What practically could Snap-a-Dap do to help ensure that good, basic standards of employment practice are adhered to by its major suppliers in India?

You are one of the team of HR consultants who Shawn Mungo asks for advice ahead of his appearance before the select committee. You are asked to provide him with evidence-based and fully-justified recommendations on the following issues: 1- What practical steps could be taken to increase levels of trust and employee engagement at Snap-a-Dap? 2-What practically could Snap-a-Dap do to help ensure that good, basic standards of employment practice are adhered to by its major suppliers in India? 3-What should Snap-a-Dap managers do to help ensure that sexual harassment does not occur in any of its operations in the future? 4-Recommend THREE distinct measures that could be introduced at Snap-a-Dap to turn round the company’s ethical reputation and help it secure recognition as a first rate employer. Explain & do a comparison for the three measures. Justify your answers. CASE STUDY Shawn Mungo is a very successful, high-profile businessman who has spent the last 20 years developing a fashion and accessories business called Snap-a-Dap. Having left school at the age of 16 without any qualifications, Shawn started importing clothes, shoes and costume jewellery to sell on a market stall in London. Observing what sold well, he started to design his own products which he then had manufactured by a sub-contractor. Very quickly his Snapa-Dap brand became popular in the UK and in several overseas markets, making Shawn a wealthy man. The company went public in 2010, raising several millions more for Shawn from the sale of shares. The pace of growth has exceeded all expectations and has inevitably led Shawn to make some mistakes through inexperience. Snap-a-Dap now employs 50 people in its head office mainly undertaking design and marketing activities and a further 50 in its busy warehouse operation. The products are all now manufactured in India by a group of suppliers who employ many hundreds more in their factories. Mr Mungo is articulate, energetic and charming, but also quite impetuous. These qualities, together with his passion for the business, have enabled him to become adept at effectively publicising his brand. He mixes very publicly with high profile figures from the worlds of show business and sport, goes to parties at which he is photographed with well-known personalities and has become something of a media celebrity himself. He entertains his friends lavishly and regularly voices some quite strident opinions in the pages of tabloid newspapers. Earlier this year, after two decades of fast growth, things started to go wrong for Shawn and his business. A series of developments have damaged both his reputation and that of Snapa-Dap. First he got into a dispute with a group of his staff who joined a trade union and proposed to him that it should be recognised for collective bargaining purposes. Shawn refused to do this, arguing that he wanted to prevent a ‘them and us culture’ from developing at Snap-a-Dap. The employees concerned said that there already was such a culture and that it was grossly unfair that he should be earning vast sums personally when so many of the people he employed were paid low wages and felt insecure in their jobs. They also complained about a lack of proper grievance and disciplinary procedures at the company and Shawn’s tendency to make policy informally on the basis of hunches and personal prejudices. The immediate storm blew over, but in the process trust was lost. Staff turnover increased rapidly, absence levels rose and Shawn perceives that his warehouse staff in particular are much less well-engaged than they used to be. Secondly, an undercover reporter undertook an investigation into working conditions in some of the factories in Southern India which supply Snap-a-Dap with its merchandise. Film was taken showing what appear to be young children working in dirty and unsafe conditions. This has now been circulated extensively online along with articles alleging that Snap-a-Dap and Shawn personally are making millions from the suffering of some of the world’s poorest people who are obliged to work long hours in hot factories for a pittance. The allegations are exaggerations of the true situation and such conditions are not typical of the factories that supply the company. However, on the day that they appeared on the front page of a national newspaper the price of Snap-a-Dap shares plunged by 40%, wiping millions off the value of the company and Shawn’s personal fortune. The third blow came a few days later when a group of women employed in Snap-a-Dap’s HQ took to social media to complain about incidents of sexual harassment at social events organised for company employees. Some of these are alleged to have taken place in Shawn’s box at a Premiership football ground when clients he was entertaining there had been drinking heavily, but the complaints relate generally to the laddish culture that the staff say prevails at Snap-a-Dap. A tabloid newspaper picked up on the story and interviewed some of Shawn’s former employees about their experiences at the company. The headlines were lurid and in Shawn’s opinion misrepresented things, but the upshot was further damage to his business’s reputation as well as his own. As a result of these three developments, Shawn has become a rather controversial public figure. An unflattering photograph of him leaving a night club where he had been drinking heavily accompanied by a young woman appeared in one newspaper under a headline referring to him as ‘Shonky Shawn’, and the nickname has stuck. Sales of Snap-a-Dap products are down as the brand, along with its creator, fall out of fashion. Last week, just when Shawn thought that things could not get any worse, he received a letter summoning him to appear before a House of Commons Select Committee which is investigating business ethics. Its members want to question him about all three matters described above. The hearing will be in public with many journalists present and will also be televised. Shawn knows that some of the MPs on the committee dislike him and will use the hearing as an opportunity to attack him very publicly. This could fatally undermine his company’s reputation if he gives them the opportunity. Shawn has a month to prepare for the hearing. He hires one set of consultants to advise him on how best to present himself and another to give him advice about HRM matters and business ethics. His plan is to apologise sincerely for what has happened, shoulder all the blame personally and to admit that the company has been managed in too informal a manner during a period of very fast growth. Lapses in ethical standards will not be repeated. He then plans to take the opportunity to set out in some detail a plan for radically improving the way that Snap-a-Dap operates. From an HR point of view his aim for the future is to turn things around completely. Shawn likes the idea of Snap-a-Dap being widely recognised as ‘an employer of choice’, winning awards for the way it manages people and embracing ‘best in class’ standards of business ethics. Evidence to be produced Complete all activities in one document