Table of Contents
Type: Case Study | Subject: HRM | Level: Masters | Word Count: ~3000 words
This model case study was produced by an Essays UK specialist as reference material for learning purposes only. For support in this field, see our HRM assignment support.
You have been asked to prepare an HRM case study for the board of a UK logistics company that recently completed a depot merger and automation programme resulting in redundancies. Staff turnover and reported morale among remaining employees have deteriorated sharply since the programme completed. Analyse the causes using appropriate change management and motivation theory, and recommend an HR response.
Fenwick Distribution Group is a fictional UK logistics and warehousing company used here to illustrate an HRM case study concerned with managing organisational change and employee morale. The company operates regional distribution depots serving retail and e-commerce clients across the UK, employing approximately 1,100 staff, the large majority in warehouse operative, driver and shift-supervisor roles. Eight months ago, Fenwick completed a restructuring programme that merged two adjacent regional depots into a single, larger site and introduced automated sortation equipment intended to increase throughput and reduce unit handling costs. The programme resulted in 85 redundancies, primarily among warehouse operatives whose roles were displaced by automation, alongside significant changes to shift patterns and reporting lines for remaining staff.
Since the restructure, voluntary staff turnover among remaining warehouse employees has risen from an historic average of around 18 per cent annually to over 30 per cent, and an internal staff survey recorded a marked decline in reported morale and trust in management compared with the previous year. Absence rates have also increased over the same period. The board has commissioned this case study to diagnose the causes of the deterioration and to recommend an HR response capable of stabilising the workforce before turnover and absence rise further.
The analysis applies Lewin’s (1947) three-step change model to examine how the restructuring process itself may have contributed to the current difficulties, before applying Herzberg’s (1959, 1968) two-factor theory of motivation to diagnose the specific drivers of low morale among remaining staff. As with the other cases in this series, Fenwick Distribution Group, and all figures and individuals referred to, are fictional constructs created for academic illustration and do not describe any real company.
The pressures facing Fenwick are consistent with a wider pattern reported across the UK logistics and warehousing sector, in which rising automation investment, driven by both cost pressure and labour availability, has frequently been accompanied by workforce anxiety and, in some documented cases, by turnover increases similar in scale to those reported here (Marchington et al., 2020). What distinguishes cases that recover workforce stability from those that do not, in the HRM literature, is typically not whether automation and restructuring occur, since in a competitive logistics market these are frequently unavoidable, but how the accompanying change process is managed for the employees who remain, which is the focus of the analysis that follows.
The merged depot began full operation four months before the internal survey referenced above. The automation investment replaced a significant proportion of manual sortation work with conveyor and scanning equipment, changing many warehouse operative roles from physical sortation to equipment monitoring and exception-handling, a shift in job content that was not accompanied by significant retraining or role redesign beyond basic equipment operation training. Remaining staff absorbed much of the redundant colleagues’ residual workload during a six-week transition period before the new equipment reached full capacity, during which overtime increased sharply across both former depots.
Management communication during the process was limited to two all-staff briefings, at the announcement of the merger and shortly before redundancies took effect, supplemented by formal HR consultation with directly affected employees as required by law. No structured communication or engagement process was maintained with remaining staff once redundancies were completed, and the internal survey indicates that many employees felt uncertain about whether further job losses might follow, despite management’s private view that no further redundancies were planned for the merged site. Line managers, several of whom were themselves newly appointed following the depot merger, report feeling similarly unprepared to manage the transition or to address staff concerns about job security and workload.
The internal survey, completed by 74 per cent of remaining warehouse staff, recorded free-text comments alongside its quantitative scores. Recurring themes in these comments included a perceived lack of clarity about the long-term future of the merged site, frustration at increased workload during the transition period without corresponding recognition, and a sense that communication from senior management had reduced rather than increased once the redundancy process itself was complete, at exactly the point staff report needing reassurance most. A smaller number of comments referred positively to the new equipment itself, suggesting that dissatisfaction is concentrated in the management of the change process and its aftermath rather than in opposition to automation as such, a distinction that is developed further in the analysis below.
Two complementary frameworks are applied: Lewin’s (1947) three-step model of change, to examine the restructuring process itself, and Herzberg’s (1959, 1968) two-factor theory of motivation, to diagnose the specific drivers of the morale decline reported among remaining staff.
Lewin’s (1947) model conceptualises planned change as a sequence of unfreezing, creating readiness for change and reducing the forces resisting it, moving, implementing the change itself, and refreezing, stabilising the new state so that it does not revert or leave the organisation in a prolonged transitional condition. Although the model has been criticised as an oversimplification of complex, continuous organisational environments (Cummings, Bridgman and Brown, 2016), it remains useful here precisely because it highlights what Fenwick’s process appears to have omitted. The unfreezing stage, in Lewin’s original conception, required genuine engagement with why change was necessary and reduction of the psychological forces resisting it; at Fenwick this stage was compressed into two formal briefings and statutory consultation with directly affected staff, with little structured effort to build readiness for change among the staff who would remain employed but whose roles and working environment were about to change substantially.
The moving stage, the implementation of the merger and automation itself, appears to have been managed reasonably effectively in purely operational terms, with the new site reaching full throughput within the planned timeframe. However, Lewin’s model and subsequent change literature (Bridges, 2009) emphasise that the psychological transition accompanying structural change, what Bridges terms the “neutral zone” between an old way of working and a new one, requires active management distinct from the technical implementation; at Fenwick this appears to have been left largely to individual line managers without additional support or guidance, several of whom were themselves new to their roles at the merged site.
Most significantly, the case shows little evidence of a refreezing stage at all. No structured communication or engagement process was maintained once redundancies were completed, leaving remaining staff without confirmation that the new organisational state was stable, a gap consistent with the survey finding that many employees remained uncertain whether further job losses were likely. Schein (2010) argues that this kind of unresolved uncertainty following organisational change is itself a significant source of anxiety, independent of the substantive changes involved, which may partly explain why reported morale continued to decline even after the operational transition was technically complete.
Herzberg’s (1959, 1968) two-factor theory distinguishes hygiene factors, whose absence causes dissatisfaction but whose presence does not itself motivate, for example job security, working conditions, supervision quality and company policy, from motivators, whose presence generates genuine satisfaction and engagement, for example achievement, recognition, responsibility and the work itself. Applied to Fenwick, the survey and turnover data are consistent with a deterioration across several hygiene factors: job security has been visibly undermined by the redundancy programme regardless of management’s private assurances, supervision quality has been affected by placing newly appointed, similarly under-supported line managers in front-line roles, and working conditions changed substantially with new equipment and shift patterns introduced with limited consultation.
At the same time, the automation programme may have reduced motivator-level satisfaction for some remaining staff by removing elements of skilled, autonomous sortation work and replacing them with more constrained equipment-monitoring tasks, a change in job content that, without deliberate redesign, risks reducing the sense of responsibility and achievement Herzberg identifies as central to genuine motivation, as opposed to merely preventing dissatisfaction. Robbins and Judge (2021) note that hygiene-factor deterioration of this kind tends to manifest first through withdrawal behaviours, absence and eventually voluntary turnover, precisely the pattern reported at Fenwick, rather than through overt complaint, since employees experiencing weak hygiene factors with no compensating motivators are, in Herzberg’s terms, more likely to disengage quietly or leave than to raise the issue formally through internal channels.
A further, complementary lens is offered by psychological contract theory, which describes the largely implicit set of mutual expectations and obligations that employees believe exist between themselves and their employer, distinct from the formal written contract of employment (Armstrong and Taylor, 2020). The survey findings summarised above, particularly the sense that increased workload during the transition period went unrecognised and that senior communication reduced once redundancies concluded, are consistent with a perceived breach of the psychological contract: remaining staff appear to have expected that loyalty and additional effort during a difficult period would be met with continued engagement and recognition from management, and the apparent withdrawal of communication once the immediate crisis passed may have been read as a failure to honour that implicit obligation, independent of any breach of the formal contract of employment. Ulrich (1997) argues that HR’s role in periods of organisational change is precisely to manage this relational dimension, alongside the transactional and legal requirements of a redundancy process, a role that appears to have been under-resourced at Fenwick relative to the scale of the restructuring undertaken. Read together, Lewin’s model, Herzberg’s theory and psychological contract theory point to a consistent diagnosis: the technical and legal requirements of the restructure were met, but the relational and communicative requirements of managing change with the remaining workforce were not, and it is this gap that the recommendations below are designed to close.
Synthesising the Lewin and Herzberg analysis, four key issues emerge.
First, an incomplete change process: the restructuring appears to have been managed as a technical and operational project rather than a full change process, with the unfreezing and refreezing stages Lewin (1947) identifies as critical to sustainable change largely absent, leaving remaining staff without the engagement or reassurance needed to accept and stabilise around the new organisational state.
Second, unresolved job-security anxiety: in Herzberg’s terms, a core hygiene factor has been damaged by the redundancy programme and has not been actively repaired through communication, leaving many remaining staff uncertain about their own future regardless of management’s actual intentions for the site.
Third, under-supported line management: newly appointed supervisors, themselves adjusting to the merged depot, have been left to manage staff engagement and communication during a difficult transition without additional training or support, weakening the supervision-quality hygiene factor at precisely the point it matters most to remaining staff.
Fourth, diminished motivator content in some roles: the shift from manual sortation to equipment-monitoring work may have reduced perceived autonomy, responsibility and skill use for some staff, a motivator-level loss that hygiene-factor improvements alone would not be sufficient to address.
A fifth, cross-cutting issue is a broken psychological contract: the survey evidence that staff felt increased effort during the transition went unrecognised, combined with the withdrawal of senior communication once redundancies concluded, suggests remaining employees perceive an implicit breach of mutual obligation, which is likely to be reinforcing the hygiene-factor and change-process issues identified above rather than operating as a wholly separate driver of turnover.
As with the strategic issues identified in comparable organisational-change cases, these five issues should be read as mutually reinforcing rather than independent problems requiring separate solutions. The incomplete change process created the conditions for job-security anxiety to persist unaddressed; the resulting anxiety, combined with under-supported line management, made it more likely that effort during the transition would go unacknowledged; and that lack of acknowledgement is what appears, on the survey evidence, to have crystallised into a perceived breach of the psychological contract severe enough to drive the turnover increase reported to the board. This interdependence is the rationale for treating the recommendations below as a coordinated response rather than a set of independent initiatives that HR might implement selectively.
Five recommendations follow, prioritised to address the most acute and time-sensitive issues first.
1. Run a structured “refreezing” communication programme. Establish regular, honest, two-way communication with remaining staff, explicitly addressing job-security uncertainty and providing a clear, credible statement of the organisation’s near-term plans, directly targeting the incomplete change process identified through Lewin’s (1947) model.
2. Support line managers explicitly. Provide newly appointed supervisors with structured training and coaching in managing staff through organisational change, recognising that they are themselves navigating the transition and cannot be expected to support others’ adjustment without support of their own (Bridges, 2009).
3. Redesign roles to restore motivator content. Review equipment-monitoring roles to identify opportunities for greater autonomy, responsibility or skill variation, for example through cross-training on exception-handling and equipment troubleshooting, addressing the motivator-level losses identified through Herzberg’s (1959) theory rather than relying solely on hygiene-factor repair.
4. Monitor turnover and morale by team and shift. Introduce regular, anonymised pulse surveys and structured exit-interview analysis segmented by depot area and shift, allowing HR to identify whether specific teams or line managers require additional support, rather than relying on an annual survey alone.
5. Review reward and recognition mechanisms. Introduce structured recognition for staff who have taken on additional responsibility during the transition, addressing the achievement and recognition dimensions of Herzberg’s motivator category, which are unlikely to improve through hygiene-factor repair alone.
6. Actively rebuild the psychological contract. Beyond formal communication, ensure senior and site leadership visibly acknowledge the additional effort staff provided during the transition period, through direct, in-person recognition rather than written communication alone, addressing the perceived breach of mutual obligation identified above and signalling that the relationship, not only the pay and role, is valued by the organisation.
Implementation should prioritise the communication programme and line-manager support, recommendations 1 and 2, immediately, since these address the most acute and time-sensitive hygiene-factor damage, with role redesign and recognition mechanisms, recommendations 3 and 5, following over a longer six-to-twelve-month period as part of embedding a stable post-restructure organisation, consistent with Lewin’s (1947) emphasis on refreezing as an active, sustained process rather than a single event that concludes once operational targets are met.
This case study has examined the deterioration in staff turnover and morale at Fenwick Distribution Group, a fictional UK logistics company, following a depot merger and automation programme. Applying Lewin’s (1947) three-step model suggests the restructuring was managed effectively as a technical and operational project but incompletely as a change process, with limited attention to unfreezing staff readiness before the change and almost no structured refreezing activity afterwards. Applying Herzberg’s (1959, 1968) two-factor theory indicates that the resulting morale decline is substantially explained by damage to hygiene factors, particularly job security and supervision quality, compounded by a reduction in motivator-level job content for some remaining staff.
The recommendations proposed therefore combine active communication and line-manager support to repair hygiene factors in the near term with role redesign and recognition mechanisms to rebuild motivator-level engagement over a longer period, informed additionally by psychological contract theory, which suggests that rebuilding trust after organisational change requires visible, relational acknowledgement of employee effort and not only the resolution of formal, transactional issues such as pay and job security. The broader implication for Fenwick, and for organisations facing similar automation-led restructuring across the logistics sector, is that the technical success of a change programme, measured in throughput or cost terms, cannot be assumed to translate into workforce stability unless the process is managed with equal attention to the people who remain, not only those who leave. As with the other cases in this series, Fenwick Distribution Group and the figures presented are fictional constructs created for academic illustration and do not describe any real organisation.
Need a Model Case Study Written to Your Exact Brief?
Our 350+ UK-qualified writers deliver referenced model documents from £15 per 250 words, with free plagiarism and AI-detection reports.
You May Also Like
All work is written by human writers. 100% AI free, guaranteed.
100% money back guarantee if you find plagiarism in our work.
COMPANY DETAILS
