Recruitment Procedure Of Tesco PLC: Challenges And Strategies

Discuss about the Recruitment Procedure Of Tesco PLC And The Challenges That Are Faced By The Company.

For the success of an organization, the quality of its human resources plays an important role. It is essential for the human resource managers to place the right person in the right job with the right skills and competencies. However, there are various challenges that HR manager has to face during the recruitment process (Chen & Huang, 2009). This report, in this regard, discusses the case study of Tesco PLC which focuses on its recruitment process along with the challenges that are faced by the company while recruiting the potential candidates.

The report also aims at discussing the strategies that can be used by the HR department of the company to overcome the recruitment challenges. The thesis statement for this report may be stated as “whether the human resource department of the company, Tesco PLC also faces challenges in the recruitment process or not.”

Tesco PLC headquartered at England is a British general merchandise and multinational grocery retailer. The company works across eight countries and has its stores in Ireland, Asia, Europe, Malaysia, Hungary, and Thailand. The company was founded in the year 1919; however, it expanded its operations in the early 1990s where it diversified from grocery selling to books, electronics, clothing, financial services, and furniture and internet services (Ryle, 2013).

The company is currently listed on London Stock Exchange and has approximately 6500 stores across different markets. The company also has a wide employee base where it has employed more than 476,000 employees. The company has adopted a positive approach towards its employees where it ensures to provide training and development opportunities to its employees on a regular basis. It even ensures that any changes made in the processes, stores, policies or structures, its employees are the first one to be informed (TESCO PLC, 2017). It is employee-centric organization, the focus of which is on being a great employer.

Recruitment may be defined as a process of searching for potential employees for the business and motivating them to apply for the job vacancies in the organization. It is a process through which the company ensures that the best-qualified personnel are hired for the job profiles at the correct time and in a cost-effective manner (Devi & Banu, 2014). It includes analyzing the requirements of a job, stimulating the potential candidates to apply for the job, selecting the best possible candidate, hiring and integrating him to the working of the organization (Bhoganadam & Rao, 2014).

Recruitment Process of the Company

In the context of the recruitment process of Tesco PLC, the company uses different modes for advertising about the job vacancies, depending upon the nature of the job. Before opening the vacancy for the other people, the company advertises the job vacancies on the intranet within the company. It focuses on its internal talent program and on those employees who are interested in moving to new positions, either a promotion or at the same level.

If the managers do not find a suitable match for the concerned profiles, it advertises about such vacancies on its websites and through the vacancy boards present in its stores. The interested candidates make online applications on the company’s websites, especially if the nature of the posts is managerial. The shortlisted candidates are asked for the telephonic interview which is followed by a mandatory attendance at the assessment centers where the final selection of the candidates is made (TESCO Careers, 2017).

For the store vacancies, the company usually uses the vacancy boards; however, for the specialist jobs, the company makes use of the external sources for advertising the vacancies. For such positions, the company advertises on its websites, radio, television, offline media, placing advertisements in magazines including ‘The Appointment Journal’ and Google. The focus of the company is to hire best-qualified candidates for the job in the most cost-effective manner, but on a timely basis, it uses expensive advertising strategies for advertising about its jobs so that the company can have a wide talent base to choose from (Tesco Underwriting Limited, 2017).

Recruitment is a wide term and it includes different activities that are focused on hiring an appropriate for a job opening in the most cost effective manner. It is necessary that the human resource department of the company carefully undertakes these activities so that the recruitment and selection can be made for the best candidate. However, there are certain factors that are internal and external to the organization that affects the recruitment process and poses challenges for the human resource manager to hire the potential employees (Juhdi et al., 2010).

The factors that create challenges during the process of recruitment can be categorized under two heads, namely- internal factors and external factors. Even if the company is able to overcome the challenges created by the internal factors, there are still the external factors that almost every organization has to face. The seriousness of such external challenges, however, varies from organization to organization depending on the nature of the job and the place where it is operating. The company, Tesco PLC also has to face the external challenges in the different markets where it operates and serves its customers.

Challenges faced by the Human Resource Managers during Recruitment Process

The internal factors also known as endogenous factors refer to the attributes that are present within the organization and affects the recruitment process. Some of these are discussed below:

• The size of the company: The literature indicates that the size of the organization often determines the quality and the success of the recruitment process. If the organization is bigger in size, it is likely to have fewer problems while recruiting potential employees and vice versa (Florea& Mihai, 2014).
• Recruiting Policy: The policy adopted by the companies to hire employees from external sources or within the organization also affects its recruitment. In general, companies prefer to opt for the internal recruitment, as the employees are already familiar with the organizational working (Ekwoaba, Ikeije& Ufoma, 2015). In the context of Tesco PLC also, it is observed that the company initially tries to fill its vacancies through internal talent plan. However, when the appropriate employees are not available for the vacancies, it becomes a challenge for the company to hire from the external sources, as the cost of recruitment in such scenarios is usually higher.
• Image of the Organization: The reputation that a company has in the market also serves as a detrimental factor in the recruitment process. The organizations which do not have a positive image in the market and which is not fulfilling its social obligations or rendering public services, often face challenges in stimulating the candidates to apply for the jobs in the organization (Balasubramanian, 2014). However, Tesco PLC does not face this challenge as it is an employee and society centric organization, the focus of which is to render its services to the public.

On the other hand, there are certain other factors that are beyond the control of the organization and have a direct impact on the recruitment process of a company. These factors are termed as external factors. These challenges are difficult for the human resource managers to overcome. It usually requires carefully planned strategies on the part of the company, so that the impact on the recruitment process can be minimized. These factors are as follows:

• Demographic factors: The demographic factors are those that are related to the human resources and have a profound impact on the recruitment and selection process. The demographic factors include age, sex, literacy level, economic status and other factors. The literature indicates that majority of the workforce population in the US comprised of the baby boomers who were born between the period of 1946 to 1964. In the current scenario, the ratio of the young people joining the workforce market will be less in comparison to the jobs vacated by the baby boomers (Doverspike et al., 2000). This would result in a huge workforce gap which poses a big challenge for the human resource managers of the companies.
• Labor Market Conditions: The conditions of supply and demand of the labor in the market also affect the recruitment process of the companies. For instance, if there is an increased demand for the skilled labor in the industry whereas the supply of such skilled labor is comparatively less, the companies are required to exert more efforts for attracting the labors towards the companies’ jobs (Agyeman& Ponniah, 2014; Oyetunde & Ayeni, 2014).
• Labor Laws and Legal Considerations: Tesco PLC operates in a number of countries and each country has a separate labor law and legal obligations which are required to be fulfilled by the company. These conditions may be in regard to working hours, working conditions, safety and health aspects and compensation. It is necessary for the human resource managers to take care of the laws and other practices so that the recruitment process in such locations is easier (Islam& Rahman, 2015; Stoilkovska, Ilieva & Gjakovski, 2015).

In addition to this, internal and external factors, there are certain additional challenges that the company faced in the context of recruitment. It is difficult for the company to manage the recruitment process for all its locations (TribePad, n.d.). It also has to ensure improving the efficiency of its recruitment process and maximizing the candidates’ experiences at the time of the interviews and entire recruitment process (Hopping, 2016). Another concern for the company is to reduce its recruitment costs for the recruitment that is made through external sources.

If a company intends to overcome these challenges and minimize their impact on the recruitment process, it is recommended that it carefully plans and develops different strategies for the same.

• In order to deal with the demographic challenges, the company should develop a strategy that aims at providing the training and development until the end of the career so that the long-term employability can be safeguarded (Bossaert, Demmke & Moilanen, 2012).
• For the internal challenge such as an image of the organization, the company may adopt the employer branding strategy to reinforce its positive image in the mind of potential candidates. This will help in making a good corporate image, brand loyalty and eventually will enhance the overall productivity (Wallace et al., 2014).
• One of the concerns for every human resource manager is to reduce the cost of recruitment. For reducing this cost, it is recommended that the company should adopt creative recruiting whereby the technology should be leveraged so that the cost is reduced. This can be done through video conferencing instead of face to face interviews, inviting social media applications, and collaborations with associations, colleges, and governments (Varshney & Kanchan, n.d.).

Conclusion

On the basis of the above discussion, it is concluded that there are various factors that affect the recruitment process of Tesco PLC. These factors are both internal and external to the working of the organization. The major recruitment challenges that are faced by the company are external to it and which are beyond its control. As the company is operating in different countries, it has to follow different labor laws and comply with the legal considerations that are applicable in those countries.

Moreover, the demographic factors and the supply and demand conditions also pose significant challenges to the recruitment process of the company. The strategies such as the employer branding, creative recruitment strategies and delayed training and development opportunities for safeguarding the long-term employability of the employees can help the company to overcome such challenges to a great extent. Therefore, the thesis statement can be restated as “the human resource department of the company, Tesco PLC also faces challenges in the recruitment process.”

References

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Recommended Strategies to Overcome the Recruitment Challenges

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