This report is based on the change caused by the re-organisation of the biotech sales team of Roche Bangladesh Limited. Due to the rapid market growth, the biotech sales team was divided into three parts to ensure focused promotion in every therapeutic area and to ensure sales achievement. Techniques used to analyse the change within this report included PEST Analysis, SWOT analysis, Stakeholder Analysis, Relationship diagram, Force-field analysis and Structural analysis.
Literatures have been reviewed to identify corresponding Human Resource Management (HRM) theory related to the change and it has been analysed how the change was managed compared to related HRM theory. At the beginning, the change could not be handled properly by the management due to the dissatisfaction of the employees caused by lack of information about the change, non-participation into the change and dissatisfaction about salary.
As soon as the management discovered the barriers, necessary actions were taken to transmit information properly, involve the employees into the change and solve their dissatisfaction about the salary. After 1 year, the sales team achieved 23% sales growth against the target of 25%. The sales deficit was caused by the negative impact of the initial mismanagement of the change which could not be fully minimised at the end of one year.
For future improvements, it has been recommended that staffs should be involved in all future change processes, they should be involved from the very beginning, their inputs should be taken at every step and they must be informed about every situation at each step so that they get prepared. Roche Bangladesh Limited (Roche) is an affiliate of F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. , Pharmaceutical Division, Basel, Switzerland. The Biotech sales team of Roche consisted of five Medical Representatives (MR) led by one Regional Manager (RM).
This team was responsible to promote the biotech products to three different groups of prescribers- Cancer specialists or Oncologists, Liver specialists or Hepatologists & Kidney specialists or Nephrologists. According to pharmabiz. com (2006), the pharmaceutical sector in Bangladesh registered nearly 15-20% growth in recent times. From year 2000 onwards, several international hospital groups started operation in Bangladesh leading to a larger market with an increased need for novel therapeutic molecules.
Due to the growing market size & development of specialised treatment area, it was becoming more and more difficult for one single sales team to focus on three groups of customers. Herzberg (1959) cited in Gawel (1997) described that factors such as company policy, supervision, interpersonal relations, working conditions, and salary are hygiene factors rather than motivators. The hygiene factor, if not addressed properly, can negatively affect employees’ work-motivation and thus productivity. The employees of Roche were dissatisfied for a long time with their salary.
The salary was less than other multinational pharmaceutical companies operating in market. Their lower salary resulted in the lack of their motivation. The lack of motivation led to a poor performance ; therefore, the team could not reach the sales target for two years. Again, the non-achievement of sales target led to a weak financial status of the company. So, the company was not in a position to increase the salary. To get rid of this situation, the management divided the sales team into 3 parts in order to ensure focused promotion ; to achieve the sales objectives.
Amongst all the changes that have occurred in last five years, the division of the sales team was the most significant one. Within this report, this change will be analysed against literatures on change management and relevant Human Resource Management (HRM) theories. Armstrong (2003) defined change management as advising on and assisting with the facilitation of change in organisation in response to changes in the environment, and the introduction of new organisation structures and systems, and HR policies and practices.
He also suggested that there are two main types of change: strategic and operational. Strategic change deals with broad, long-term and organisation-wise issues. On the other hand operational change relates to new systems, procedures, structures or technology which will have an immediate effect on working arrangements within a part of the organisation. The discussed change was, therefore, an operational change.
