Avon: The Need for Change

Avon Products

Madelyn Lakeisha Manigault

Dr. Daniel Frost

Strayer University – Global Campus

HRM 532 – Talent Management

April 29, 2018

Avon: The Need for Change

Avon Products is a global company over a century years old. It was founded by David H. McConnell who was originally a door-to-door salesman that stumbled upon customers interest in perfume over books. In 1886, he founded a company that would later become Avon Products in 1939. Since then, Avon has become a company widely known for its beauty products and other innovative offerings that extends beyond cosmetics. Avon’s amazing reputation was as a result of the direct selling foundation embodied by the founder. David H. McConnell was as pioneer in the 19th century America by offering women the chance at financial freedom during the time where woman were mainly confined to less glamorous work outside of the home. (Avon Company, 2016)

Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon, and Avon found itself challenged by flattening revenues and declining operating profits in 2006. (Silze & Dowell, 2010, p. 2) The company went from eight billion dollars in 2005 to ten billion dollars and the organization structure was not a good fit. It was because of this reason Andrea and company executives completed a fundamental overhaul to include major efforts to source brand management, talent and performance management, marketing analytics, and chain supply management.

The need for change was eminent. Avon revised the talent management processes and the talent management team identified the following weaknesses that they felt most hurt the organization’s growth: opaque, egalitarian, complex, episodic, emotional, and meaningless. (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010, p. 3) Current management was unaware of how well employees were really performing and with the ineffective performance management structure all employees were treated the same. This was problematic because high performers were treated the same as low performers and there was a lack of motivation and incentive to do better despite the position you held within the performance ranking.

The performance evaluation was extremely complicated and with feedback being sporadic, employees were not as engaged as they could have been. The performance management form was long and complicated and it left a lot of room for ambiguity, subjectivity, and error. It is because of these infractions that Avon decided to simplify the process and find proven ways to affect change to support its growth.

Avon’s Model Theory

Work motivation theory is the model for change typified in the Avon Products case study. Work motivation is a set of energetic forces that originate both within as well as beyond an individual’s being, to initiate work-related behavior and to determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration. (Pinder, 1998) I chose this theory because it is based on setting effective goals for behavior change (those that are specific, challenging, and achievable) will facilitate learning and development. (Silzer & Dowell, 2010, p. 354) Avon noticed that it needed to make a change in order to develop and promote more competitively competent leaders and associates within the organization to be able to handle the influx of growth it was experiencing.

As a result, it leaned on work motivation theory practices to implement new talent management tools that allowed each employee the ability to see tangible goals, growth, and receive feedback that would promote the desire and ability to learn and grow. In doing so, it created an environment where employees were no longer equal but different and that differentiation came from employee engagement.

The old talent management model had several gaps in its ability to properly see the talent and develop the based on competencies. In acknowledging their shortcomings, Avon took to the drawing board and sought to create a better talent management model that was less complicated but more productive and efficient. The result was to build talent practices with two principles in mind; execute on the what, and differentiate on “how.” (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010, p. 4) These two principles focused on managing performance in a way that was easy to consistently execute and implement, and how it was to be done to ensure success. With a refocused plan, Avon completely transformed its talent practices and employed the premise of the work motivation theory.  

Benefits of the Evaluation Tools and Processes

The various types of information that was collected were all predicated on the effective use of feedback. The processing of feedback likely involves monitoring the environment in an automatic preconscious fashion through visual, auditory, and relational clues. (Ashford & Black, 1996) The previous evaluation practices at Avon only allowed episodic and meaningless feedback in relation to talent and performance management. The new model focused on performance management with challenging and achievable goals that allowed easier recognition of positive behaviors. Streamlining the evaluation process increased participation to almost one hundred percent.