Unit 23 Managing Human Resources Assignment - Waitrose

Introduction

Managing human resource is the term used for planning, developing and utilizing the workforce within organization and helps to meet the goals and objectives in professional and convincing manners. This is the responsibility of Human Resource (HR) department of organization to identify the factors influencing the performance and capabilities of staff and develop plan for motivating the employee and improve the flexibility at workplace to lead towards the effectiveness of operations. Unit 23 managing human resources Waitrose report will analyze the Guest’s model of HRM and compare difference between Storey definition of HRM, personnel and IR practices. It will also assess the implications for line manager and employees of developing a strategic approach for Waitrose food retailer organization. In the next part report will explain model of flexibility and discuss the types of flexibility that has been developed by Waitrose. This is a chain of  British supermarket  which is a firm of the food retail division of Britain’s largest employee owned John Lewis partnership. Moreover, report will explain the forms of discrimination that can take place in the workplace as well as compare the managing opportunities and diversity. At the end, report will assess the approaches used to manage employee welfare and evaluate the issues like use of technology, budget and labour. 

Task 1

1.1 Guest’s model of HRM applied to Waitrose

Guest’s model acknowledges the close links between HR strategy and general business strategies of differentiation focus and cost of organizational practices.  According to this model, high employee commitment is required for critical HR outcome, concerned with the goals of staff members and binding employees to organizational approach that supports to maintain the ethical behaviour and cooperation. Majorly this model is being used for establishing the relation between employee and employers which helps to evaluate the differences between human resources and personnel management. The management of Waitrose is following six dimensions of analysis which are listed below:

• HRM strategy: The human resource department of Waitrose is developing the strategies and planning for managing the human work force to perform the operations as well improve the efficiency in production to encourage the profit. This strategy helps to engage staff members to follow the culture and process of organization (Aswathappa, 2013).
• HRM practices: HRM practices plays critical part in the procedure of Waitrose food organization as the manager define the role and responsibility to individual according to capabilities and skills.   
• HRM outcomes: HRM outcomes in Waitrose basically include commitment, quality and flexibility. These say that the commitment should be there in the organisation among the employees and there should be flexibility in the operations and the quality standard should also be match in the Waitrose.
• Behaviour outcomes: A behavioural outcome in HRM means the outcome which we can  brought up with the help of motivation, cooperation, involvement of individuals and organisational citizenship will help in increasing the outcome of Waitrose by these using or having these behaviour outcomes (Buller and McEvoy, 2012).
• Performance outcomes: The outcome so received in the Waitrose organisation includes positive productivity, innovation, quality, low absence, low turnover and less conflicts and customer complaints.
• Financial outcomes: In financial outcome dimension of analysis, it includes increase in profits and high return on investment. This will help the Waitrose to grow and to have a sustain position in the competitive market.

                                        Figure 1: Dimensions of HRM

1.2 Differences between Storey’s Definitions of HRM, personnel and IR practices

Storey has defined the HRM as coherent and strategic approach to the management of a people, working there who collectively and individually contribute towards the growth of an organization. According to storey, people working in the organization and their contribution are organization’s most valued assets.  The Human Resource Management is very important to an organization like Waitrose and also they had a significant impact on the functioning of the organization. Further, Storey has discussed and distinguished the hard and soft forms of HRM. The hard HRM laid emphasis on the managing of the people working in the organization in such a way to obtain added value from them and also to achieve the competitive advantages. For this purpose the Hard HRM mainly focuses or concentrates on the measurable criteria, control, quantitative, and performance management. Where else the Soft HRM is defined as the treatment of the employees of an organization as a valuable asset (Storey and Sisson, 2014). They are the one of the source of getting the advantages of competition through their commitment, adaptability and high quality. Soft HRM boosts the interest of talented and brilliant people working in the Waitrose

The personnel management is also introduced and defined by the Storey apart from that. Storey defined personnel management as the management of the employees or the workforce working in the organization like Waitrose to perform with the rules that is required by the owners of the business. Personnel management is basically concerned with the employee’s law, recruitment and payroll. Personnel management helps in setting the priorities for the employees with the aim to encourage and motivate them to work in more efficient and dedicated manner. The IR practices according to the Storey refer to the study of the employment relationship. For maintaining the efficiency and effectiveness of managerial decisions these IR practices are very helpful (Storey, 2015). The Waitrose organization is the IR has three faces i.e. science building, problem solving and the last is ethical.

1.3 Implications for line managers and employees in order to develop a strategic approach for Waitrose

Strategic approach development is basically creating a planned approach for the development by focusing on the challenges and opportunities and by identifying the responsibilities for making the things happened. In order to develop a strategic approach, there are many several implications for line managers and employees working in the Waitrose. The main motto of the Waitrose organization is to increase its customer and to diversify its business all over. The line manager responsibility at Waitrose is to manage the policies of the business, applying the required leadership style, increasing the productivity and to improve the organization culture. With this motto of the Waitrose organization the responsibility on the line manager has increased. Analyzing the capabilities and the skills of workforce and the division of the work according to it are the major implications for the line managers. The culture and the policies implemented by the top level of management of the Waitrose organization with the purpose of increasing the production and its brand name should be properly considered by the line manager which helps line manager to avoid some implication that had an adverse effect (Gilbert.et.al.2011). The line manager is also responsible for bridging the top level management and the lower hierarchical staff. Due to daily contacts of line managers with the staff, line manager has also undertaken the several human resource responsibilities like recruiting, selecting, etc. The implication for line manager in order to develop a strategic approach leads to increase tin workload.

The employees working in the Waitrose is considered as a valuable asset of the Waitrose because their contribution helps the organization to grow and to have a sustainable position in the market.  Their hard work, talent, skill and contribution help in achieving the expectations and demands of the customers. Therefore, the managers of Waitrose have set various implications with the aim to motivate their workforce in order to achieve the goals and objectives of Waitrose organization. The various implications developed for employees are to maintain the quality standard for which the organization is known for (Alfes.et.al.2013). The implications are based on their contribution and their performance as individual and in team.  The implication taken in the Waitrose for employees includes bonus, improvement in salary, rewards, benefits, job security, etc.

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Task 2

2.1 How a model of flexibility might be applied in Waitrose

The flexibility can be defined as the ability of a system to vary its output within a certain range and in a given timeframe. Providing the flexibility to employees and employer has become an important aspect of consideration for Waitrose organization. Employment flexibility can be defined as flexible working which gives employees’ flexibility on how long, when and where they work Waitrose has changed its flexibility model so that their employees are able to meet both the personal and business needs.

The different types of employment flexibility exercised in Waitrose are full time employees, part-time employees, home-working, shift swapping and job sharing arrangements. Full time employees means worker employed for normal full-time hours and part-time means arrangement where worker is employed for less than the normal full-time hours. In shift swapping, freedom is given to workers to swap their shifts between themselves (Bock, 2012). Home working involves work being performed away from the employer’s premises. All such practices are allowed in only activities relating to merchandise. Such flexibility proves beneficial in achieving the goals of Waitrose. These types of employment flexibility helps in reaching the people practically who are talented but due to some reasons cannot perform their job in an inflexible environment. The various models of flexibility which are used in a Waitrose are as follows:

• Numerical Flexibility: this type of flexibility is used by an organization when the situation arises where they need either more or less staff. Such situations are controlled by increasing or reducing the staff in the organization (Xue & Xu, 2013). An organization now can easily control and handle the demand and supply activities using the numerical flexibility.
• Place-of-work flexibility: This type of flexibility enables to meet more closely the need of the staff in the organization. Home working is an example of the place-of-work flexibility.
• Functional flexibility: Functional flexibility means developing the skills of the employees of Waitrose with the purpose to deal with the wider variety of work (Ketkar and Sett, 2010). This helps the employees to be more comfortable in undertaking the task when the nature and type of work changes.
• Thus, using such flexibilities in the Waitrose would help the organization to meet the requirements in respect of the workers or staff in the organization.

2.2 Types of flexibility

The term flexible working covers the flexibility used in respect of the hours that are worked and the location. Different types of flexibilities used in working which are adopted by the Waitrose organization are as follows:

• Part-time working: In this type of work flexibility, workers are employed to work less than the standard, basic, full time hours. These are normally used when organization offers the job opportunities to those who are unable to perform their job in a normal standard time, like students.
• Staggered hours: In this working flexibility, employees have different start, finish and break times with the purpose of allowing a business of Waitrose to open for longer hours.
• Flexi-time: According to this flexibility, the employees are given full liberty to work in any of the way they choose outside a set core of hours determined by the company (Santos-Vijande.et.al.2012).
• Job sharing: In job sharing, employees are given freedom to split the one full-time job between the two employees on agreed hours between them.
• Shift swapping: This flexibility allows employees of Waitrose to arrange their shifts according to themselves and provided that all the shifts are covered.
• Compressed working hours: This allows the employees of Waitrose to cover their standard working hours in fewer working days.
• Annual hours: This type of flexibility is used in Waitrose when employees contracted hours are calculated over a year and the majority of shifts are been allocated and the remaining hours are kept as reserved so that they can be called in the short notice.
• Teleworking: This flexibility allows employees to perform its all or part of job anywhere outside employer’s premises.
• Career break: Waitrose undertakes this facility which allows its employees to take an extended period of time off either on the basis of paid or unpaid (Wei, 2014).

                                                        Figure 2: Working flexibility

Using above types of flexibility, an organization has some benefits and also the challenges associated with that. The benefits associated with these flexibilities are that the organization will not have the problem of losing their talented employee and also helps in motivating them to attain the targets in an efficient way. This flexibility leads the challenges related to quality in task.

2.3 Use of flexibility working practices for employees and employer

Flexibility helps Waitrose to improve the effectiveness and quality of operations carried on in the organization. The working flexibility used in Waitrose helps in motivating their employees so that they give their best in achieving the targets of the organization. These flexibilities encourage women to do their job while sitting in their home. The flexibility working practices provides benefits to both employees as well as to employers also. Benefits of flexible working practices in Waitrose for its employees are as follows:

• Flexible working practices enable an individual or employee to balance work and home commitments more readily.
• It helps them to increase the quality of life
• Flexibility in working helps in reducing the stress of employee
• Helps in achieving the greater level of job satisfaction
• During a period of temporary increased family commitments, allowed employees to maintain their career development and personal growth.
• Helps them to access to more interesting and better paid work
• Provides an ability to continue to work (De Menezes and Kelliher, 2011)

Usefulness of flexible working practices in Waitrose from the employer’s perspective is as follows:

• Flexible working practices helps in increasing the production level
• Helps in decreasing the absenteeism and employees turnover
• Employees will be more motivated who have job tailored to meet their needs
• These flexibility allows employees of Waitrose to develop and grow in their career
• Access to a pool of talent which might otherwise be unavailable

Thus from above, it is conclude that introduction of flexible working practices in Waitrose are beneficial with respect to both, from the aspect of employee and employer (Joyce.et.al.2010).

2.4 Impact of changes in the labour market on flexible working practices

Labour market can be defined as the place where workers and employees interact with each other. Labour markets may be local or national or even international in their scope with different qualification, skills and geographical locations. The continuous changes in labour market helps in minimum involvement of government regulations and the wages and conditions are also determined by the market forces. The changes in the labour market are quickly adopted by the flexible working hour. The impact of labour market changes in the flexible working practices in Waitrose is that the organization is now introducing various strategies for recruiting people whether graduate, under graduate or post graduate. It is noticed that that in UK, labour market is changed due to economic growth of countries and self employment is increased (Wilkinson, 2013). Many workers now prefer flexible employment patterns because it suits their life style and also offers a greater range of choice.

Due to this, Waitrose is employing people from different geographical regions. The people from different region are also joining Waitrose due to use of flexibility in working practices at workplace. The tremendous changes in the labour market are seen because of some of the factors such as industrialization, deindustrialization, liberalization and globalization. Due to this organization is trying various ways to sustain their talented  human resources  in the organization by preferring various practices of working flexibility. Due to flexible working now Waitrose is trying to employee women as labour in the organization (Helpman and Itskhoki, 2010).The negative impact that is seen on the flexible working practices in the Waitrose due to changes in labour is that the part time and temporary staffs does not get sufficient training because they are on short term contracts. Flexible labour markets also create greater job insecurity and stress.

Task 3

3.1 Different forms of discrimination that can take place in the workplace

Discrimination is the unfair treatment of employee in the workplace with respect to other employees those are also similar in qualities. Individual’s abilities and characters are ignored to do partial behaviour in distribution of roles and responsibilities to achieve personal benefits. Discrimination occurs when victim employee and beneficiate employee possess same characters as stated in Equality Act, 2010. Discrimination can be categorised in direct and indirect forms based on the protected characteristics. Protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sex as defined in Equality legislation (Altman, 2011).

• Direct Discrimination: It occurs when someone is treated as less favourable due to the certain protected characteristics in personality. For instance, someone in workplace may be treated less favourable for training, employment and promotion etc. some of direct discriminations are:
• Age Discrimination: It means to treat employee as less capable due to over age. For example, Beck, investment banker at CIBC is replaced with the young man by assuming that he is too old and not capable to do work due to age. Laws helped Beck to protect his rights and he was rewarded with 75K Euros to bear the loss during unemployment.
• Disability Discrimination: Employee with previous history of disabilities or relation with disable person should not be discriminated from others. Laws also help to protect the employees from harassment on disabilities (Wood.et.al.2013).

                                                        Figure 1: Forms of discriminations

• Race Discriminations: Employees with different in race like colour, nationality, refugee status etc should not be discriminated from other employees. For instance, Dr. Michalak won the discrimination rewards of 4.5 million dollars against the NHS hospital.
• Indirect Discriminations: Indirect discrimination occurs due to the organizational policies, practices and procedures to disadvantages the employees with similarities in protected characteristics. These discriminations may be unlawful if employer can provide the right reason behind the discriminations (Dipboye and Colella, 2013).

3.2 Practical implications of equal opportunity legislation

Equal opportunity is the right of employees to treat them without the discrimination, especially in age, sex and race. Equal opportunity legislation is the law statement that forbids the employers to discriminate the employees during the training time, employment, promotion and services (Hepple, 2010). Waitrose implements the equal opportunities legislation strictly to avoid the discrimination at workplace and to offer equal chances to all employees to learn and grow. Organization makes the use of lawyers and expertise to analyse the organizational policies and procedures to ensure the implementation of legislation at every level. Waitrose focuses on abilities of employees during the recruitment, employment, promotions and benefits related to employees without being the part of discrimination. It helps Waitrose to achieve motivated employees and avoids the conflict with laws.

Besides the good part, implementation of legislation impacts Waitrose in term of cost and time required to hire expertise to audit the procedures. Policies and decisions first need to be verified with experience of experts to avoid the conflict with laws and discrimination cases. As a result, organizational processes become slow and lack the freedom to meet the organizational goals (Snell and Bohlander, 2010). However, Waitrose prefer to invest on expertises rather than to puzzle with laws.

3.3 Approaches to manage equal opportunities and diversity

As stated in Equal Opportunity Act, employees in an organization should not be discriminated from benefits and opportunities due to the difference in age, sex or race. Equal opportunity is the right of employees to achieve equal chances of personal growth. Equal opportunity leads the diversity in workplace. Diversity management is related to achievement of organizational goal by treating employees as a unit rather than diverse natures. Waitrose uses the different approaches to meet equal opportunities and diversity in workplace. Recruitment process at Waitrose is transparent to clarify the requirements of organization. Waitrose emphasize on the skills and experience of candidates to achieve organizational growth and does not lead the discrimination in recruitment (Armstrong.et.al.2010). Alongside to it, Waitrose management provides training and workshop to encourage the employees to learn and grow without being discriminated. Performance and ability is the only parameter to measure employees and their contribution in workplace. As a result of equal opportunities, each level of Waitrose structure presents the diversity.

Another approach is open communication to listen from all employees. Individual’s thoughts and ideas are taken into count to understand their behaviour and expectations with organization. This is helpful for Waitrose to make the communication and strategies transparent to employees so that they can contribute to raise and protect their rights. Open communication at Waitrose helps management to understand the diversity and equal opportunities in workplace so that better policies can be formed to meet organizational goals easily (Cole and Salimath, 2013). Open communication is also necessary to build the effective teamwork of diverse talents which is only possible when organization and employees are satisfied with each other in term of fulfilment of their equal opportunity rights. Addition to it, Waitrose offers same accommodation and benefit at each level of organization.

Task 4

4.1 identify and compare the performance management methods

Performance management is a systematic approach to measure the contribution of employees in completion of a task. Waitrose uses two approaches to measure the performance of employees-

• Past Oriented Method: In this method, Waitrose measures the performance of employees after the completion of task. Organization uses the rating scale approach which is based on numeric values to indicate the performance achieved by employee. This is the traditional, easy and cost effective approach of performance management. Past oriented method also defined the forms filling techniques to consider the reviews from various sources. Forms may be include ticks, yes/no options or written comments to receive the information on performance of employee from other sources including other employees and team members (Van Dooren.et.al.2015). Occasionally, critical behaviour of employees is counted to measure the performance and it is possible that a single misbehave may reduce performance benefits.

                                           Figure 2: Performance Management Methods

• Future Oriented Method: This type of method is used to measure the performance against the defined objectives, targets and standards. Employees’ task contribution and quality in work is compared with the standards set by organization. Waitrose uses this approach to make the measurement procedure parallel to task progress. Thus, employees know their performance at each stage and have chance to meet the standards by improving their work. Waitrose also uses the 360 degree feedback system to measure the performance considering all sources of information. Individual’s feedback and response is used to rate the performance of an employee (Walker.et.al.2010).

Future oriented method is more appropriate for Waitrose because it notifies employees at each level so that they can improve. This method also results in a self-motivation within employees to meet the goals and standards.

4.2 Approaches used to managing employee welfare

The term ‘employee welfare’ is used to describe the services, benefits and facilities provided to employees by employers. Employee welfare is necessary to control the behaviour and motivation of employees towards the organization. In the context of Waitrose, two approaches are being described to understand the practices on employee welfare.

• Intramural Facilities: Facilities and services provided inside the organization are referred as intramural facilities. Waitrose provides pure drinking water, fresh spaced offices, medical aids, good food and beverages at canteens, uniforms and safety tools as intramural welfare to employees. Management uses the feedbacks on services to improve the employees’ experience in workplace. However, at first side it looks costly but management gets the benefits in term of motivated employees and reduced employee turnover (Gallie.et.al.2012). Also, intramural facilities create brand value outside the organizational boundaries to attract skilled and talented employees.
• Extramural facilities: Waitrose also offers extramural facilities like housing, sports, transportation charges, health insurance, fair price shopping, vocational trips etc to employees in order to motivate them towards the higher structure in organization. This is necessary to welfare the employees at certain level in organization so that self-motivation can be used to achieve more productivity (Van Buren.et.al.2012). Addition to brand value to organization, employees also enhances their social status.

                                              Figure 3: Employee welfare services

Waitrose uses the most of intramural facilities for all employees to get the benefits from motivated and healthy employees. Extramural facilities are only given to high position and performance employees to motivate employees towards the more productivity and quality as well as to attract talented candidates towards the organization.

4.3 Implications of health and safety legislation on human resources practices

Health and safety legislation ensure the reasonable human resource practices on employees. Legislation of  health and safety  helps to prevent the negative impacts of policies and operations on the health of employees. For example, Waitrose needs to provide the safety uniforms and equipments for the workers in manufacturing department. Waitrose also needs to ensure the health of employees those are working overtime to meet organizational goals.

The positive impact of health and safety legislation on Waitrose is employees are more productive and satisfied with the structure of organization. Waitrose offers safety tools in workplace which are well tested and designed to ensure the safety. Organization also provides the clean workplace and healthy hours to care the health of employees (Bratton and Gold, 2012). Waitrose respects the social life and vacation time of employees to keep the positive and active nature of them. Reasonable working hours and practices, healthy workplace, safety tools and awareness in employees help to run the organization smoothly to deliver more productivity and quality.

However, there are some negative impacts of legislation on organizational operations. Organizational goals may conflict with health of employees and general public. In such case, organization needs to change the way to reach goals or to make more efforts to achieve objectives. Cost of experts and medical aids as well as implementation of fire and emergency system is additional expenditure for an organization towards employees. Implementation of health and safety legislation is the challenge for Waitrose as to achieve maximum benefits from minimum inputs (Mathew, 2014.). Also, regulation of such legislation at each level is a complex job. Although Waitrose’s attitude towards application of health and safety legislation is positive as organization makes the more profits from healthier and safety-aware employees.

4.4 Impact of a topical issue on human resources practices

One of the topical issues at Waitrose is to manage the diversity in organization. Diversity refers to the difference in capabilities, personality and culture of employees. As organization recruits employees from different countries and cultures, diversity can be seen at each level. Management gets the benefits of managing diversity because it promotes the teamwork and well behavioural culture at workplace. Diversity management makes use of diverse talents and personalities to carry out organizational tasks. Also, diversity helps Waitrose to enhance the skills and experiences of employees in a combine culture in workplace. Organization empowers the cultural values and skills of employees so that together they can achieve high throughputs. But there are several complexities to implement diversity. Employees may react as discriminated when others are promoted (Austin, 2011). Also, there are chances of conflict in cultural and moral values of employees. Waitrose needs to make robust strategy to maintain better workplace culture and trust among employees.

Diversity management is a challenge for organization to get together the talents and cultures. Organization needs the well designed procedure to convey the same meaning of decisions for all employees. Individual’s capability and rights are difficult to manage with respect to decisions taken on others. Waitrose management is investing a lot of business time to manage the diversity of employees in favour of organization. Different meetings and events are organized to put the pin on learnable points from individuals’ culture and skills (Allen and Eby, 2011.). Managerial policies and decisions are good at Waitrose to manage the diversity but stills some changes are possible for better experience.

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Conclusion

The study has been concluded the significance of historical theories on modern practices of human resource management. The study also determined the role of line managers and employees to develop the effective HRM strategies. The application and impact of different flexibility issues are considered as part of study. The report has been described the significance and implementation of equal opportunity, diversity and health and safety legislations in workplace. Several ways has been identified to ensure the health and safety practices of employees in workplace.