Key Challenges In Recruitment Faced By Tesco's HR Department: An Essay.

Human Resources Strategies of Tesco

Question:

Discuss about the Managing Human Resources of Tesco and Identify Some Of The Key Challenges For Recruiting The Workforce.

The human resources department of an organization like Tesco is the part that builds up the root of the organization. It, therefore, acts as the process that can be a change agent which works for the replacement of the role of the personnel department as well as the specific function rather than carrying out the replacement of an outdated personnel department. Tesco is a well-known brand in the retail market that has developed their culture through the extension of their logo that specifically helps in the fulfilment of their commitment to the employees as, well as the customers(Tesco, 2017). Thus this report reflects the key challenges that Tesco faces during the completion of its commitment. The knowledge regarding the key challenges will provide the proper path to find requisite and effective solutions to increase their business in the competitive market.

As mentioned in the above section the report is supposed to reflect the requisite information regarding the key challenges that are faced by the human resources department and which is hindering the growth of the business in the international market. As per Alan & Chloe,  while considering the human resources rules and specifications then it can be seen that the company’s human resource strategies spin around the work simplification, challenging unwritten rules along with the rolling out of the effective skills of the employees as well as their performance management (Alan & Chloe, 2013). But out of all the crucial part is the recruitment part which poses threat to all the ongoing processes. Thus the organization some of the issues that are basically raised during the recruitment and keeping that into account the requisite solutions are found which will mitigate the problem(Aladwan, Bhanugopan& Fish, 2014).

As per Bansal, recruitment is the initial process that takes the organization towards the path of success. It is because the company owns skilled, efficient and experienced labour supply that makes the fulfilment of the goals and objectives of the organization (Bansal, 2014). Therefore the challenges that the selected by considering the particular characteristics are:

• The ongoing process of Recruitment: The organization is basically facing issues due to the high amount of staff turnover just because the employees are getting better as well as attractive offer elsewhere. Thus the reasons of the ongoing recruitment can be of various types that basically disrupts the business processes (Budhwar&Varma, 2013). By tat manner it is seemed to that the customers will be regularly receive the bad services with the recruitment of wrong people in the frontline roles. But out of all the reasons of high staff turnover one reason is the job position being unattractive or the recruitment of the wrong person for the desired role (Cascio, 2013). This makes the organization continually recruiting. Thereafter the pressure increases and the hiring managers cannot control the quality of recruits.
• Lack of Decision Making: According to Chang-Richards, et al, the decision making process is one of the big challenges which pose threat during the fulfilment of the responsibilities. For that reason the quick decision must be made. The hiring managers or the higher management should take effective decision to take the first position to hire the efficient and skilled candidates quickly. Thus the lack of effective decision making makes the management to lose the good and skilled candidate to a competitor (Chang-Richards, et al., 2015, July).
• Decentralization of the Recruitment: The lack of expertise of the managers in the organization or its other outlets brings the condition of decentralization of the recruitment. It is because the recruitment as well as the selection of the effective people in the shop is directly linked to the productivity as well as the profitability of the organization. This challenge in Tesco is faced in many of the outlets which decreases the percentage of sales of the organization (Edwards & Bach, 2013).
• Lack of effective Advertising: Most of the candidates carry out their recruitment process by attracting the eligible candidates through marketing and effective advertising. And specifically in the retail sector like Tesco the company should attract a diverse range of applicants from various age groups, qualification and ethnicity (Fechter, Oelberger&McWha-Hermann, 2017). This brings the organization to choose efficient candidates for their increase of productivity as well as profitability. But in condition of lack of effective advertising the hiring managers will not be able to find requisite qualities that should be within the right person. Thus the lack of effective advertisement enables the organization to face challenge in finding the right candidate for their organization.
• The last challenges that Tesco faces in recruitment in not understanding the mentality of the candidates coming for the interview. In that context, it can be said that at some point the candidates are also the definitive customers of the organizations which must be taken care of. Thus the organization needs to attract the right candidates like their customers. It is very clear from the scenario that the applicants generally apply for the jobs to Tesco. The reason behind it is the brand name of Tesco which liked by the people. Thus by liking the brand as well as the values the candidates get attracted to apply for jobs in Tesco. So the company also treat the applicants as the customers (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin&Cardy, 2015).

As far as the recruitment process of Tesco is concerned, it includes the selection of suitable candidates from various applicants by making the appropriate use of the specification and description of the job (McDonnell, Scullion & Lavelle, 2013). There are various factors that have both short term and long term effects on the recruitment process of Tesco which can be categorized as follows:

There is a high turnover rate of turnover of employees in the retail industry which is very much experienced by Tesco. This means the employees come and go on a routine basis that leads various challenges. Most of the time the retails like Tesco experience the highest rate of" no show" for the recruitment interviews as the candidates get a better offer from other company. This is not basically because the job is unattractive or the candidates who come for the recruitment are not appropriate. As per Peter & Robert, there are probabilities that the applicants may only feel like working on a temporary basis as in most of the cases the candidates are students who want to have a part-time experience and earn pocket money or they may want to simply make extra money as the stopgap (Peter & Robert, 2015). Thus, there is a demand for the labour in Tesco which is majorly affected by the high rate of employee turnover. One of the reasons for the labour supply that is influencing the recruitment in Tesco is the early stage recruitment that is conducted one-to-one most of the time. Most of the candidate applies for a high street retailer like Tesco which is local for them which results in increasing the chances that the candidates will walk in directly to ask for a job. This provides a huge opportunity for the store managers to establish a positive association with them in the outlets. However, the regular walk-ins disrupt the operation and functions of the managements when the walk-ins happen on a regular basis (Snell, Morris &Bohlander, 2015). If the manager finds it extremely required regarding the need of someone at the moment, an appointment can take place of whoever comes to the recruitment at the moment without even assessing properly the suitability of that person for the retailer. The conditions of the employment in the community where the outlets of Tesco are located have been influencing the efforts regarding the recruitment of Tesco (Stone, 2013). Even the informal attempts during the recruitment time like the announcements in the meetings or the displays at the notice boards of the requisition will attract a lot of applicants provided there is huge manpower at the recruitment time.

Challenges Faced by Tesco

The image of Tesco acts as a potential constraint for the recruitment process. Tesco has a positive goodwill and image as an employer which makes it easy to retain and attract the candidates in comparison to any other retailer which has a negative image in the market. The image of Tesco is determined by the work it does and in what way it affects the society.  The positive image of the retailers also paves the way for the customers getting interested in joining as employees (Varma&Budhwar, 2013). This happens in the companies like Tesco which belongs to B2C industry. It both positively and negatively attracts the candidates which affect the recruitment process. The applicants who apply for the jobs in Tesco are attracted because they like the brand and the values of the company. This also denotes that Tesco has been rejecting by levelling up the criteria and suitability standards which hurt most of the rejected candidates which happen to be the customers of Tesco most of the time (Varma&Budhwar, 2013).

Diversified workforce creates issues for Tesco during the recruitment process. The gender biases which happen during the process of recruitment are affecting the quality of the workforce that Tesco has. The preference of fairer sex is undermining the image of the company. The most pressing concern that Tesco is also facing is the implications f the people who are working longer with respect to the age strategies of Tesco (Wirtz&Heracleous, 2013). The availability of manpower within and outside TESCO has been an important factor in the recruitment process of Tesco. Tesco has to rely upon the internal sources when it does not find suitable candidates from outside recruitment which leads to many corruption and inappropriate strategies.

Tesco should focus on the in-depth analysis of job and profiling of roles that would reveal the qualities and competencies that it needs in the new recruits. To be aware what is beneficial and which is not in the role would help the recruiters of the company in understanding what they would be assessing. They would also get the idea regarding the target of the training and the participation that they would need in the job role. Tesco should attempt mobile enabled pre-assessment which would provide the company with a realistic job preview in interactive, short evaluation which would be described in the career section of the website of the retailer. It would describe the realities of the job role and would assist the potential candidates in making a decision regarding the culture and job of Tesco. If the recruitment process would be mobile-enabled, the recruiters can ask the walk-in candidates to go through the applications and self-asses their suitability. Tesco can also initiate applications that are on the spot initials. Tesco can use the realistic job preview of the interested candidate for walk-in and can make quick psychometric assessments, situational judgments tests along with the short interview.

All of this would be integrated and automated with the application tracking system.  This would prove to be a quick and efficient process that would enable Tesco to respond rapidly by screening all candidates in an effective way. This type of on-spot approach would help Tesco to handle the recruitment process along with gaining much control over the human touch. This structure is less disruptive for the managers of the stores in which their lack of experience in the recruitment would not hinder the recruitment process during assessing the qualities of the candidates. For a forward thinking retailer like Tesco, inviting the candidates for the key roles to the centres of assessment would reflect the creativity. The candidates can be able to take part in the interactive and practical activities, customer interaction and along with the situational judgmental, that would be required during the jobs.  By making use of the tablets, the recruitment managers of Tesco can deploy the video clips along with conducting quizzes  that can be instantly tracked for which the recruitment department would not have to take the worry regarding the printing and making hard copies of the materials.

Conclusion:

The report deals with the in-depth analysis of the issues and challenges that arise during the process of recruitment in an organization like Tesco. The current process of recruitment along with the role of the management of the organization in making effective hiring or workforce is discussed in the report. The secrets of being a successful recruiter in the retail industry, Tesco has to treat every candidate with respect and care along with making good us of technology in order to make the selection process very fast and convenient as far as possible. This way, the managers of the outlets would be able to hire a better quality of staff within the least of disruption.

References

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