Human Resource (HR) has become a key aspect of any organisation’s success. This perspective has gained prominence after the recognition of human resources as a major asset of an organisation. It is known as the human resource strategies that define how well the organisation is likely to achieve its objectives and visions by translating these into day-to-day tasks (Kunz & Linder, 2012). Furthermore, this assists in accomplishing the tasks that will allow the organisation to realise its long-term plans. It has been recognised as a vital part of an organisation’s competitive position for dissertation writing service. Hence, due to this, the human resource has been recognised as a separate function in a business (Wilton & Nick, 2013). However, merely the presence of resources in an organisation is not enough for it to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. The resources have to be managed effectively to do so and for this purpose, there is a need of human resource management (Berman & Evans, 2013). An organisation, therefore, there is a need to develop suitable strategies, conduct planning, and then manage HR in such a way that the function is coordinated with other functions in the organisation This assists in achieving the organisation’s goal or aim of existence (Wilton & Nick, 2013). In this report, human resource management strategies and planning procedures in Tesco and Sainsbury’s will be identified and evaluated through comparison. Both of these companies are found competing in the retail industry, in which Tesco and Sainsbury’s are completely a retail stores. Moreover, their policies and procedures will also be compared with each other.
Human Resource Strategies
Human resource strategies are used for identifying the needs of those human resources, which are essential for the future growth of the company. This helps in achieving the goals of an organisation and serves as a link between the strategic planning and human resource management. It is difficult to ascertain the upcoming workforce requirements of a company as the future is uncertain in assignment writing service. However, the prediction enables a company to be escaped from the worst conditions of future (Wilton & Nick, 2013). Strategic Human Resource planning gives the idea of how staff is needed for an organisation and how it should be distributed. By using these strategic planning, it can be estimated that within five years, how many employees will leave the job and how many will come to fulfil the places. In other words, it can be said that it refers to the procedure of forecasting the number of employees that are essential for a company (Berman & Evans, 2013).
Need of Human Resource Strategies
Tesco and Sainsbury’s are the two largest private retail sector companies in the UK. They have progressed rapidly with the passage of time. However, still, there are some reasons, for which both organisations are needed to adopt an effective strategic human resource planning (Armstrong & Reilly, 2011).
Huge Costs and Low Wages
In the Tesco, there is an imbalance situation in the wages that are paid to the employees, and cost that is required for the training of the staff. For instance, the wages do not satisfy the staff, as they expect the higher salary to be paid. At the same time, the cost of staff training is also increasing due to poor strategies in essay writing service (Kunz & Linder, 2012). In Sainsbury’s, the situation is rather stable, but employers are likely to cut the overtime salaries and this shows the real picture of low paid employees. Therefore, in both of these companies, there is a need to meet the objectives of huge profitability by using the human resource strategies. This gives the strategy to reduce the costs of training, however, at the same time, it might increase the cost if the process is not conducted efficiently (Truss et al., 2013).
Ineffective Strategy and Dissatisfaction
Tesco has a number of employees and approximate 476,000 workers are associated with this globally, while at Sainsbury’s, there are around 161,100 workers, which means that Tesco has better employment strategies as compared to Sainsbury’s. This company has been facing the challenges in terms of ineffective corporate policy and strategies (Piercy & Archer-Brown, 2014). For instance, the major strategy that is taken by both of these companies is the product differentiation and price-effectiveness. However, this is only for attracting the consumers. On the other hand, there is a need to attract employees as well and this requires subsidy-based strategies, which will increase the satisfaction of employees with their work (Global union, 2009).
Negative reliability of Performance
Due to the unfair employment practice within the organisations in the UK, the reliability of the performance of these companies is moving towards a negative trend. In future, it is estimated to be worst and this might be developed by using effective strategies (Piercy & Archer-Brown, 2014).
Comparing the Recruitment Process
Tesco comprises of advertising the available jobs through different ways. It is dependable on the availability of the jobs. Sainsbury’s, on the other hand, consists of taking job applications through their website or via phone (Kunz & Linder, 2012). Tesco has the strategies defined to first analyse the internal Talent Plan of the organisation in order to fill a particular vacancy. This procedure lists those current employees, which might be leaving their post due to some reason. If no appropriate people are available, the organisation moves from this Talent Plan towards advertising on the intranet of the company for the period of two weeks (Deakin, 2007).
Sainsbury’s has the browsing strategic process, through which the interested participants could look at the careers section, relating to available job roles of the company. In contrast, Tesco with the internal process also has the external recruitment process (John, 2014). The company advertises the available vacancies on their website or on the boards that are present in the stores. The recruitment process for Sainsbury’s has the online application form for the interested participants. For Tesco, the interested participants for the jobs that are based on the store can contact the stores with their CVs (Rogers & Helen, 2005). The interested people for the in-store based jobs at Tesco can also apply for their registration through the Jobcentre Plus. In Sainsbury’s, at the time when a candidate has submitted the application form, on their provided email addresses they would receive an email receipt from the organisation. The recruitment process for Sainsbury’s is easy and rather simple for tracking for a candidate (John, 2014). They could revisit the website of the organisation in order to check their progress of the submitted application for the job and even the options for editing the personal details of the candidate themselves (Richter & Ganit, 2015).
Comparing Motivational Theory and Reward
There are two different motivation theories, which are used by both Tesco and Sainsbury’s. They are commonly known as Maslow and Herzberg theory, which focus on rewards in the form of opportunities, positive environment, and motivation policies to attract employees (Tesco, 2010). For instance, Tesco has been using the Maslow theory, which helps in achieving different levels of success one-by-one. The main aim of Tesco is to motivate its workers by paying incentives and bonuses to satisfy employees (Kunz & Linder, 2012). Sainsbury’s also has defined its strategies for adding bonuses on a yearly basis for the employees, but as per the job satisfaction level of the employees they are very low (Tessari, 2000). This theory assists the organisation to motivate its staff by improving the communication, giving responsibility, and involving them in the decision-making process.
As per Richter and Ganit (2015), based on this theory, Tesco allows the workers to be a part of the discussion on pay rises, which reflects a credit of work that staffs do and at the same time, rewards them. The company rewards staff for their work by focusing on Herzberg theory as it keeps workers motivated for the work and carries on applying altered motivation theories at work. Tesco and Sainsbury’s both pursue the pension system, which includes assistance that an employer creates on the behalf of employees. They also use sum reward by offering employees the complete value of their benefits package (Promberger & Marteau, 2013). Furthermore, Tesco rewards employees by giving extra benefits such as medical and car insurance, special offers and discounts, and Sainsbury’s strategies involve only normal wages and some bonuses.
Comparing Process of Job Evaluation
Job evaluation is known as a systematic process that defines the relative worth of jobs within an organisation. The basic purpose is to find internal relativities. It is used for providing the fundamentals for grading jobs, designing an equitable grade and pay structure, and managing the job as well as pay relativities (Kahya, 2006). Most of the retail organisations, such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s use the same strategies for job evaluation. It includes the company’s starter process management to give reasons and importance to employee. They fix a group, which includes knowledgeable HR specialists and employee and selects a job from every department to evaluate. A committee investigates the job in detail after getting training from the compensation department (Berman & Evans, 2013).
Comparing Effectiveness of Reward Systems Strategies
The reward system is a mix of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, and it consists of integrated policies, practices, processes, and management procedures for implementing the system within the organisational system (John, 2014). Extrinsic rewards are tangible and the employee receives rewards in the form of bonuses, increments, and promotions. On the other hand, intrinsic rewards are liable to give personal satisfaction in the form of feedback, trust, and relationship (Berman & Evans, 2013). The Tesco’s reward system is remarkably effective for employees and management. For instance, it focuses on salary based rewards for customer service employees and they are more likely to work, however, some employees are not ready to receive a little increment (Global union, 2009). On the other hand, intrinsic and promotion rewards are especially for the store manager, who is getting huge personal satisfaction. The Sainsbury’s reward system is incompatible, as it keeps its strategies updating. For instance, the loyalty rewards system for all the employees in the organisation, which pays well when the employees show loyalty (Kunz & Linder, 2012).
Comparing Employee Performance Monitoring Strategies
Performance monitoring is necessary for every organisation to observe where the employees stand and where these employees are to be directed in the future. Similar is the case with Tesco, monitoring performance is significant and vital for management and employees and for this purpose; the company uses 360-degree feedback method. 360-degree feedback is used to evaluate all the executives, manager, and other officers (ETS, 2013). As mentioned by John Sale, who is the head of Tesco, 360 degrees provide an interesting feedback for employees by their peer, colleagues and line managers (Global union, 2009).
In the Sainsbury’s, the strategies for performance evaluation are also effective, but their systems are not comprised of any significant strategy to be applied for this purpose. However, in both the organisations, all employees have their Personal Development Plan that is built for monitoring employees. This helps these companies in providing its employees with potential feedback that create opportunities and development consistently (Truss et al., 2013).
Comprising Employment Exit Procedures and Strategies
Exit procedure is an important part of a company because it provides a closure to either the employee, who is retiring, leaving willingly or being terminated. The procedure in Tesco is initiated through an exit interview, which is conducted with an employee, who is leaving. This interview is done to investigate and discuss the reasons behind his/her resigning (Burgess & Annette, 2014). In cases where potential employees leave or employees are getting retired, alternative solutions to work out the problems are offered. This can be either in the form of increment in salary, additional incentives, or solution of any other issues that have induced him in resigning. Retiring employees get an offer of joining the Retired Staff Association if they wish to (Berman & Evans, 2013).
After it is clear that the employee will not stay, all the relevant exit documents are made available to the employee that will enable him to find the next job. The second last step of this exit procedure is the settlement of debts. Generally, in the case of termination, this step is necessary to be followed. If the employee owes any money to the company, then this is settled before handing the documents to the employee or it will be adjusted with this salary (Kunz & Linder, 2012). Similar is the case with a pension that is owed by the company and it will be paid along with the final salary to both types of employees. The last step in Exit procedure and strategies in Tesco is the return of the property to the company. If any sort of property such as the laptop or company car has previously been awarded to the employee then this will be taken back prior to providing the documents (Armstrong & Reilly, 2011).
More or less the same standard of the exit procedure in Tesco is followed in Sainsbury’s. The difference between the two is that Sainsbury’s focuses more on formal exit interviews compared to Tesco (Kahya, 2006). Furthermore, the notice period based on the number of years served to range from 0 to 12 weeks has to be completed in Sainsbury’s as a mandatory part of exit procedure, otherwise, a portion of notice pay is deducted (Berman & Evans, 2013). Management of Sainsbury’s sometimes also includes a strategy of supporting its senior employees in finding another job, as they focus on following specific laws. The rest of the process is similar to Tesco (Armstrong & Reilly, 2011).
This report presents the different aspects of human resource management that are strategies, planning, and development was discussed that are applicable to Tesco and Sainsbury’s. The features were also compared with those of Sainsbury’s that relates to the retail industry. However, just the presence of resources in an organisation is not enough for it to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. It can be concluded that the human resource management strategies are indeed in great shape in Tesco with great importance being paid to this key asset of the companies.
The recommendation that could be provided to both of these companies includes that they should be working on their strategic planning and included better and more effective systems for ensuring that the strategies are better from the competitors. The ineffective strategies especially in the attainment of employees that is the major role of human resource management are also in need of resolution in both of the companies. This is not it, as it has been found that Tesco has a sound performance management system, while Sainsbury’s lacks in its delivery of the performance of employees in many ways, this means that Sainsbury’s should be maintaining its Human resource strategies more particularly define for the performance management of the employees.
Coming to the strategies applied for accessing, motivation, and job evaluation of the employees, it comes to the view that Sainsbury’s, and Tesco both are competing well. However, the reward system of Tesco is better as compared to the Sainsbury’s, which means that the employees are better approached and kept with a satisfaction level being high in the Tesco. Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s have better-perceived exit procedure and strategies, while Sainsbury’s should adopt some specifications of Tesco, such as returning the property as well.
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