Case Analysis: Richard Wood And Hulme LLP

Richard, Wood and Hulme LLP was a mid-sized professional services firm that offered clients audit and taxation services. This company was established by Chris Richard, Genna Wood and Lauren Hulme in 1998. These three established the company by using their experience and knowledge from their old company. This firm was gradually growing since the foundation until there was a problem emerged in 2008. The firm has one major principle of working is that they strongly focus on how their employees can work and collaborate with the audit team members. They put the priority on individuals who are able to work efficiently in team, not just the one who is smart but has poor teamwork skills. In terms of the priority this firm puts on teamwork, there was
When team have a trust among each others, it is comfortable for members to engage in heated dialogue. Members feel free to disagree with others’ decisions in order to find best solutions and strategies. There were several occasions of conflict that seemed to be avoided by the team members. For example, the first conflict derived from Michaels, who had the same duties as Dee. He had once given his concerns about the team getting behind. However, other senior members in the team disregarded him because they thought that it would be such a waste of time. Moreover, they said something dishonestly to Michaels that they were busy with their Spector audit and other client commitments. Therefore, Michaels, who was falling behind the team, did not receive the assistance from other team members, and this was the first conflict happening among the team. Another possible conflict was that Michaels did miss the chance in order to challenge Nguyen’s thought that increasing more team members would not be a good idea because the new members had to be coached by other old members, so adding new members would slow down the current work and might lead the team to the negative way. These examples can be illustrated that the members in the team feared to challenge others colleagues because they thought that it would lead more
While the team did good in 2007, however, the team could have done better if they had two or more audit planning people. We can seen quite clearly that having only lead planner will lead to the problematic issue in 2008 due to lack of audit planning, so if there were 2 audit planners, the team will be able to have plan anyway even though another planner is off for her duty. One of the important member who has the closest characteristic with Ellis in the team should be promoted to be an audit planner as well. Because in 2007, Ellis was a good planner having clear roles and status structures, in 2008 due to examination, Ellis had to be away and could not plan for the work. Having another audit planner will replace Ellis’s issue, and the team will still be able to move on even though Ellis was not there. Therefore, having more than one planner will provide less risk in the team. Moreover, implement mentoring problem has to be set up as well. The team has to have a fixed teacher-student arrangement. For example, due to two members in the team were fired, having mentoring arrangement will be a good idea for new members because they will have someone to teach the process of work for them. Lastly, reward system must be included. Everyone has to be motivated by something, so they will give their best effort to do the work in order to receive the reward. Therefore, reward system will be really