TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.............................................................................................................2
1.0 Origin of Cadbury’s Human Resource Strategy............................................2
2.0 Cadbury’s Commitment to Human Resources...............................................3
3.0 Three Dimensions of Cadbury’s Human Resource Management.................3
3.1 Staff’s Commitment...................................................................................................................3
3.2 Flexibility...................................................................................................................................4
3.3 Quality Enhancement.................................................................................................................4
4.0 How Cadbury Tackled Change Management?...............................................4
4.1 Decentralization....................................................................................................................4
4.2 Unity in Diversity.................................................................................................................5
4.3 Changes in Strategies............................................................................................................5
5.0 Evaluation of Cadbury’s Approach.................................................................5
5.1 Managing People for Value........................................................................................................6
5.2 Working Better Together............................................................................................................6
5.3 Growing our People...................................................................................................................6
5.4 Passion for people......................................................................................................................6
6.0 Resource-Based Model v/s Best-Fit Model......................................................7
7.0 Impact of Strategic Human Resources Management on Cadbury...............8
Conclusion................................................................................................................9
References..............................................................................................................10
Introduction

Cadbury is one of the biggest confectioneries that operates in a competitive market. The brand
has been able to connect with customers and increase customer satisfaction over years. Through
effective management and high-quality products, the company has been able to achieve massive
success and customer loyalty. Cadbury Schweppes acknowledges that whatever it has achieved
till date is only because of its workforce. It owes its success to its people as without them the
company would not have reached heights. What has helped Cadbury so far to stay ahead of its
competitors, is the strategic human resource management practices. To be able to progress
further, the company aims at improving its human resource towards global success. Human
resources are considered to be the most vital tool that helps a company to survive any pressure
and helps it become more innovative. Hence, this study analyzes how Cadbury manages its
human resources and the different strategies.

1.0 Origin of Cadbury’s Human Resource Strategy

The human resource strategy, a means to business success and profit maximization, originated
with Cadbury’s intention of creating a collaborative working environment. The company aims at
managing its essential assets, that is its employees, by ensuring that their potentials are unlocked
and optimal use of it is made. As such, both the company and its people reap the benefits, in the
sense that when the employee’s performance is improved, the company make the most from
increased productivity while simultaneously, this gives the employees an opportunity to grow.

Additionally, Cadbury also advocates for ethical behavior as the company believes this is what
allows the business to function. It holds the view that good ethics are important for a business to
run well and helps to deal with people as well. Through the implementation of ethical business
culture, Cadbury guarantees a workplace where employees are valued, understood, respected,
and given equal opportunities. Hence, this is how Cadbury’s human resource strategies were
developed, resulting into long term success.

1|Page
2.0 Cadbury’s Commitment to Human Resources

Being a company with long term vision, Cadbury has a high commitment to its Human Resource
Strategies. This is clearly visible through its purpose which is profitmaking, and that’s why it
motivates its employees to keep their focus on goals and results. It makes it clear to its people
that they should constantly strive to develop their skills and provide high-quality products.
Hence, if employees have a good understanding of the business’ purpose, then on one can stop it
from achieving success.

Besides, Cadbury committed itself to human resource when it had acquired Adams in 2003
which induced a major reorganization in the company and turned it into a more decentralized
entity. Cadbury opted for a culture which makes it more results orientated.

The organization’s commitment can also be seen through the collective involvement of its staff.
Cadbury continuously encourages the participation of its people and emphasizes on getting more
from them so as to remain in the lead position in the competitive market.

3.0 Three Dimensions of Cadbury’s Human Resource Management

Cadbury introduces three dimensions of human resource management to guarantee better

organizational performance. The dimensions are essential factors that helps to maintain staff
loyalty, high level performance and adaptability. The three- dimensional strategic human
resources management are:

3.1 Staff’s Commitment

When an employee is committed to an organization, he becomes attached and involved in
the organizational activities. The employee dedicates himself to his job and shows
determination in everything he does which aligns with the objectives of the company. A
committed employee is more likely to work for the company for a longer period of time
and will contribute significantly to the vision of the organization.

2|Page
 3.2 Flexibility
Organizational flexibility is what allows employees to respond positively to changes and
allows the organization itself to adapt easily to new practices such as new structure
technology and so on. Flexibility allows the business to survive the competitive
environment and gain efficiency.

3.3 Quality Enhancement

Improving product quality remains one of the most essential things for Cadbury as a
means of increasing their sales and enhancing customer satisfaction. Without good
quality products, a business will never be able to attract its consumers nor will it ever
contribute to business growth. Therefore, Cadbury makes use of high-quality ingredients
for a more enriching taste and for pursuing excellency.

4.0 How Cadbury Tackled Change Management?

With increasing changes and pressures in the organization, Cadbury had to adopt the strategic
human resource management to be able to stay ahead of its competitor’s, as well as to be able to
present something innovative to its consumers. The company had to face several challenges,
considering which they decided to create a different culture within the organization. Below are
the following policies that Cadbury came up with to survive the competitive market.

4.1 Decentralization
As Cadbury expanded globally, it was not easy for the company to operate under a
centralized system as it tends to create communication gap which then leads to slow
down of work and low efficiency. Therefore, with decentralization, Cadbury was able
to increase its pace in terms of productivity, decision-making and internal processes.
Indeed, the decentralized organizational structure has been a great means of
motivation to the employees of Cadbury. It has helped create a sense of
belongingness, team spirit, and independence in the organization, leaving the
employees with job satisfaction.

3|Page
 The decision-making process, also has become more efficient, allowing the managers
to take quick actions in case of emergency. The process is not longer delayed by
waiting for approval of higher-level management.

Besides, Cadbury eliminates the communication gap between superiors and

subordinates with the decentralization, making the system effective with proper flow
of communication within the organization.

4.2 Unity in Diversity

Despite the cultural differences, Cadbury has successfully promoted diversity
throughout the globe by having its printings in different languages and making sure it
is reachable to people of different cultural backgrounds. Also, through its recruitment
and selection process, the company has supported the varied cultures that exist in an
organization. The company has adopted a new culture where diverse staff are
recruited, irrespective of their background, culture, gender, and race and where its
people work as a team. As such, Cadbury succeeds in enriching its workforce and
maximizing its productivity.

4.3 Changes in Strategies

Cadbury brought about a change in its marketing strategy by introducing strategies like
direct marketing, sales promotion and public relations. It set up captivating prices for the
chocolates which are quite affordable. With these techniques, Cadbury aimed at making
sure it stands out from the competition and boosts its sales.

5.0 Evaluation of Cadbury’s Approach

Over the years, Cadbury has implemented several techniques and processes which has made it
stand ahead of its competitors and also has contributed much to its success. The company has
been able to come up with four different policies, as mentioned above, which aligns with its
competitive strategies namely:

4|Page
5.1 Managing People for Value
Through this strategy Cadbury has aimed to make its employees understand the goals and
objectives of the organization so that they can contribute towards achieving them. In
short, it aims to make its employees more result oriented focused. It also lays great
emphasis Andrew Gibson’s practices which are the 3As, consisting of accountable,
adaptable and aggressive. As such, this strategy aims at high-level performance and better
output, and this is only possible when the objectives are clearly defined to the employees.

5.2 Working Better Together

This is another approach designed by Andrew Gibson which draws attention to real
teamwork. It is only when employees share common purpose that they come together to
achieve that. This approach has many benefits as there is sharing of workload, increased
productivity, and also there is the involvement of everyone. The company has always
encouraged teamwork to meet its target of ‘creating brands that people love.’ “Cadbury’s
vision is to work together with all the employees and develop unique brands under the
main company’s flagship that everyone will love to the core.” (Mission Statement
Academy, n.d.)

5.3 Growing our People

This program was initiated with a view to developing the skills of the employees and
making them realize where their inner strength lies. This strategy is a small training
program for managers to teach them how to identify and manage potential talent and
ensure equal participation of every resource. (Adnan, 2018) Therefore, by unlocking the
potentials of its people, Cadbury aims at making the most of it by maximizing its
productivity.

5.4 Passion for people

Cadbury developed Passion for People “to teach the standard approach used for
managing people, it is also the goal of this program to refresh such management
approach among current employees, as well as improving the drive performance skills of
the managers.” (STUDYDRIVER, 2017) The program was also introduced as a means to

5|Page
 combat dissatisfaction of employees in the workplace. Hence, this structured program
aims at creating the right environment for its employees where they get full support,
training, their input is appreciated, and also rewarded for their high performance.

6.0 Resource-Based Model v/s Best-Fit Model

The resource-based model believes in the fact that the success of an organization lies within the
organization itself, and the key to it, are the internal resources of the firm which helps to achieve
competitive advantages. According to this approach, “it is much more feasible to exploit external
opportunities using existing resources in a new way rather than trying to acquire new skills for
each different opportunity.” (Jurevicius, 2021)

Cadbury has been able to leverage its competitive advantage in terms of its tangible and
intangible organizational resources. The tangible resources of the firm include those that can be
of use in the long run for example, land, equipment, material, supplies and infrastructure. While
the intangible resources consist of, brand reputation, goodwill, franchise agreements which have
no physical value.

As per Cadbury’s human resource, we can find that the resource-based model was implemented
as per its abilities and used it through the following steps:
 Identifying employees’ potentials and encouraging them to perform better.
 Conducting staff training for enhancement of skills.
 Share investment
 Acquisition of Adams and Trebor Bassett

However, after the acquisition, the company could no longer stick to the previous model, and had
to turn to a new approach called, Best-Fit. The best-fit model emphasizes on the fact that the
human resource strategies should align with that of the organization for a proper functioning of
the business operations, and also to support the organizational objectives. Below are the
following means how this model got integrated with Cadbury’s human resource management.
 Recruitment and Selection
6|Page
  Training and Development
 Teamwork
 Performance Appraisal

Therefore, it can be agreed that with the best-fit model, Cadbury has successfully managed its
workforce consisting of more than 50,000 employees globally. Indeed, “by adopting the best fit
model along to the initial resource-based approach, Cadbury has executed unique and effective
changes that had affected employee’s performance in every situation that had arisen.”
(UKESSAYS.COM, 2015) As such, the adoption of this approach has proved to be quite
beneficial for the company as it has created stability in the business operations and helped in
remaining consistent with changes in the global market.

7.0 Impact of Strategic Human Resources Management on Cadbury

With all the restructuration and different strategies, it is certain that Cadbury has been able to
addressed all the management issues that existed within the organization. The implementation of
several approaches has proved to be quite useful in the sense that it has played huge part in
creating value for the company. Through its training programs, Cadbury has been able to remove
the skill gap among its employees, ensuring that everyone gets equal treatment and opportunities.
Also, the strategic human resources management has left the staff highly motivated as there is
now the practice of appreciation. That is, employees are rewarded for their good performance
through monetary or non-monetary value and hence, encouraging employees to keep giving their
best while the company benefits from continuous growth. Besides, the execution of teamwork
turned out to be a conducive strategy as this has led to increased productivity which also means
increase in sales. Teamwork has always been a great way of increasing workflow speed and
uniting people since everyone in a team shares common goal. Last, but not the least, the
recruitment and selection process of Cadbury became less time consuming with the use of
technology. The hiring process was quicker, and therefore the company could invest their time in
other job-related exercises.

7|Page
Conclusion

In a nutshell, we can say that Cadbury Schweppes is highly committed to its human resource as it
makes sure that its employees receive job satisfaction by catering for their needs, and at the same
time ensured that business objectives are being met. The company has proven to be effective by
running different programs to cope with changes and has instilled the same quality in its
employees, to always fight adversities, and due to its resilience, today Cadbury stands among the
world’s top companies. Indeed, the organization’s decision of opting a new culture has brought
about more efficiency in its operations and has turned it into result orientated. However, the
human resource is an ever-changing process and the organizational culture will always be
influenced by some unforeseen changes. The company will then have to embrace the changes by
coming up with new trends and techniques to survive those challenges, and also to prove itself as
a strong competitor.

8|Page
References
(n.d.). Retrieved from Mission Statement Academy: https://mission-statement.com/cadbury/

(2015, Jan). Retrieved from UKESSAYS.COM:

https://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/the-hr-model-of-cadbury-schweppes-
management-essay.php

(2017, Jun). Retrieved from STUDYDRIVER: https://studydriver.com/the-role-of-strategic-

human-resource-management-to-cadbury-schweppe/

Adnan. (2018, February ). Retrieved from EssaysClub:

https://en.essays.club/Business/Taxation/Cadbury-Case-Study-6045.html

Jurevicius, O. (2021, November). Retrieved from Strategic Management Insight:

https://strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/resource-based-view/

9|Page