Human Resource issues at Fedex Canada

Federal Express Canada (FedEx Canada) is a subsidiary of FedEx Group. It was established in 1987 to serve shipments between US and Canada with about 400 employees. FedEx Canada currently has approximately 5,000 employees with many types of services for both domestic and oversea markets (more than 200 countries)  There are over 1,000 FedEx drop-off locations in Canada, and the three Canadian Call Centers (in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal) respond to 36,500 calls a day. (Fedex, n.d.)

At Fedex, human resource is recognized as a crucial value to the organization. The workforce has been recruited from several levels of education background and experience. For instance: High School Diploma or GED equivalent for Driver Courier, Bachelor or MBA and 4-year experience for Senior Finance Analysis, Bachelor or MBA and 10-year experience for Marketing Manager, etc.

There is a gender allocation in FedEx Group’s human resource structure, as well as a number of minorities in the management team.

   

Figure 1: Gender ratio in Fedex Global workforce (Corporation, 2014) 

   

Figure 2: Minorities in Fedex Global (Corporation, 2014)

According to Figure 1, male staffs dominates the workforce at FedEx.

The nature of the work varies for working type. As a supply chain company, we are maintaining flexible working time for many levels of staffs: part-time jobs for operation teams (6:30am – 9:00pm), full-time jobs for other office support teams. Work shifts are applied for operation teams. Moreover, FedEx Canada has carried out some programs to improve safety for the workplace, such as: Safety Focus Program, Safety Partnership Location, etc. (Fedex, n.d.)

FedEx Canada’s Employment Practice and Procedure are in line with the group in terms of systematic and professional operation. Firstly, management, department and team meetings are planned based on annual goal plan and adhoc request. Plus, our uniform with two color black-purple and FedEx logo is easy to be recognized via our drivers. Regarding recruitment, we look for staffs via head-hunter companies. Moreover, in order to motivate employees, FedEx has some programs to rewards excellent performance as well as the loyalty to the company. The programs are: Five Star Award, Bravo Zulu, Purple Promise Award, CEO safety award, Service Award, Quality Driven Management Cup  (FedEx)

Although FedEx Canada has been doing well in the human resource management, however, we would likely encounter 3 human rights challenges in our organization. Firstly, gender discrimination would be an issue due to the domination of male staffs in the workforce. Additional, BFOR would be a challenge in the workplace. Furthermore, legal challenge in terms of occupational health and safety should also be considered.

To begin with, we should review the Prohibited grounds of Discrimination, which is related to gender. According to the gender ratio reported by FedEx’s Global Citizenship report, the number of female accounted for only ¼ of the workforce. In the management team, male leaders also dominates the quantity. We recommend all department manager to review the job types to find out positions that could be more suitable for female staff, such as: administration, personal assistant, secretary,…and to be really objective in recruiting new staffs, giving male and female candidates the same chance to demonstrate their capacity and background. We should think about this to avoid the problem may have caused due to Gender Discrimination.

Plus, bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) is also a challenge in our organization. This may occur in the operation sector, where driver-couriers play the vital role. Due to the job characteristic, the driver-couriers would have good health for transportation and deliver parcels. Male drivers with better physical strength is an advantage. Although this issue is legal, the people in the non-protected group may feel bad as being indirectly discriminated. Our recommendation for this issue is the department heads as well as human resource department to diplomatically explain to staff/candidates why physical strength is an advantage for some types of work, and also fairly treat female candidates/staffs if they have good health that could adapt the job.

In addition, occupational health and safety is an issue in almost every supply chain company. In FedEx, a large portion of staffs are working outside the office, and their workplace is streets and trucks. Therefore, they have to face to many dangerous situations on the streets, for example: bad traffic, severe weather (snow, rain, ice pellets). In the other hand, accidents, which could be falling or being injured, may happen while our couriers deliver heavy parcels. Furthermore, people working in the warehouse are also in an unsafety environment. Since there are tons of goods to be packed, delivered, it is likely to be dusty, unhygienic within the area. Toxic is a problem that must be considered by HR department. Besides, equipment used in the warehouse, ie. Conveyor belt system, may also cause accidents like clothes/finger/feet caught, injury,   In order to ensure the safety for our labor force and minimize the dangerous, we recommend to develop our current safety training program by regularly implementing every 6 months for different job types. In details, we will implement 2 specific safety training programs for driver courier team and warehouse staffs. For the driver courier team, we will do some investigation to survey the causations of most of accidents so far, then design the proper program. For staffs working in the warehouse, we will measure the toxic and dust concentration in the area and have a professional entity to consult the best solution. The warehouse staffs will be also carefully trained about safety rules in the workplace. 

References

Corporation, F. (2014). FY14 Global Citizenship Report. Tennessee: Fedex.

FedEx. (n.d.). About FedEX. Retrieved from www.fedex.com: http://about.van.fedex.com/our-people/recognition-programs/

Fedex, C. (n.d.). Fedex Canada history. Retrieved from www.fedex.com: http://www.fedex.com/ca_english/about/overview/fastfacts/