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NTU Management Review Vol. 35 No. 1 Apr. 2025

4. Case Analysis

4.1 Problem Definition
According to the industry reports from the case company, since 2008, the total

express industry market in Taiwan has had an average annual growth rate of less than 1%
for 8 successive years. The competition among express businesses is fierce. To grow above
the market, the case company has to outperform competitors and satisfy its customers in
terms of consistency in speed and service quality delivered by its employees, particularly

the couriers. Couriers form the core of daily operations. As the senior corporate advisor
points out, “We can afford the absence of marketing, sales, IT, or HR for weeks, but we
cannot afford any shortage of couriers for one day. They play the most critical role—to
keep this giant machine running.” Couriers are responsible for the complete appearance of

packages and on-time physical deliveries. There are approximately 650 couriers in the case
company, and that number continues to grow. Any shortage of workforce in operations
leads to overtime work for first-line couriers, even in the worst-case scenario—delivery
delay—that places the case company at the risk of losing customers to its competitors.

Furthermore, such occurrences make the customer service department a battlefield. This
vicious cycle is the opposite of the FOCUS strategy, in that unhappy employees are
delivering poor quality services to customers, which destroys existing customer loyalty
and breaks the profitable network. Recruiting a sufficient workforce in the operations

department is the key to avoiding this downward cycle.
However, the case company encounters the problems of recruiting couriers in Taiwan.
“Twenty percent of the candidates pursuing courier jobs are not familiar with the formal
offer letter process in a corporation and are showing little patience waiting for [the] offer

letter. They just reject our offers because we cannot have them onboard immediately, even
though our package is better,” recruiter A stated. Candidates can be interviewed and be
onboard on the same day in local Taiwanese companies, a recruitment process which is
impossible for the case company to accomplish due to its internal policies. The average

process time for the case company to approve the compensation report and generate an
offer letter is 9.5 working days, approximately 2 weeks. “Two weeks is too long for our
candidates,” recruiter A added. Indeed, the resourcing team is facing rejections because of
the lengthy internal process, even though the case company’s total reward is better than its

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