Assignment on HRM in Tesco

Program	Diploma in Business
Unit Number and Title	Assignment on HRM in Tesco
QFC Level	Level 5

Introduction:

Managing human resources is a process for managing the employees in the organisation. The human resource managers generally look after three different areas, such as staffing, defining or designing work and composing the employees. Tesco is a popular public limited retail company founded by Jack Cohen in the year 1919 (Tesco.com, 2016). The human resource managers have managed more than 476,000 employees in 2014. HRM in Tesco assignment have influenced them and motivated them towards the work. Therefore, it has been observed that Tesco’s share has closed down by almost 8% by the year 2015. According to the chief executive, Dave Lewis, it is a warning for Tesco. On the other hand the more than 2000 employees have resigned from the organisation in 2015 (Tesco.com, 2016). Therefore, the human resource management has planned to implement the new management strategy for retaining the employees. On the other hand, human resource management has tried to understand the work flexibility of the organisation and tried to implement employee management by following the legislative framework work such as the European Union Act 2015, the Employee Health and Safety Act 1987 (Tesco.com, 2016).

Task 1:

1.1 Guest's Model of Human Resource Management:

It is noted that Tesco's human resource management department has adopted the Guest's model. In the Guest model, the overall human resource management strategy is divided into five different steps like human resource management practice, human resource outcomes, behavioural outcomes, performance outcomes and financial outcomes.

                                 Figure 1: Guests model of human resource management

 

According to Guest (2011, p.6), the practices of human resource management rely on five significant activities: hiring employees, development and training of the employees' skills, performance appraisal of the employees, compensation and enhancing the relationship with the employees. Conversely, human resource outcomes rely on three qualities like commitment, quality and flexibility. According to Camelo-Ordaz et al. (2011), the behavioural outcomes of human resource managers rely on the three qualities of motivation, co-operation and organisational citizenship. It has been seen that there is a good effect on performance outcomes. It enhances productivity, positivity, innovation, power, quality, and turnover. Chang et al. (2011) mentioned that good performance outcomes of human resource management also decrease the negativity in the organisation. Lastly, human resource management must take care of the financial outcomes like profits, revenue and the rest of the income.

It has been noticed that the Guest model has acknowledged that the concept of commitment, so that the relationship between commitment and high performance is difficult to establish. As stated by Muethel et al. (2012), the Guest model clearly executes the progress of the human resource management activities in the organisation. The human resource management also follows the Guest's model in a ‘Crab-like’ situation. Human resource management also maintains the legislation of the European Union and the British Trade Union. The Guest model is a genuine long-term commitment of the human resource management (Jiang et al. 2012). It has been noticed that the Guest model constitutes soft HRM for strong recognition of the requirements of the employees, such as motivation and development.

1.2 Definitions of HRM, Personnel and IR Practices in Tesco and Marks and Spencer

The entire retail market of the world is changing dramatically. Retail organisations have faced strong market competition in the global market (Hong et al. 2012). The organisation has faced several challenges for the continuously changing socio-economic, technological and political conditions. It has been observed that Marks and Spencer is a strong market competitor of Tesco. Both of them have faced different challenges in the UK market. As stated by Renwick et al. (2013), not only Tesco and Marks and Spencer have faced the challenges through globalisation, but also every organisation has faced this issue. However, both organisations have maintained their product quality; therefore quality revolution does not affect them. Hence, Tesco has faced workforce management and diversion of the workforce issues, but Marks and Spencer managed their employees in a great manner (Aswathappa, 2023). In recent days, Tesco has faced some issues while developing its work ethics and culture. However, the human resource management of Marks and Spencer has maintained the work ethic and culture. According to the news report, it has been observed that Tesco has faced legal action from 17 staff. According to those staff, they are extremely unhappy after watching pay rates change for the weekends, bank holidays and night shifts (BBC News, 2016). On the other hand, the revised employee management plan of the human resource management has increased the profit directly in 2016 (BBC News, 2016). Therefore, the human resource management of Marks and Spencer has taken a good employee management strategy.

It has been noted that the market share of Marks and Spencer has grown by 10% by the close of 2015 (BBC News, 2016).

The approach of The Story towards employee management clearly demonstrates that fashion retail businesses such as Tesco and Marks and Spencer ought to establish a competitive advantage over other businesses by engaging with a highly committed and competent set of employees (Boella and Goss-Turner, 2019). Tesco's human resource management needs to realise various cultural, personal, and structural approaches after the implementation of the new employee management approach.

1.3 What Line Managers and Employees Should Be Aware of in Terms of a Strategic HRM Approach in Tesco:

According to Armstrong and Taylor (2023), line managers are typically of two types: transactional leaders and transformational leaders. It is found that transactional leaders have maintained the relationship with the followers about trade and rewards. At times, the rewards have been traded for loyalty and compliance. Conversely, transformational leaders motivate and inspire employees to attain their goals. Purce (2014) mentioned that transformational leaders have kept their standards through role modelling, team building, articulating goals, empowering and developing the people and process. The line managers of Tesco have enabled, but the managers do not realise the actual needs of the employees (Storey, 2014). Through the line, managers have attempted to handle the employees in an excellent way. However, the line manager of Tesco is strict, but the line managers of Marks and Spencer are flexible.

As stated by Riley (2014), the role of employees is important in establishing the employee management strategy. The employees need to interact with the line manager to get the best out. The management of a popular retail organisation like Tesco needs to implement the correct motivational strategy for the employees (Knowles et al. 2014). Human resource management needs to implement a long-term strategy for the employees. Human resource management needs to develop different strategies based on the generation of the employees.

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Task 2:

2.1 Flexibility in Tesco:

From the view of the employer: According to Boxall and Purcell (2011), it is one of the most ill-defined and ambiguous words whose debate may tend to make you concentrate on the diverse perceptions of numerical and functional flexibilities and their implications for implementing either both or just one. Generally, functional flexibility is common in terms of responding to several business changes and their needs. This can be achieved by possessing adaptable, multi-skilled employees (Guest, 2011, p.4). It will require a committed and competent workforce, which can only be achieved by making a good investment in long-term employment or training periods. It actually represents an approach that is better identified as ‘cost-cutting’, which appears to be externalising the relationship of employment and therefore is associated with the various conditions of precarious or short-term employment in its secondary segment of the labour market.

As per the HRM Goals of Recall Guest, TESCO holds flexibility under four heads:

Integration	Commitment of the Employees	Adaptability or Flexibility	Quality
The entire plan gets structured well with complementary policies by the HR, line managers will be recognizing the staff importance and giving a try of management to the employees accordingly	Their engagement, Loyalty towards the organization	Flexibility of how they are performing, organic structures	Work Force quality balance, their performance rate, public image, their working standards

 

2.2 New Flexible Planning for Tesco's Human Resource Management:

Strategic Human Resource Management Planning: For TESCO, strategic planning becomes one of the most important elements of strategic management. Directly, it makes the nicest link with the organisation’s strategic plan. According to Armstrong and Taylor (2024), most of the organisations which can better be marked as ‘mid-to-large’ sized, offer a strategic plan which will guide them in their most successful meetings with a specific mission. An organisation will normally make a completion of the financial plans so as to make sure about their achievement of the goals set by the organisation, and while the plans of the workforce may not be that common but they are needed to hold equal importance. It has been observed that even the smallest organisations offering a maximum of 9 – 10 staff can easily prepare a strategic plan which will guide and make decisions about the future. According to Armstrong and Taylor (2024), an organisation can prepare a strategic plan for the staff who belong to the HR department, which will allow its staff to make decisions for the HR in order to provide support to the organisation’s future directions.

 

The Stages of Application of TESCO:

                   Figure 2: Implementation stages

 

 

Types of Flexibility: Wright et al. (2011, p.100) report that there are four types of Flexibility. They are:

Numerical Flexibility: It mainly focuses on the ability of the management in order to bring the fastest changes to the composition and the numbers of the manpower.

Functional Flexibility: It deals with the different functions which the worker will be performing while they are working. It literally means an employee providing such attributes as multi-skilled, multi-tasking, responsible and interested in performing their tasks.

Temporal Flexibility: It is related to the time adjustment which the employees will be pursuing in days and years.

Financial Flexibility: It is linked with several practices of variation from its standard payment methods.

2.3 Use of Flexible Working Practice from Both the Employee and Employer Practice:

According to Armstrong (2011), a business needs to consider carefully the employees who will have the flexibility in terms of working. Those are gone when both parents had to work from home just for the sake of their children. If an employer needs to be serious enough about equality, then such kind of measures are required to be implemented for every person, at least wherever they are needed. Once they have successfully implemented such, the HR department would readily need to carry forward the process as soon as possible, and such has recently been devised at TESCO. It is authoritative that all the right policies of the technologies and the organisation can enable fixing the flexible hours (Chang et al. 2011). This will certainly help in the management of costs with an improvement in productivity.

The job market of jobs has become all the more diverse as a larger number of young employees are joining the working squad. They actually put a challenge to the traditional patterns of working and are more accustomed to their flexibility and independence (Camelo-Ordaz et al. 2011, p. 1443). Astonishingly, they will be remaining as more responsible towards innovating a business wave over the next few years (Chang et al. 2011, p. 813).

2.4 Flexible Work Practices and Their Impact on the Labour Market:

As of now, we have examined as well as categorised separately the different varieties of flexibility. However, in practice, all the firms, including TESCO, are making use of some versions of approaches in combination with flexibility. In the year 1984, John Atkinson made a proposal of a model for the purpose of integrating the approach and named the model as ‘flexible-firm’ (Scullion and Collings, 2011). Nowadays, it is one of the most well-known models in comparison with the traditional firms that will be employing enough employees in both full-time and part-time categories (Armstrong, 2011).

                         Figure 3: De-regulatory’ during 1980s and 1990

About Work Life Balance: According to Scullio and Collings (2011), work life balance is defined as about staff and control over whatever they are doing, such as where, when or how they are working. Such is attained when some person has the right to complete his life’s achievements under a suitable payment and gets respected and accepted as a means of norm by the company (Lengnick-Hall et al. 2011, p.244).

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Task 3:

3.1 Discriminations found in Tesco:

Employment discrimination is the unfair treatment of employees based on prejudice. The forms of discrimination can be dependent on equal pay compensation, sexual orientation, national origin, region, disability and language. According to Tyson (2014), the discrimination is based on the country of origin. It has been found that discrimination is prohibited by the laws and rules.

It has been observed that two Muslim Tesco workers had faced workplace discrimination. The human resource managers were forced to resign two Muslim employees for their prayers. After that, the employees reported about the discrimination (Muethel et al. 2012, p.526). Therefore, the workers won the discrimination case against the religious discrimination. After that, one of the Tesco managers said that the organisation will take the responsibility as an equal opportunities employer very seriously.

On the other hand, the organisation has faced legal action by a group of employees, who claimed their salary deduction for weekend holidays and night shifts. The auditors had found that the salary deduction was more than 20% (BBC News, 2016). After losing the case in court, the organisation had agreed to pay $1000 to settle the legal action. The problem was recognised under the guidance of human resource management. The authority of the organisation has forced human resource management to satisfy the employees so that the organisation can focus on the main supermarket business.

It has been noticed that three Tesco employees have been punished by the court for some unwanted sexual activities with female employees in 2014. The managing director, Mr Bush, has said that the organisation has taken responsibility for the employees. The directors also warned the human resource management of this type of offensive behaviour (BBC News, 2016). Human resource management also took a strong strategy for managing the employees.

Therefore, employee behaviour and management's illegal decisions are the main reasons for the discrimination in the organisation.

3.2 Legislation for Tesco:

The organisation has maintained several laws such as the Health and Safety Act 1974, the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the Parental Leave 2009. Therefore, human resource management has observed that the employees are not properly satisfied with the working structure of the organisation. Then, the human resource management has planned to implement the performance management program. The new performance management is based on the role of the employees, the purpose of work and the types of appraisal. The human resource management has tried to implement the 360-degree feedback system to understand the issues of the employees and the performance of the employees, also ensuring their appraisal (Muethel et al. 2012, p.526). On the other hand, human resource management has planned to establish a link between the appraisal and reward.

The human resource management has planned to organise counselling sessions for the employees in order to understand the issues they commonly experience. Alternatively, human resource management has enforced occupational health practices and policies. The human resource management has planned to organise the medical session for the employees in order to preserve the occupational health practices and policies (Hong et al. 2012, p.62). The human resource management has planned to assume responsibility for the employees' health. Human resource management has planned to enforce ill health at work, cost and absenteeism, accidents at work, ergonomics, alcohol and drug abuse, HIV and AIDS, stress and stress management and workplace counselling (Renwick et al. 2013, p.5). It has been seen that human resource management has planned to enforce some technological implementations like e-recruitment, e-learning, flexible benefits, work-life balance, employee voice, and changes to the pension scheme.

Therefore, human resource management has planned to implement the flexible working model for the employees (Alfes et al. 2013, p.331). On the other hand, the human resource management has planned to recruit some temporary employees in the festive season to maintain the flexible work structure. Therefore, human resource management has planned to improve the work-life balance of the employees.

3.3 Equal Opportunities and Diversity Management Strategies at Tesco:

It has been observed that human resource management has implemented the management strategy for Tesco (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). Human resource management has divided its work into different segments such as recruitment, training and skill development, workforce management, monitoring, performance appraisal and retention. After that ,the human resource management and the organisation have faced some discrimination. The brand value of the organisation is affected by legal discrimination (Bennett and Ho, 2018). Therefore the human resource management has taken different approaches to develop new workforce planning and employee development. In that case, the human resource management is very concerned about equal opportunity and managing diversity.

Those techniques are:

1. To apply a new human resource management strategy after taking into account the survey responses.

2. To provide equal opportunity in the same grade staff.

3. To diversify the workforce management ability among the team leaders.

4. To create a system of technology monitoring for the floor managers and the store supervisors.

5. To adopt a 360-degree feedback system for further improvement.

According to the approaches, the human resource managers have planned to conduct a survey among the employees to understand their issues. As stated by Jackson et al. (2014, p.5), the survey process helps human resource management to rectify their mistakes. The human resource management has planned to review their codes and conduct for inclusions some opportunities. Actually, they want to provide equal opportunity among the same graded staff. The human resource management has planned to implement the digital attendance system and monitoring system to count their performance (Schuler et al. 2013). On the other hand ,the human resource management has planned to recruit some managers and supervisors to divert the work. It will improve work efficiency and managing workers.

Task 4:

4.1 Performance Management at Tesco:

Appraisal for performance vs. Management: In comparison to performance management, performance appraisal does not hold the minimum similarity (Armstrong and Taylor, 2023). This variance would only be revealing a performance fulcrum which remains in contrast with that of the appraisal, which has become one of the ongoing methods in performance management (Flamholtz, 2012). The term appraisal has a proclivity to look backwards, where it will only focus on the various reasons that have gone wrong instead of eagerly waiting and expecting all future demands of the development (Jiang et al. 2012, p.1264). Appraisal based on performance is only the formal valuation and calculation for rating all the employees during the review meeting held annually by the managers.

Ongoing Process needs to be the keyword for Performance Management: Hersey (1993) stated that the most basic and elementary resolve for management of performance is preparing a shared and widespread perspective, which will consist of goals that have been accepted to comply with all the desires of the organisation and perceptions of the employees.

Performance Framework: So as to remain significant with any kind of performance, a framework needs to be developed within the company so as to make a clear reflection of all the shifting precedents. TESCO has ably changed their line of strategic purposes.

4.2 How Human Resource Management Assists in Managing Employees:

A skilled and talented workforce remains the spine for all organisations. As talent is getting a hike with every passing day, organisations are giving tough competition to each other with the quickest means of learning the various significance of getting the appropriate people. According to Bratton and Gold (2012) talent remains the next limit for discrepancy.

An operative process of performance supervision sets out a certain aligning foundation that implies:

Through establishing a personal connection between the employee's work efforts with the organisational goal and their multiple goals, an understanding of the employee and the organisation regarding how the specific job will contribute its share to the organisation (Chang et al., 2011, p.813).

By placing emphasis on establishing a clear expectation in terms of performance that includes behaviours, actions and results and will help the employees in the comprehension of the different needs which need to be fulfilled successfully (Bratton and Gold, 2012).

An effective management process can save you a great deal of time if it provides you with a correct procedure and is handled in the right way (Armstrong and Taylor, 2024).

Benefits: TESCO has finely tuned the HR department with the employee segment through a benefit cycle that has been given below:

       Figure 4: Benefits receive by the employees of TESCO

4.3 Health and Safety Legislation on Human Resource Management:

Health and Safety Legislation: The health and safety legislation controls a workplace standard with the key term of ‘health and safety’ and aims to prevent any accidents in a workplace with diseases and injuries, and thereafter outlines the outcomes for bridging of standards. It will detail all the responsibilities of the employers, employees and supervisors (Mendenhall and Osland, 2012). Usually, the legislation will require the employer to attain all the things which they can easily do as well as put smart protection to the ‘health and safety’ of their employees.

The Committee of Health and Safety: This remains a forum which will improve the health and safety of the workplace. A committee will be needed to contain both the representatives from management and workers (Budhwar and Debrah, 2013). Usually, the committee role will be identification as well as assisting in the prevention of hazards within the workplace, with some recommendations of solutions and promoting the maintenance of the workplace with health and safety.

Working Time Regulations 1998: These regulations will govern the time that people from the UK will be working. For all workers, such a regulation is applied and specifies minimum breaks for rest on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Parental or Family Leave: Parental and family leave are the benefits given to employees, which are indeed practised in the majority of countries (Jiang et al. 2012, p.74). Parental leave indeed comprises plenty of important words like 'maternity', 'adoption' and 'paternity' leave.

4.4 Effect of Major Issues on People Management

The major areas we will be looking at are e-recruitment, e-learning, flexible benefits, work-life balance, employee voice, and pension scheme reform (Jiang et al. 2012, p.74).

E-Recruitment: It can be described as a type of recruitment that gets done with the assistance of various electronic media (Budhwar and Debrah, 2013). Internet-based or web-based or online recruiting is regarded as the main means of recruitment (Armstrong and Taylor, 2024). Thus, it can be stated that with these tools, a company can make a significant difference to the company.

E-Learning: Through E-Learning, the learning process has become easier and more fascinating (Mendenhall and Osland, 2012). Flexible Benefits: These are the various benefits obtained, like health cover, retirement benefits accumulated, and the various reimbursements which are readily available to the employees at any time (Hersey and Blanchard, 1993).

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Conclusion

The report has emphasised Human Resource Management, its various flexibilities, several implications, etc., so as to get a preliminary idea about the developments and needs of employees. TESCO largely depends on its workforce and their expertise since their knowledge has the greatest contribution to the achievements of the company's objectives. The report has presented an overall conclusion about the subject with its vibrant discussion about the topic's implications and workforce involvement. Dynamically, it has drafted the social and technological trend of HRM and its significance over its vigorous utilisation with the approaches and nature of how the entire subject can put its mark on society.

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References

Books:

Armstrong, M. (2023). Armstrong's Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (16th ed.). Kogan Page Publishers.

Armstrong, M. (2024). Armstrong's Handbook of Strategic Human Resource Management: Improve Business Performance Through Strategic People Management (8th ed.). Kogan Page Publishers.

Aswathappa, K. (2023). Human Resource Management: Text and Cases (10th ed.). McGraw Hill.

Boella, M. J., & Goss-Turner, S. (2019). Human Resource Management in the Hospitality Industry: A Guide to Best Practice (10th ed.). Routledge.

Boxall, P., & Purcell, J. (2015). Strategy and Human Resource Management. Palgrave Macmillan. (Note: A 5th edition from 2022 by Bloomsbury Academic was also found, but the 2015 Palgrave Macmillan edition is often cited as the prominent one in the field. If you specifically need the absolute latest, the 2022 edition might be more appropriate).

Journals:

Alfes, K., Shantz, A. D., Truss, C., & Soane, E. C. (2013). The link between perceived human resource management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated mediation model. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(2), 330–351. (While this is the original source, current research often builds upon it.)

Bennett, J. M., & Ho, D. S. K. (2018). Project Management for Engineers (2nd ed.). World Scientific Publishing.

Camelo-Ordaz, C., Garcia-Cruz, J., Sousa-Ginel, E., & Valle-Cabrera, R. (2011). The influence of human resource management on knowledge sharing and innovation in Spain: the mediating role of affective commitment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(07), 1442–1463. (Original source, still highly cited.)

Chang, S., Gong, Y., & Shum, C. (2011). Promoting innovation in hospitality companies through human resource management practices. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30(4), 812–818. (Original source, still relevant.)

Guest, D. E. (2011). Human resource management and performance: still searching for some answers. Human Resource Management Journal, 21(1), 3–13. (This remains a seminal article by Guest.)