The Role Of HRM Practices In Supporting Business Strategy - A Case Study On Tesco Essay.

Considering the above information and, using your own research, you are required to write a report addressing the following tasks:

1.Using research, academic frameworks and contemporary business examples, critically evaluate the way in which HRM practices can be used to support an organisation’s business strategy and contribute to overall performance creating competitive advantage.  

2.Some of the strategic priorities include team-based job design, flexible workforces, employee engagement, employee empowerment and having a strategic reward system. The focus should be on how the identified HR practices influence the organisation’s performance and its effectiveness.

1.Despite the growing need for organisations to manage change effectively, 70 per cent of all change efforts fail (Beer and Nohria, 2000) and this rate has been consistent over the years. One of the most commonly cited reason for failure of change implementation is inadequately addressing people-related issues (Spiker and Lesser, 1995; Kotter, 1995).

2.Evaluate the key employee engagement issues that may arise within the change process and critically analyse ONE of the ways in which HR managers can resolve the identified issues. 

Background

The report is developed to discuss the various approaches of managing the human resources considering the business organization within the retail industry Tesco in UK. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or CIPD, the strategic management of human resources can help in accomplishing the business goals and objectives properly as well as focus on the long terms success and implementation of the right HR strategies. The report will also discuss about the rewards management and how it is linked with the enhancement of business performances and staffs. The HRM practices can also be linked with the business strategies, which can further contribute to the overall performance of the organization and allow Tesco to achieve higher profit and competitive advantage in business. The strategies will include designing jobs, empower the employees and managing a strategic reward system for influencing the organizational performance and enhancing its effectiveness too. The key engagement issues related to the performances of employees at Tesco will also be assessed in this report (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). There will be probable measures that will be undertaken by the employees to ensure that the issues are overcome and the employees are managed properly to facilitate the decision making process along with betterment of skills, knowledge and expertise. Leadership is an essential aspect of the human resource management, because it can not only keep the employees motivated an encouraged to perform better, but will also help in managing the job roles and responsibilities properly and act according to the demands of jobs. With the proper management human resources, there will also be additional scopes and opportunities to respond to changes, furthermore enhance the employee capability and ensure successful decision-making. This will engage the employees altogether as well as develop commitment to respond to changes and create opportunity enhancing practices for accomplishing the business goals and objectives effectively for Tesco in United Kingdom (Tesco.com 2018).

The human resource planning is an effective process of analyzing the needs and requirements of human resources for achieving the business goals and objectives with ease. The HRM practices could be used for supporting the business strategies and contribute to the overall business performance, thereby reducing the lead time between the recognition of job requirement and appointing a qualified person to fill that position. The human resource planning would require an idea of the job market and its ability to match the hiring needs to meet the goals and objectives without recruiting the talented individuals. The HRM practices could also lead to the hiring of efficient employees and selecting the right staffs to suit the company requirements and organizational culture (Brewster 2014). The HR practices could help in fitting the ob criteria and focus on the staffing process more to enable direct forecasting and succession planning too. The HRM practices could also keep the employees and staffs appraised with the career scopes and opportunities, furthermore reduce the employee turnover ratio for integrating the effective HR planning with the business planning strategies of Tesco (Tesco.com 2018). 

HRM Practices and Business Strategy in Tesco

Strategic recruitment and selection

Tesco has managed the core roles and responsibilities to enable proper recruitment  nd selection f employees through the identification of the most suitable pool of talent from a heterogeneous group of people. The processes of recruitment and selection could be considered as standard approaches where the focus should be on the person-job fit. The candidates would be selected against the organizational characteristics rather than the job specific criteria (Bratton and Gold 2017). Thus, selecting the right employees would allow for the development of an effective strategic human resource management. It could transform the strategic demands and preferences of the organization into the processes of recruitment and selection, furthermore align those with objectives of the company.

The objectives of both the candidates and business would be assessed at first and then it would be checked whether the job positions of the organization are strategic or not. By assessing the HRM practices, it would also be essential for managing the team based job designs, furthermore create flexible workforce by assigning the right job roles and responsibilities to the employees (Alfes et al. 2013).

Strategic training and development

At Tesco, high performances are experienced by identifying the needs for training and development. This would not only harness the best value and potential of the organization, but would also result in creating more scopes and opportunities for growth and longevity. The training and development could allow the workers of Tesco to transfer knowledge, skills and abilities and even promote the business goals and objectives needed to be achieved. The HR managers of Tesco have monitored the performances of the employees and made sure to adopt the right strategic approach to train and develop the employees to deliver outcomes in accordance to the business level strategies (Marchington et al. 2016). By evaluating the outcomes, it could be checked whether the training and development programs were effective or not and how it could contribute to the business strategy implementation.

The training and development programs are considered as vital aspects of the HR strategy of Tesco. The company has employed a huge number of employees including front line staffs who are mainly the graduates from the leading Universities all over United Kingdom. They were trained to become knowledgeable about the corporate structure and culture through various recruitment and selection practices (Kehoe and Wright 2013). This not only facilitated the development of skills, knowledge and expertise, but also allowed for gaining enough scopes and opportunities to obtain new knowledge. Tesco has realized the importance of investing in staffs and this would be quite helpful for the company to create a strong workforce that could enable innovation, creativity and long-term success. Being most of the plans implemented with the use of technology, Tesco has gained great scopes and opportunities to provide the employees with chances of managing the work properly and served the retail consumers properly. This would create convenience for Tesco, UK to become one of the most flexible employers within the retail industry and at the same time, remain simple, helpful and trusted too (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang 2014). 

Managing Employee Engagement Issues during Change

Strategic performance management

The traditional performance management system sometimes might fail to deliver the actual outcomes and so it would be necessary for enabling proper communication and overcome the issue regarding mismatch between the corporate strategy and targets of team at the individual level. The mismatch could be resolved with the performance management approach, which would check how to manage the performance, what targets should be achieved and how could the managers and employees could work in coordination and as an unit to achieve the business goals and objectives (Nankervis et al. 2013). By identifying the HR competencies of Tesco, UK, it would be easy to develop selection procedures through which an effective performance evaluation plan could be implemented that should be linked with the performance management strategies goals and objectives. By linking the compensation system with the strategies, the organizational performance would be improved along with retaining the existing staffs of the organization who possessed the competencies, skills, knowledge and expertise (Gatewood, Field and Barrick 2015). The strategic performance management would create a link between the organizational culture and strategies to manage the performances of the employees furthermore create a positive impact on the business performance with ease and effectiveness. It should not only maintain the core values of the organization, but could even facilitate the promotion of good culture to promote communication and higher level of employee satisfaction (Kramar 2014).

Strategic compensation and reward management for employee empowerment

The compensation policies and rewards provided could enhance the performances of the employees and improve their skills, knowledge and competency level to attract and retain them. Rewarding the employees acts as an effective motivator for accomplishing the desired organizational objectives and at the same time, align the compensation policies and reward management with the business goals (Sheehan 2014). The data driven approach could help in allocating the wages and other benefits properly for the employees, furthermore produce good rate of return on investments. The HR managers have monitored the performances of workers and even provided them with rewards and incentives for ensuring that they are kept encouraged and motivated to perform to their potential. They could be provided with both monetary or non-monetary rewards, which would assist them to perform to their potential and enhance the overall performance, furthermore guide towards the successful achievement of business goals and objectives with ease and effectiveness (Tesco.com 2018).

The strategies should be aligned with the business objectives for facilitating the formation of flexible workforce at Tesco. Flexibility could be obtained by providing the staffs with good working hours along with flexibility for maintaining a balance between personal and work life. This would make them feel interest and valued at the workplace and make necessary changes according to the changing needs and preferences of the customers (Jamali, El Dirani and Harwood 2015). These are essential aspects of providing better control and choice, furthermore maintain flexibility at the workplace to improve the working hours and working efficiency. Investments done by Tesco for training purposes should also assist in enhancing the variety of work roles and design the jobs in such a manner according to the skills, knowledge and expertise of the team members.  It would create more access to work as well as develop flexible work plan for arousing interest among the staffs and improving their performances too (Keep 2014). 

Human Resource Planning and Recruitment and Selection at Tesco

The changes made within organizations could often create a critical and difficult setting for sense making and for understanding the needs to manage changes with ease. There could also be issues related to complexity and inability to adjust to changes, ambiguity and equivocality too. With the change managed within the organization, there might also be shift in the demands and supplies, which could result in conflicts and misunderstandings, furthermore make the activities much more complex and difficult to engage employees all together.  The organizational change requires disparities between the expectations and experiences, which would require reframing the organizational policies, procedures, business operations and thus the engagement of employees should be important (Ceylan 2013). The employee of employees at Tesco is required not just to enable creativity and innovation, but also to facilitate the team working abilities, better communication and strengthening the business skills to maintain high quality workforce. One of the most important issues regarding change implementation could be the lack of ability to address the people related issues (Tesco.com 2018).

The employees and groups must be involved in creative sessions to developing innovative ideas and concepts, furthermore enable modification and enhancement of ideas by maintaining a high level of individual level creativity. The situational issues might arise due to higher level of ambiguity and lower level of engagement due to lack of guidance, proper support by the leaders of Tesco. Few other issues that arose were related to participation of employees, motivation and encouragement, job responsibilities, demand factors and stress factors, readiness to change and skills and abilities possessed by the employees (Minbaeva 2013). Tesco could select the candidates with the best level of personal qualities and this should make it easier for adjusting to the working conditions and ensure successful creativity and innovation all throughout.

The business organizations within the retail industry of UK mainly focus on the outcomes rather than the actual causes of such kinds of issues. Due to this, the organizations fail to take a step backward t look for the issue and this often creates disengagement among the employees. The engagement surveys that are conducted may take a lot of time and money and this can even be manipulated sometimes. The manipulation of engagement scores could be done by providing incentives and additional financial benefits for making them achieve the higher score. While implementing changes within the organization, it becomes important to ensure that proper guidance and support are provided to the staffs for enhancing their performances and skills consistently (De Waal 2013). Not keeping them motivated and providing them with monetary and non-monetary rewards could make the employees of Tesco feel less interested and valued for the organization. It would not only increase the turnover rate of employees, but would also lead to employee dissatisfaction and lack of proper quality customers services’ too. When the right job roles and responsibilities are not assigned to the right candidates, then also there can be disengagement of employees and this will further lead to inability to respond to changes and improvements within the organization’s workplace. Another major cause of engagement issues is the absence of right amounts of skills, knowledge and expertise among the workers, which can deteriorate the business organization and decrease the level of profit and the organization may even fail to achieve competitive advantage within the business environment (Bento, Bento and White 2014).

Training and Development Practices at Tesco

Thus, from the above sections, the major issues of employees engagement during the change management process were understood. To overcome  these issues, the HR managers must play a vital role in addressing the issues properly and even carry out their roles and responsibilities properly for managing the human resources and ensuring that they are provide with good working conditions to raise their interest and morale level. According to Caldwell (2001), there are four major roles of HR as an agent for enabling changes including champions, adapters, consultants and synergists (Srivastava and Sushil 2013). They all are responsible for shaping the behavioral changes and to engage the employees together for promoting effective teamwork, coordination of work, sharing and exchange of ideas and opinions with ease. It would enhance the chances for managing changes and could even combine the various HRM activities and practices for enhancing the skills, abilities, competencies and opportunities to excel in terms of performance and business profitability. The managers play major roles of enabling communication between the employee, which can increase the level of engagement as well as create potential for gaining great results based on the changes implemented. One of the most effective organizational changes could be where the employees would likely feel without any power or authority due to the existing organizational, norms, patterns, rules and regulations happened due to the changes (Shields et al. 2015).  The organizational goals and objectives might not be clearly defined, due to which, there could be shift in powers and responsibilities, furthermore might lead t disorientation and lack of control and authority over the newly accepted roles, responsibilities and change management perspectives. The HR managers must manage provision of empowerment practices to the employees and make them informed about those properly for ensuring the success of the organizational change management at Tesco, UK with ease and efficiency (Ates et al. 2013). 

The employees of Tesco should be provided with proper training and developmental programs for acquiring the relevant linguistics, technical and social influence skills and knowledge to promote a good culture and emphasize on self-determination, collaboration, high performance standards’ maintenance and meritocracy. It should enhance the scopes for open communication as well as foster effective teamwork, collaboration and providing information and messages to the employees for personal efficiency. The roles of HR managers are to lead the teams and groups effectively and manage the human resources properly for developing trust and loyalty and encouraging them to perform to their potential. This would also help in identifying the poor performers, coach and training them to address employee concerns and forecast the levels of engagement for the teams. The HR managers and supervisors must be held accountable for the desired behavioral outcomes and monitor the areas where trust and loyalty should be developed. When the employees would perform effectively, the managers could encourage and motivate them, which should drive their performances and make them achieve the goals and objectives within quick time (Truss et al. 2013).

Compensation and Reward Management at Tesco

Among all these approaches undertaken, the reward management could be the most effective way by which the HR managers could resolve the issues that were identified. By providing rewards and incentives along with other benefits such as increased wages, flexible working hours to the employees, they would likely feel more motivated and their morale level should improve as well. This would not only enhance the overall organizational performance but could also foster the development of teamwork, coordination among work and better communication among the workers to reach the aims and objectives appropriately (Saks and Gruman 2014). The strategic HR decisions and practices are considered as effective transformation process that can manage the change process entirely and this would involve the HR managers of Tesco to play the roles of  champions, adapters, consultants and synergists according to the situations. The consultants could contribute to the management f trust, respect and dignity at the workplace while the adapters would embrace the changes and make the employees adjust to those. The synergists should prioritize on the protection and promotion of the interests of stakeholders of Tesco including the shareholders, employees and customers to enhance the brand reputation and generate more revenue in business, finally resulting in obtaining competitive edge over its competitors within the retail industry (Menguc et al. 2013).

Conclusion

From the report, the various aspects of human resource management including the HR practices, employee engagement issues and ways of resolving those were demonstrated. The major HR practices to support the business strategies and contributing to the overall business performance had been the management of strategic recruitment and selection, strategic training and development programs offered to the individuals working at Tesco and performance management procedures. The strategic performance management helped in maintaining the core values of the organization and even formed and effective culture that fostered good communication, teamwork and resulted in higher level of customer satisfaction too. The strategic compensation and reward management are other aspects that could strengthen the business functioning, furthermore result in enhanced business performance and positive business outcomes. It could be in the form of both monetary and non-monetary rewards that should also allow for raising their confidence to work and feel interested too. Few employee engagement issues were related to the change management at Tesco, which could arise due to lack of skills, knowledge and expertise among the workers and lack of proper leadership guidance and support. Providing them with training and developmental programs, rewards and other benefits should make them enough capable of handling critical situations and at the same time, engage altogether through better communication. The tasks would be handled much easily through fostering of effective teamwork, which could result in higher level of employee satisfaction and positive business outcomes too. 

Conclusion

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