Abna Digital Pharmacy

Introduction

abna is a digital pharmacy that simplifies access to medications by partnering with pharmacies and healthcare providers to deliver prescriptions directly to the patients door. The company partners with leading health insurance companies to deliver significant savings whilst offering a word-class experience to their members. The digital pharmacy connects users to pharmacies, doctors and insurance companies allowing them to browse and order medication and other pharmaceutical products.

The company was founded in 2015 by Amunet, Bastet and Neith Ahmed who are brothers and work closely together to drive business growth. The business is headed by Amunet as the oldest brother and many of family members work in the business with each of the brothers managing a different aspect.

The company offers a digital platform that enables insurance companies and digital health care providers to automate approvals whilst boosting online sales. The company has grown significantly over the last 2 years with residents in Giza, Egypt spending over $6 billion a year on medical insurance. The digital pharmacy is based in Giza and operates on one physical site.

Amunet's wife Hatshepsut leads the H.R function in the company and looks after the 56 employees. She looks after the people within the business and her brothers manage business performance, organizational performance, and financial performance. This works well as she has always had a good relationship with the employees.

The pharmacy obtains the drugs from various sources including online pharmacies and prescription collection units. The digital pharmacy is linked to healthcare providers and enables the prescribers to send the prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy of the patients' choice. The digital pharmacy market is experiencing significant growth with projects to reach $13.6 by 2027 and the brothers want to be an active part of this growing market. This shift to the digital platforms is due to consumer behavior, increasing regulatory support with digital health services and being able to streamline the process.

Hatshepsut has recently sent out an engagement survey to the employees to find out how they feel about various aspects of the role and she has identified that there is a problem with transparent communication, trust amongst the employees and the reward strategy. The company has faced challenges with high turnover rates amongst the software engineers that develop and maintain the digital platform despite offering competitive salaries and this is causing operational problems for the business when important updates are needed to the platform and there is a lack of available staff to carry these out.

The challenges

Hatshepsut is aware that the business is currently spending significant amounts of money replacing employees who voluntarily leave the organization. The latest survey identifies problems across the organization and she is trying to understand more about this challenge and how she can reduce the attrition rates for the software engineers. She has held a focus group with some employees who implied that they were attracted to the organization through their E.V.P and branding as they felt that the company values matched their own but felt that after they joined the organization the values or job role didn't always fully represent what was promised during induction. They also shared that some competitors are providing enhancements for the software engineers to move away from abna and to their competitors.

As the company is operating in a highly volatile competitive market-place, Hatshepsut wants to understand more about job satisfaction and the reward strategies offered by competitors. The management team have suggested some ideas as to the root causes of staff attrition but these are not based on any evidence. The company has also started to find it challenging to fill the role of software engineer which is vital to the existence of the organization. The turnover is affecting the bottom line but also the customer experience as the service can be disrupted for periods of time when the digital platform is unavailable due to updates that are needed.

Hatshepsut wants to look at a reduction in recruitment costs to improve overall operational stability with a view to cutting attrition rates by 27% overall in the next 12 months. She is very aware that there is a global shortage of software engineers and a growing challenge with a projected shortfall of over 4 million developers by 2026. The digital pharmacy rely on software engineers that have specialized skills in A.I, cloud and cybersecurity and those that have real production experience and collaborative skills and these are sought after skills in the area! abna currently has a limited talent pool which is underrepresented by women, minorities and remove workers.

The H.R Team

Hatshepsut works with a People Practice Officer, Seti. Seti has worked at the company for the last three years and he moved into this role in the last 12 months. He has been getting up to speed with H.R.M practices and has been working closely with the software engineers during exit, carrying out exit interviews to find out why they are leaving. He has focused on understanding the employee experience, management and culture, retention strategies to identify patterns in employee departure.

Seti has collected the data and has presented this to Hatshepsut which shows the main reasons for attrition are:

Reward package

Job design

Competitive compensation

Many of the employees have identified that the job they applied for doesn't fully match the job they were appointed to and they felt that there is a lack of alignment between their skills, abilities and preferences and limited links with organizational goals and values.

Therefore, the business needs to review their existing jobs to ensure they meet individual needs and preferences and increase the sense of ownership and purpose in work. Hatshepsut has started to review these ideas to present to her brothers later in the month at the next Board meeting. Following the meeting, Hatshepsut has come to you and has asked you to review the way that Human Resources are utilized in the business and to help her understand how the flow in the organization can further define and enhance the software engineers role and expectations which can be incorporated into the job role to retain them by recommending improvements in this area in time for the next Board Meeting in 3 months' time.