave the employees full medical days off for covid, but he also gave them full medical

insurance. Dr. Tarek also kept paying them full salaries and giving them the bonuses

that they deserved. Dr. Tarek also gave any old employee who had any chronic

diseases the option to go home and stop working with a full paid salary until its safer for

them to come back to work.

The office furniture was a decentralized (“The practice of delegating decision-

making authority to lower levels of management and, in some cases, to nonmanagers

authorized to make decisions, such as salespeople”) organization before the pandemic

hit however, during the pandemic, Dr. Tarek took the decision to make it more

centralized (“Centralized management is the organizational structure where a small

handful of individuals make most of the decisions in a company”) to take fast decisions

as there was no time to waste.

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 Dr. Tarek also knew that he needed to do something for his factories in order to

protect his workers, so he bought a machine called CNC (Computerized numeric

control) that uses a program to control the operation of machine tools such as lathes

and mills. Dr. Tarek Seif specifically asked the machine manufacturer to update it in

order to be used remotely and protect the health of his employees. CNC interface was

used by the employee who was working from home in machinery and designs. Dr.

Tarek Seif also decreased the working capacity by 50% to assure social distancing as

much as possible. He also replaced every meeting with online meeting using different

applications such as Zoom and Microsoft teams. Dr. Tarek Seif likewise focused on

Specific departments that can be operated from home and concluded that both

marketing and advertisement department should work from home. Dr. Tarek Seif knew

that the fingerprint scanner can negatively impact the organization sanitary. In

conclusion, since the pandemic negatively affected the organization sales drastically,

the office Egypt needed to think of other alternatives to generate profit, that’s why Dr.

Tarek Seif son’s (Seif Tarek Seif) suggested the idea of making a more compacted

desks that can be used in houses rather than the big office desks. This solution was

brought up to compensate for the offices being closed all over Egypt.

Recommendations of future scenarios for post COVID-19 recovery

Dr. Tarek was certain of the recovery of the company nonetheless, although it

might have had improved, we are not in a position to affirm that it has fully recovered.

As firm leaders seek to make sense of the post-COVID business world, many find

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themselves leading from this grey zone of indecision. Saying that two years ago, few

leaders saw crisis management, enterprise agility, cost management, workforce

resiliency, innovation, or cash-flow management as crucial to their organization.

Company management, on the other hand, tell a different story today. As he has seen

other compagnies grow and improve, Dr. Tarek anticipates greater success from

adjusting their own activities and improving their services to make them available and

optimal not only for the customers, but for the employees as well. Though there is

always a place for improvement, they have come so far by doing everything they could

to ensure the perpetuity of their company. By making those changes, it would also likely

expand the competitiveness and improve working conditions. In fact, the company was

able to provide more support for their employees as such as making it possible for them

to work from home without losing efficiency and improve health care program. They

also provided them with all the disinfection and safety equipment needed during covid.

Those benefits would, without a doubt, derive from a lot of changes of which

progressing towards a digital conversion of the company. One of the most improved

work they’ve done so far was to simply create a website that made sales online

possible. Although adapting and changing some of their activities was known to bring a

good outcome like avoiding contact needed for social distancing and having a lot more

clients purchasing online at the same time, they still suffered from the loss of a great

number of clients and partnership prospects. Unfortunately, due to closing workspaces

worldwide for a certain amount of time during covid, their supplies weren’t needed as

much anymore and many of contracts were cancelled. The company had to adjust to

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that new reality hitting everyone quite badly in terms of lower demand in some sectors

therefore impacting the financial status. [ CITATION DrT21 \l 1033 ]

To avoid those disruptions, I believe the organization should consider adopting

more pandemic-specific rules and procedures as well as capabilities for staff

communications, telecommuting, and personal/family leave. Furthermore, the

organization should have a better understanding of Customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV

identifies the most loyal consumers and assists in prioritizing service based on

customer value, hence enhancing customer loyalty, and increasing CLV. This

understanding is crucial for long-term recurring income enterprises during the post

covid-19. As a result, I believe Dr. Tarek will need to focus more on CLV and explore

building loyalty programmed to retain and target more high-value consumers to

maximize their marketing strategies. Moreover, in the light of being able to purchase

online and having the advantage of doing almost everything from home, I would

recommend putting in place a support team that would be reachable 24/7. Not only the

customers would have a better experience this would likewise create new jobs. Having

a better support team in place would correspondingly be beneficial in terms of

competitiveness.

According to the interview with Dr. Tarek, the firm has numerous ambitions for

the future. During the crisis, they chose low-level automation for their machinery

regardless of the social benefits that may outcome from retraining displaced workers for

other jobs, in almost all cases, the employee whose job has been taken on by a

machine goes through a period of psychological pain and will be a loss for the company

too as they may be loyal workers. Another downside of automated equipment is the

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large capital investment necessary to invest in automation; designing, fabricating, and

installing an automated system can cost millions of pounds. In addition, there is a higher

amount of maintenance required than with a manually controlled machine, as well as a

usually lesser degree of flexibility in terms of conceivable products as compared to a

manual system. In addition, he stated that the cost of labour in Egypt is reasonable and

suited for business. However, the company moved ahead and purchased some

machines that needed to be purchased because of the need of social distancing.

Though, Dr. Tarek intends to add more automation to the firm in the future, in addition

to the low-level automation, so that they can devote all their resources for developing

and creating new designs with a sustainable material. Therefore, instead of usual

employment losses, the firm chose to create new ones. Dr. Tarek truly believes that

establishing new positions will definitely help the firm in some manner as well as

improving the efficiency in some sectors of the company. In this direction, the company

have decided to take advantage of the progress of technology and employ digital

marketing and online sales teams. Furthermore, they began to outsource delivery

services which reduced their costs over time. In addition of also hiring web designers to

maintain their website, they have introduced an online payment option to make it easier

for their clients to pay without having to visit the office. Dr. Tarek tends to believe that

the loss of jobs will have a detrimental impact on output, thus, in the future, he intends

to only create employment that would add value to his company.[ CITATION DrT21 \l

1033 ]

Although this may seem very ambitious, I would recommend an increase scale of

trading. That being said, I believe that extending the delivery of their products outside

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the country should be considered. As The office is already known to have good

products, their reputation could reach a greater amount of potential new clients and

partnership prospects in order to compensate for the previous losses they have

experienced. As mentioned previously, the company outsourced the delivery service

which can be taken advantage of in order to make deliveries all around the world

possible.

Furthermore, the corporation has always favoured the implementation of a talent

strategy since the management feel that doing so, it will most likely push the

organization to a higher level over time. On another hand, since the corporation intends

to continue seeking for and sponsoring talent, the company’s management has even

now begun to fund several talented university students majoring in engineering and

interior design and any other fields that would be likely to serve the company’s good.

Dr. Tarek stated that the company is in continuous search for opportunities that would

assure their full recovery despite all the changes that has been brought so far.

[ CITATION DrT21 \l 1033 ]

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Covid-19 had serious impacts on businesses in general, and the office

furniture was not an exception, the crisis management team had a difficult challenge,

however due to Dr. Tarek Seif great leadership and due to his work ethics, he managed

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to overcome the pandemic and pull the company from survival to stability, by using the

different intervention techniques mentioned above.

Interview Information Evidence

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 References
4 Types of Tender and Tendering Processes. (2019, April 17). Retrieved from
https://www.opuskinetic.com/2019/04/4-types-of-tender-and-tendering-
processes/
Seif, D. T. (2021).
Seif, T. (2021). Dr. (A. Alhadary, Interviewer)

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