IB Business Management SL 2.4.8 Training Question Bank

Green Clean (GC)


Green Clean (GC) is a private limited company controlled by the Hitta family. Its unique selling point (USP) is offering high-quality, reliable cleaning services by teams of professional cleaners who clean offices and houses.
GC has strong ethical objectives. They only use eco-friendly cleaning products and pay their employees fair wages. Labour turnover is low and many cleaners have worked for the company for over two decades.
However, the cleaning market has become very competitive. GC has been slow to react. Other cleaning companies are beginning to offer a wider range of services. GC's management has decided to introduce a gardening service to maximize profit.
GC will recruit professionally trained gardeners. As it is very difficult to find professional gardeners in the market, G C will pay them 20 % more than its cleaners. G C prefers to use external recruitment. GC's management will also offer cleaners the opportunity to become gardeners even though off-the-job training costs are very high. If most of GC's cleaners choose training, the company could fall short of workers to meet the demand for cleaning services.
The cleaners are becoming demotivated because they are unhappy about the difference in pay between cleaners and future gardeners. They believe that gardeners are not more skilled than cleaners but just have a different skill set. Human resource managers are concerned about the potential impact of demotivated cleaners and are looking for ways to improve morale. One option they are considering is to offer cleaners an employee-share ownership scheme. Shareholders, however, are opposed to this proposal.

Explain one advantage and one disadvantage for GC of using off-the-job training for the cleaners who would like to become gardeners.