Human Resource Strategy of TESCO in UK

Every organization selects qualified employees to achieve their goals. Only selecting the right people for the right place is not the main work, besides to make them more productive and efficient, several training and development programs should be arranged and to retain them organizations have to focus their demands. All these works are done by the Human Resource department (Barnes, 2011).

Human Resource Strategy of TESCO in UK

From recruiting to retain customers in the organization is done by the HR department. In this assignment, the researcher plays as an HR assistant in Tesco, the largest supermarket in the UK and he has to discuss the following factors that recruitment & selection, induction & training, different motivational strategies. Besides, the researcher needs to identify the managing way of individual and group performance in Tesco.

Organizational Overview

Tesco is the biggest multinational groceries and in raking it is the third-largest retail shop in the world and for revenue purposes, it is the ninth-largest retail shop. It started its journey from 1919 and the headquarter is in Hackney, London. Almost 450,000 employees work on it. All types of grocery, household, electronics, fresh food, vegetable, kids’ food, etc. are available in the Tesco supermarket. As it is a multinational company, it has its own bank and mobile network. Being the market leader is not so easy and Tesco can reach that position only because of their efficient management team and their hard work.

Recruitment and Selection Process in Tesco

Recruitment and selection is a crucial task for the HR department of any organization. Because recruiting or selecting the right person for a specific position will bring productivity. And wrong selection may cause of facing loss. According to Edwin B. Flippo, recruitment is a process by which an organization searches for prospective employees and stimulates and motivates them to apply for jobs.

Recruitment refers to select the right person for the right position of the job. Selecting the person who has proper knowledge and skills for a specific job should hire him for the job. Tesco is very much cautious about selecting the right employees for their organization (Karen, 1993). Their main motive is to select qualified skilled employees for their organization. Recruitment and selection process if Tesco will be discussed in the following part of this study.

Advertise the Job Vacancy

Tesco first identifies the empty positions of all different departments of the organization and then make a list of required employees. After that find out all possible qualifications and skills which are needed for the empty posts separately. When all information is gathered, Tesco publishes job advertisement through newspaper, magazine, television as well as the internet.

Check the Application

After seeing job advertisement interest people apply through the Tesco website or send their CV through email to the HR manager. When the deadline is over, the HR department checks all the application and make a shortlist of that applicant based on their qualification and skills (Meighan and Meighan, 2000).

Telephone Interview

HR personnel manager gives the telephone to the shortlisted applicant and takes an interview over the telephone. Generally, it takes 10 to 15 minutes and he will ask the applicant about their educational qualification, the experience of the previous job, skills, and UK job rights and so on.

Final Store Interview

Based on the telephone interview, the HR personnel manager selects some applicants whose interview was good over the telephone, call them for a face to face interview in the store. In the final interview, the interviewer asks questions regarding basic customer services, their qualifications, skills, knowledge, work experience, nationality, work right and so on.

A Job Offer to the Applicant

After the final interview, the HR manager offers the selected employees to join the company and specify a date to take their joining date and call to collect the joining letter (Meighan and Meighan, 2000).

Job Advertisement

The researcher needs to make a job advertisement for the post of customer service executive and this advertising will be shown in the Tesco online site. They need 10 customer service executives both for stores and online services. The customer service executive provides services to the customers according to their demands. Tesco finds qualified, skilled, smart, communicative employees for this post.  And the education level should have the GCSE level at least.

• Number of vacancies: 10,
• Experienced candidates get the priority but fresher’s can also apply here.
• Working hours: 6 hours per week.
• Permanent contract
• Transportation facility
• Salary: Up to 22k yearly

Job Description

• Manage customers by providing their required product.
• Organize the stores nicely to attract customer’s attention.
• Build a strong customer relationship.
• Provide the team leaders all types of product details, selling amount and stock amounts.
• Handling customers’ demands very nicely.
• Follow the rules and regulations of Tesco.

Person Specification

• 1-year experience as a customer service executive in a supermarket.
• Good communication skills required.
• Be flexible in the roaster timing schedule.
• Educational qualification needs at least an O level.
• Strong interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work under pressure.

Induction and Training

Induction and training are the introductory things to make an employee unable to work in their new profession or job within an organization in a new environment. This program is arranged by the human resource department. Induction refers to the accomplishment or procedure of inducting someone to post or organization (Seibert, 1990). The HR personnel manager of Tesco arranges an induction program for the new employees to give them a clear idea about the organization, the rules and regulations, employee’s rights and benefits, their responsibility towards the job and the organization, health security, fire protection facility, etc. So to introduce new employees about their new work environment is the main motive of the induction program.

Training and Development

To improve the employees’ performance and the productivity level, every organization arranges a training program for its employees. Training enhances employees’ skills their knowledge also improves the quality of knowledge. To make the time to time updated with the new terms and technology, training and development program is a must. In this case, Tesco also does a training program to make the employees more productive than before. To sustain in a competitive market and retain their position, skilled and knowledgeable employees are needed. And for this reason, Tesco arranges Training and development programs for the operative and mid-level employees in a regular interval.

Benefits of Induction and Training

1. Saves organization resource: Introductory level training helps employees learn the organizational culture, working pattern, develop new skills and knowledge. For this reason, employees can deliver better services to the organization and it saves organization money and time.
2. Decrease employee turnover rate: Effective induction training makes employees more confident and increases their retention rate.
3. Certify operational efficiency: Good induction training program helps the employees to understand their roles to achieve organizational goal and it helps to ensure the operational efficiency of Tesco.
4. Employees feel respected: For the employees, the induction training program is a warm reception from the Tesco Company. So they feel respected to join here.

Problems Arise in Induction, Training, and Development

1. Tesco personnel manager sometimes gives more information to the employees that are not relevant to their work. So new employees get confused.
2. A different generation of people in the same training program creates confusion. Some can easily understand some cannot (Smith et al., 1985).
3. Sometimes time is too short for the training and there is no option to get feedback from the employees.
4. Some do not get technical support to explain the terms and conditions and it may create a problem.

Possible solution

Tesco should emphasize the relevant content which is needed for employees to start their work on the organization. Use proper technological support and make a clear explanation for all generation people (Kramar and Syed, 2012). And at last take feedback from the trained employees as well as make them clear if they raise any question.

Motivation

Motivation is the way used to make the employees dedicated and boost up their mindset by using some tactics of human resource management. It is one of the most important functions of managers. By motivating the employees it is possible to increase the overall outcome and betterment of the organization and achieve their goals by improving the service standards (Leroy et al., 2018).

Managers use different types of motivational tools to encourage their employees to increase their self-confidence and dedication towards their job. The most common method is providing rewards to the employees and the benefit they get from employees are:

• Employees perform well and increase their productivity
• Motivated workers develop long term relationships with loyal customers and their organization
• They can participate in organizational decision making and become better assets of any organization (Kramar and Syed, 2012).
• Managers are dedicated to using different theories of Motivation developed by the researchers based on the need of the organizations. Here are two motivational theories are explained which are used in Tesco’s operation and quite successful in the organization.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The most traditional, well known and commonly used motivation theory is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs developed based on the 5 basic needs of human life and they are:

Physiological Needs

Physiological needs are the basic requirements of food, shelter, treatment, and cloths. People who cannot fulfill these needs Tesco try to provide them work and ensure their needs with their salary and other incentives (Leroy et al., 2018).

Safety Needs

In this stage, people search for job security, safety and a better way of living. Here Tesco ensures their job security and provides them comfort to perform well to ensure their security with their performance.

Social needs: After physiological and safety need social acceptance and recognition become important to employees. So providing them appreciation and recognizing their works it is possible to ensure their social needs (Kramar and Syed, 2012).

Esteem Needs

Esteem need is one of the highest levels of needs to fulfill their dreams and desire for having a big house, expensive cars, and luxury clothing. Here people interact and communicate with their family, friends and more people to satisfy their esteem (Leroy et al., 2018).

Self-Actualization Needs

The highest and final stage of people’s needs is self-actualization needs. People can achieve this kind of need fulfillment with their work for the country or people. So here they concentrate on something memorable for everyone by creating an example.

Tesco tries to provide its employees with a better salary and yearly bonus based on their improved performance. Primarily they try to meet the employees’ physiological and safety needs (Leroy et al., 2018). Then Tesco focus on ensuring a better working environment, providing work-life balance; promote the health and safety of the work and their health. They also make their employees’ jobs are permanent after a certain time. The organization is very concerned about their employee’s safety, health and other concerns they are facing in regular life and try to minimize their anxiety as much as possible by fulfilling their social needs. For the esteem and self-actualization need they provide formal and informal support in many ways from Tesco’s point of achievement (Kramar and Syed, 2012).

Advantages

• Easy and effective theory to apply and understand employees.
• It has close relevance to an employee’s life and their improvement.

Disadvantages

• Varies from person to person, so not always provide the best outcome (Leroy et al., 2018).
• It’s hard to predict how far esteem and self-actualization need leads the employees and organization.

Herzberg Two Factor Theory of Motivation

Another very popular motivation theory is known as Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Here, Herzberg divided the motivation factors in two ways- Motivators and Hygiene factors and they are explained as follows based on Tesco’s strategy of using them.

Motivators: Motivators are some factors that are necessary to ensure the motivation of the employees but they are not actually mandatory for employee’s motivation. They don’t have any direct relation to motivating employees but their absence can create dissatisfaction in the job (Kramar and Syed, 2012). So by offering them Tesco increase their job satisfaction level and ensure their dedication and commitment for the organization.

Hygiene Factors

Hygiene elements are a must for ensuring employees’ motivation and boost up their energy. Because their absence can lead the employee’s unable to perform well in the long run. Salary, friendly working environment, supportive teammates are some important elements of hygiene factors (Kramar and Syed, 2012). Unavailability of these factors can lead to serious damage in the working environment for the employees’ overall mindset.

So, Tesco tries to offer both hygiene and motivators factors to enable the employees with their perfect workplace support and try to get the best outcome from them whenever necessary.

Factors that Affect Individual Behavior at the Workplace

Each and every employee working patterns are different from each other. Some are highly dedicated and motivated to perform and some are performed depending on their productivity level or their timings (Ivancevich and Konopaske, 2013). Some are not all ready to perform and become ineffective to add value for the organization. In the case of Tesco, there are diversified employees poll can be seen. So to understand each and every employee based on their individual behavior at the workplace method developed by Mars can be used. He has invented 4 different factors to analyze it and they are:

• Motivation
• Individual ability to perform
• Role-playing and
• Situational factors

Organizations need to understand the factors and manage it effectively to develop the individual performance of the employees on a different level. Tesco follows this model to improve its employees’ working performance and efficiency.

Motivation

Motivation is the prime need for the employees to ensure their best performance for the organization. Tesco believes that by keeping the employees happy and motivated they can get a better outcome from their employees. The Mars model used by Tesco to make the employees loyal to Tesco and perform according to their guidance (Hook and Jenkins, 2019).

Individual Ability

To improve the individual ability of the employees Tesco provide them training and take skill improvement session to fulfill their need for learning and improvement. If an employee doesn’t have the required skills it is possible to decrease their efficiency and dedication towards works (Ivancevich and Konopaske, 2013). So Tesco always makes sure that its employees are not lacking any skills and capability required for their performance.

Role Plays

Role perception and clarifies the role and responsibility can ensure a better outcome for the organization. Most of the employees are not properly about their roles and responsibilities. So to reduce their problems Tesco arranges an induction program and clarifies all the job roles related to each and every performer (Hook and Jenkins, 2019).

Situational Factors

Apart from all the things discussed above, there are some situational factors such as; working environment, teammates, and family problems that can also affect the employees’ performance sometimes.

Effective Teamwork in the Workplace

To ensure effective teamwork it is important to align their individual goals with organizational goals. So Tesco develops and motivates the teams in such a way so they can easily focus on their job roles and reach their desired success. Tesco motivates its employees to develop good relations with their colleagues for making a better team. They provide their employees’ facility to communication, trust and share their values and opinion with each other for the organizational betterment (Blum and Wall, 1997). Here some of the ways are discussed which can be used to develop teamwork by using Tuckman’s model.

Forming

Forming is a way of making employees learn to perform their job and the skills and abilities they required to perform. Here most of the employees try to learn and acquire the knowledge as much as possible for their own betterment.

Storming

Storming is the process of making employees acquainted with each other and build up a friendly working relationship with them. Managers or leaders provide them directly to solve problems and conflicts and sort them out for performance improvement (Blum and Wall, 1997).

Norming

In the case of norming employees become aware of their jobs and responsibilities and focus on individual performance as well as the group performance to achieve the organizational goal. Tesco influences its people to perform better and providing their best effort.

Performing

In performing stage employees perform their tasks to fulfill the need and requirements of the organization and individually ensure organizational needs and demands to meet up the Tesco’s expectations from them.

Conclusion

Tesco is one of the best supermarkets who take care of their employees and support them in each and every way possible. They provide financial and non-financial incentives to keep them motivated and always try to recruit best-skilled people for better performance assurance (Blum and Wall, 1997). The organization also provides training and learning sessions to develop their skills and capabilities. Overall they are careful and concern about keep their people happy to get the best outcomes from them in the long run.

Written by

Md. Shadequr Rahaman

Email: [email protected]

References

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