Recruitment Challenges In Retail: Woolworth Limited Case Study (Essay).

Select an organisation or industry as the case study for your report. Identify some of the key challenges for recruiting the workforce for this organisation/industry, and recommend strategies to address these challenges. Your report should make reference to factors such as labour supply/demand, organisational image, demographic issues (such as an ageing workforce, generations, diversity etc), as well as recruitment strategies such as employer branding and types of advertising. 

Key Challenges in the Recruitment Process

It is important for all business organisations to have effective recruitment policy in order to ensure that all the efficient and deserving candidates get a chance to deliver performance in the workplace. However, in most of the cases the recruitment process is one of the most challenging jobs of the Human Resource Department of an organisation as it is considered to be one of the most time consuming activities. Shortage of skills among workers is one of the main challenges that are faced by all major business organisations of the modern days.

The current report will discuss all the major issues and challenges that are faced by Woolworth limited, which is one of the main super market retail of Australian market. Report will also highlight upon the theories and models that are used in the recruitment process of all major business organisation in order to deal with the challenges of recruitment process. Finally it will also provide recommendations for Woolworth Limited that will help them to deal with major challenges in the Human Resource Department. 

The Woolworths Limited is one of the largest retail supermarkets of Australia and is considered to be one of the biggest recruiter. The company has currently 202,000 employees and has been able to generate operating income worth of 1.6 billion dollar. However few major challenges in the workplace are currently the major cause of the major concerns of the management of the company.

Alonso (2015), has mentioned that the overall recruitment process is one of the most challenging roles of the human resource department of an organization. The challenge of employing the workers depends on the job profile and also the overall challenges in the workplace. According to Bryson et al., (2013), the company’s ability to deal with the recruitment challenges by hiring skilled workers is one of the major factors that help them to fulfill their objective of the business.

In the global environment of the current days, where the companies have to deal with diverse work culture, the companies faces challenges due to various social and technological changes. The political instability of the government of the nation is also one of major challenges that are mainly responsible for the poor working skills of the employees. The human resource department of all major business organization has to deal with the challenges for hiring the correct candidates.

Gurkov (2014), has highlighted that shortage of skilled workers and labors has been one of the key issues in the overall process of recruitment and selection process within the retail sector industry. With the rise of the demand of the products in the retail supermarket industry, it is important to have high skilled labors that will help to meet the demand within the retail sectors. The labor market has a great influence in the overall performance of the supply chain and demand within the retail industry of Australia. In case, the demand of a specific skill is high, it can be regarded as one of the key skills that are needed within the retail sector industry. Hence, it is important for the companies to recruit more people within the company in order to meet the demand of the supply chain and thereby have the capability to deal with all the issues related in the workplace. It is also important to mention in the context that the labor market of Australia have been able to strengthen the overall position. The level of employment within the nation has also increased at a rate of 1.9% (Cappelli & Keller, 2014). Nevertheless, it is important to note in the context that in spite of the rise in the total number of employees, the overall skills of the employees have been highly compromised due to the fact that nature of the job that is needed within the workplace has reduced significantly. Özçelik (2015), has mentioned that the global recession of 2008 has been one of the major causes of the lower rate of employment in the labor market of Australia.

Strategies and Recommendations to Deal with the Challenges in Recruitment

The organizational image is another important factor that decides upon the issues that are encountered within an organization. It is important for all business companies to have higher reputation within the workplace. Poor reputation of the workplace will not allow the talented candidates to make their application with the organization (Stone & Deadrick, 2015). With the rise in the demand in the retail sector industry of Australia, the employees of the industry have to face the challenge of increased work pressure. The high level of expertise and management skills that are needed in the sector is also one of the major causes of poor organizational image that can de-motivate the candidates to make application in the respective field. In this context, it can be said that the Woolworth Limited has one of the primary advantage due to the fact that it is one of the largest recruiter in Australia and hence, it enjoys a healthy reputation within the labor market of Australia. However, it can be said in the context that the rise of the demand of skilled workers within the retail sector that can harm the level of reputation within the organization.  

The demographic issues are also one of the major contributing factors that pose challenge to the workplace and overall recruitment process.  The demographic diversity in the workplace is one of the major challenges that are faced by every organisation while recruiting candidates for the job profile. It is also important for every organisation to adopt according to the needs of demographic diversity. It is important to mention in this context that with average age increase in the workforce of Australia and in the labour market the employed has to face the challenge of recruiting young employees. The lack of talent and work experience of the Young candidates in the Australian labour market is one of the main contributing factors to the challenges that exist in the Retail Industry. The company also had to depend on the cultural diversity and cultural Change management in order to provide better experience of the workers. The Woolworth Limited being one of the major multinational retail corporations, it is important for them to deal with the challenges of managing business in different and culturally diverse background. It is important for the company to have an effective culturally diverse environment within the workplace which will allow workers from different cultural community backgrounds to have a chance to employee themselves in the workplace of Woolworth.

With the average age of the population in the workplace of the Retail Industry it is not possible for the company to get full performance and also compromise upon the fresh talent that is needed in the Retail Industry in order to deal with the exercise pressure and change in the work environment. The diverse group of labour in the workplace of Australia is also one of the major challenges that are faced by all retail companies that are responsible for poor performance level within the company.

It is important to have an effective strategy in order to deal with all the challenges in the workplace and also improve upon the performance of the retail sector. According to Luzurier et al., (2015), it is important for the human resource management department of an organisation to have proper selection and recruitment process that will help to select the deserving candidates in the workplace of an organisation.  proper method of evaluation through proper method of evaluation through aptitude test and interview can help the managers of Human Resource Management to judge the capability of the candidate and hence and sure that only the deserving candidate is being recruited within the organisation.

It is also important to follow a strict protocol of selection process which should not have any biasness towards in candidate and allow them to get any unfair advantage in the overall recruitment process.

With the rise of talent among individual candidates who are eligible for applying in the workplace it is one of the most challenging duty of the human resource manager select the best candidate within the workplace. Moreover with the increase of work pressure it is important for the candidates to have better working capability and also the ability to handle stress and work pressure. Hence it is important for the Human Resource Department to ensure the proper training are being given to all the working candidates which will help them to deal with the working challenge and work pressure and high level of expertise that is needed in the Retail Industry of Australia. With better level of training that will help the workers to get better work experience and also have the capability to deal have better level of work experience (Indolfi et al., 2014).

At the initial stage it is important for the organisation to publish a proper advertisement for recruitment process by providing details of the eligibility criteria and also detailed description of the job profile along with the salary and total pay package. The advertisement also needs to have proper information about the detail regarding the selection procedure and examination that every interested candidate has to face in order to get recruitment within the organisation.

Waddington and Kerr (2015), have mentioned about the importance of psychometric assessment which is regarded as one of the important step in overall recruitment process. With the help of face to face interview process it is possible for the human resource manager to estimate and judge the communication skill and psychological ability of an individual candidate. The candidate needs to be inquired about their past record and experience in academic career and professional career that can help them in contributing in the respective job profile. Effective questionnaire method is an important part of the interview which will help the human resource manager to understand the capability of every individual candidate and also the stress management skill possessed by them.

According to Rees and Smith (2017), it is also important for every business organisation to ensure that they are able to retain all the experienced and old employees which will help them in the process of using their performance capability to fulfil the higher target capability of an organisation. Better retention process is one of the key indicators of success of the organisation in terms of workplace reputation.

Large scale multinational corporations like Woolworth can use business processing outsourcing method in order to increase the total number of candidate and also to deal with the challenges of less number of working employees. With the help of this procedure this possible for the organisation to hire third party business processing Outsourcing unit who will help in the overall operational management activities of the company and also ensure that less pressure is being exerted upon the working candidates of the company.

The Human Resource Department can also use the technique of internal recruitment policy where all the currently working employees would be encouraged to bring about new working candidates by offering them fixed scale of incentive with the employment on every new employee. This process is believed to be one of the effective techniques to recruit new candidates for the Human Resource Department will not have to take the trouble of searching eligible candidates from the labour market. After recruitment of every new employee it is important for the company to have a fixed training session which will enable the new recruiters to understand the challenge that they have to face within the workplace of the company and also understand the importance of stress management process in doing job for the organisation.

Conclusion 

The lack of working candidates and skills in the labor market of Australia is believed to be one of key challenges that are farced by large scale corporations like Woolworth in order to improve upon their performance. The demographic and cultural diversity is also regarded as one of the major issues that are encountered by all business organization.  

It is important for all the companies in the retail sector to have effective selection procedure to deal with all the challenge in the workplace and also ensure that only the deserving candidates get the job.    

References

Alonso, R. (2015). Recruitment and selection in organizations.

Bryson, J., James, S., & Keep, E. (2013). Recruitment and selection. Managing human resources. Human Resource Management in transition, 125-149.

Cappelli, P., & Keller, J. R. (2014). Talent management: Conceptual approaches and practical challenges. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 1(1), 305-331.

Gurkov, I. (2014). Management practices in Russian manufacturing subsidiaries of foreign multinational corporations: challenging some beliefs about contemporary Russian industrial management. Post-Communist Economies, 26(2), 220-240.

Indolfi, L., Iaconetti, C., Monteforte, A., Dunn, A., Baker, A., Indolfi, C., & Edelman, E. (2014). Harnessing cell: materials interactions to develop innovative strategy for the recruitment of progenitor cells. In Society for Biomaterials. Annual Meeting.

Luzurier, Q., Damm, C., Lion, F., Daniel, C., Pellerin, L., & Tavolacci, M. P. (2015). Strategy for recruitment and factors associated with motivation and satisfaction in a randomized trial with 210 healthy volunteers without financial compensation. BMC medical research methodology, 15(1), 2.

Özçelik, G. (2015). Engagement and retention of the millennial generation in the workplace through internal branding. International Journal of Business and Management, 10(3), 99.

Rees, G., & Smith, P. (Eds.). (2017). Strategic human resource management: An international perspective. Sage

Stone, D. L., & Deadrick, D. L. (2015). Challenges and opportunities affecting the future of human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), 139-145..

Waddington, J., & Kerr, A. (2015). Joining UNISON: does the reform of a union organising strategy change how members perceive their recruitment?. Industrial Relations Journal, 46(3), 187-207.