Sainsbury’s Approach for Human Resource Development
One of the most vital parts of any organization is its human resources, as it plays a very important role in the successful functioning and execution of the various operations that exists within the process of any business conducted by the organization. Management of human resource is the central and the most important operation that comes with the requirement of getting performed effectively (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014). The man-power or the human resource of any corporation is considered to be liable enough to influence the business as well as the trade of the business organization. Furthermore, in order to develop as well as expand the business globally in the international market, the company needs to ensure that the Human resource management is effective as well as sustainable. The whole concept of the human resource management is very broad as it involves a wide range of operations that is significant and necessary for all businesses. The reasons of human resource to be executed essentially, is it being a core component for all the operational process at different level of the company (Marchington et al., 2016).
This essay focuses on the vital operations performed to manage as well as maintain the skilled and qualified human resource that exists within an organizational structure. The effective execution of the operations of human resource management is one of the major factors that help in improving the performance of the company further enabling it to grow and fulfill its goals and achieve the targets (Bamberger, Biron and Meshoulam, 2014). The Human resource management, being the backbone of every company, is inclusive of a wide range of operations such as recruitment of employees, management of performances, employees’ motivation, compensation, performance related incentives and appraisals (Din et al., 2014). This essay provides an analysis and summarizes the operations of the human resource management of Sainsbury, the second largest supermarket in the United Kingdom (UK).
Just like any other business organization where it has been observed that human resource plays the most important role in achieving higher level of efficiency and productivity, the same applies for Sainsbury when it comes to the need of developing and maintaining better environment at workplace (Grugulis, 2016). The management of human resources is one of the pivotal tasks that Sainsbury needs to perform by adopting various approaches as well as business models. One such example of the proactive approach that an organization can adopt to perform the various activities of human resource management is strategic human resource management (SHRM) (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014). The main reason to go with the implementation of this approach is that it helps the workforce in the identification of better support for itself that further helps in providing performance hikes as well as the execution of other functionalities of the Human resource management. Among the basic roles of the human resource (HR) manager, one is the management of the operations at workplace from the recruitment stage to the retirement stage. An HR manager performs both the managerial as well as operational roles (Veloso, Tzafrir and Enosh, 2015). The various components of the managerial operations includes Planning, Organizing and Staffing the employees, Monitoring, Coordinating and Controlling, Budgeting and Implementing. On the other, the various functions that the operational roles carries with it includes Planning, Recruitment and Selection of the candidates, incentives and performance appraisal of the employees as well as providing welfare to the employees. These roles have envisioned for not only the identification of the potential capabilities at workplace but also focus on their performance that contributes to the growth as well as development of the company. The significant role that a performance management system plays is to provide the company with better and efficient experts. These effective experts will ensure the company with an increase in the sale of the products in the competitive market as well as provide the company with the opportunities of sharing and developing the Company’s vision (Baloyi, van Waveren and Chan, 2014).
Managing Equality and Diversity in the Workplace
One of the important norm of the HRM’s policies and practices is to meet the set goals and strategies in order to adapt as well as to cope-up with the competition that exists in the market and also to meet the immediate and sudden business situations that arises in the company. The reason for integrated strategic management to be significantly considered as an approach to be applied is because of it being a 3 dimensional approach. This approach relates the strategic management practices with the policies of the human resource management by proper demonstration (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang, 2014). The whole notion of the strategic human resource management (SHRM) can also be labeled as conveying and executing the HR practices as well as policies that helps in growing and developing the competencies as well as behaviors of the staffs in the organization that needs to achieve its strategic accomplishments. Based on this approach, it was observed that the staffs are required to have the necessary skills, knowledge as well as dedication to manage and run the operations and various functionalities concerned with the strategic plan. The Strategic plan of an HR includes a framework in detail as well as set of rules and guidelines that describes the required skills and understanding to be possessed by the company employees as well as various processes including recruitment, monitoring, assemblage and training of the new candidates (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). One of the observations made was that the HR managers gets involved with their seniors and associate them in various operations including planning and implementing the plans as well as the strategies of company. The HR managers should and must demonstrate and share their departmental plans in order to pay more focus on the competitiveness as well as operational advancements (Lepak, Jiang and Ployhart, 2017). Beside the approach mentioned above that Sainsbury adopted for its HRM and development, the company has been taking certain regular strategies and schemes in order to develop its human resource continuously. The company is committed to provide all its employees equal rights and opportunities to develop their skills as well as capabilities that will further enhances their performance and productivity level bringing significant improvement in their gross job operations.
The business firm offers the staffs with an analysis of Performance Development (PD) (Zhu, 2014). This PD analysis is executed in order to discuss the career development plans and its implementation with concerning the superior authorities. The analysis also comprises calculating the advancement and improvements as well as the requirements of the training at regular intervals. A committee for the career development was developed by the company for each of its business areas in order to evaluate the training as well as the development sessions and implementing the various strategies and plans for the company in future (Blustein, 2013). The company uses various training approaches and several models including workshops, mentorship and self-development materials. The company can adopt the assessment approach, an important mechanisms, to further develop the company’s human resource. The assessment approach is envisaged to help the users to identify and address the issues that are related to the systems of the HRM (Marsden, Caffrey and McCaffery, 2013). The approach enables the data collection promotions and its analysis after the key challenges of the HRM are defined. It also provide the required information regarding the development of all the effective policies, procedures, and mechanisms that are utilized to respond to these challenges. The assessment approach also helps in the generation of the evidence base that is needed in order to determine the solutions that are appropriate and at the same time most reliable as well as the interferences. With this, the various HRM challenges can be addressed in a systematic, integrated as well as in a holistic way (Lenz et al., 2016). Furthermore, it also helps in accessing and using the Action Framework of HRM that is a mean to assess and analyze the various issues as well as problems of the HRM in a complete manner.
Contributions of HRM towards Sainsbury’s Strategy
One of the most important task that an HRM is considered to do is to maintain gender equality as well as diversity. Diversity plays a very important role for any company to develop and grow (Casillas and Moreno-Menéndez, 2014). This concept holds its significance true for both the large as well as small firms. The main purpose of going with the diversity and gender equality is to make sure that all the employees of the organization gets equal opportunities and fair treatment (Verloo, 2016). All the staffs and employees of an organization deserves to get equal opportunities and should never be discriminated or harassed and thus must always be offered equal treatment regardless of the employees age, sexual orientation, religion, race and culture. The business organizations must also implement certain specific rules as well as legislations at the workplace in order to ensure that the working environment and condition is nurtured comprehensively, without any kind of discrimination proving itself as a barrier in the career growth as well as development of a particular employee or a candidate (Barak, 2016). The authority in governance has introduced a wide range of acts and legislations prohibiting discrimination that the companies needs to adopt and impose in its organizational structure as a standard sets. With a diverse pool of talents working in the company, a wide range of skills and ideas existing in the working system of the company energies the operations of the business and help the company to achieve a competitive advantage in the market. Apart from the existing pool of talent, there exists a wider pool inclusive of individuals with potential and diversity suited for the business entities (Guillaume et al., 2013). By making the effective use of these diverse individuals as employees, the company will benefit in various forms including an increase in their market presence, their productivity getting advanced and enhanced and the company profile and goodwill being raised high among the public and society.
Moving further, the various approaches that Sainsbury adopted in order to manage the equality as well as the diversity that exists in the organization is analyzed. The dependency of growth as well as the competitiveness of the organization is inclined on the company’s ability to sustain diversity and access maximum benefits from it (Madera, 2013). Various benefits are reported when a company makes an active execution of all the plans as well as approaches regarding to diversity. The benefits that Sainsbury got after it successful adoption of the approaches as well as policies regarding the equality at workplace along with diversity is that by providing employment to individuals from different regions and with different cultural backgrounds with an increase in diversity, the company also managed to get new, innovative and creative minds. The ideas that are provided by the employees shows flexibility when adopted in order to fluctuate the marketing trends as well as the customer demands (Ramsdal, 2016). A wide range in the collection of the talented staffs with experiences in different language and cultural understanding will ensure the company to deliver quality services to all its customers around the globe. The only way through which the execution of the provisions of the wider pool of new ideas and better understandings is possible is through the establishment of a diverse workforce, who will happily express the varying and different points in their opinions. The various ideas that are picked from this pool of talented individuals can help in attaining the strategies and fulfilling the requirements of the company’s customers successfully (King and Lakhani, 2013). Based on the research it was observed that during the period of 2004-2005, Sainsbury came up with the introduction of a website for diversity management in order to guide the audience as well as develop and manage the trust and beliefs of the employees and the company’s customers. Along with these things, the company also tried to provide the disability management, guidance on the local commodities and offer recruitment from the website. With proper planning, the website was designed to help the entire staffs and employees working within the company to achieve more awareness about the needs of others as well as spread it. The corporation being highly concerned with the equality and diversity policy offers as well as delivers guidance to the senior employees and authorities in written on the equal opportunities including the recruitment of the colleagues disabled during the sessions of the training.
Impact of Internal and External Factors on Sainsbury’s HRM Approach
Furthermore, during the same period of 2004-05 apart from starting a website, the company also started with the use of the ‘Disability Confident’. With the help of this medium the employees at Sainsbury were able to learn and become aware of the benefits of moving the disabled customers in its various stores as well as supermarkets, thus making them more confident when they had to deal with the customers as well as individuals with disability (Metzger, 2014). The company also has a set of procedures in order to address the complaints and provide fair treatment to all the individuals by providing them the means to report any kind of harassment and discrimination. Apart from this, the business corporation also has set targets to introduce plans for development for its older employees. These plans are inclusive of the retirement plan as well as the mechanism for pension protection and also providing full salary to all the recruited employees till they attain the age of 65 (www.jspensions.co.uk, 2017). The company after it adopted the approach of equality and diversity, made certain amendments including the removal of the age criteria in the application form for recruitment purposes and request for the information of age just for monitoring. This amendment of having the staffs and employees of mixed age group resulted in improving as well as enhancing the customer satisfaction level along with reflecting the customer’s profile. An integral and important part of the scheme of Sainsbury’s business is its policies and practices on the diversity and gender equality. All these policies are also stated to add more value in order to advance and also improve the customer services and the sales of the products. One other example is the company’s improved flexibility to cover the holidays with different religious festivals spread throughout the year. For this, the company came up with the approach of coming up with a designed calendar of various religious festivals and put it on display in the various supermarkets and the stores.
In order to manage the increasingly complicated, unpredictable, undetermined and equivocal environments, huge volume of data as well as useful and necessary insights are required. A productive environment can be created within an organization with the help of a well-managed diversity that branches out the performance of the organization. The main factor behind this concept is to bring together different people with different thought process and have a collection of a wide range of innovative ideas as well as thoughts. By the beginning of the 21st century, majority of the business companies got exposed to the challenging environment. Not only this, the intensity level of the competition is also on rise and is asymmetrical with the singularity being described by the managerial acronym ‘VUCA’ on trend. VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (Bennett and Lemoine, 2014). The business company with the implementation of the policies and the practices related to equality at workplace and promoting diversity gets widely benefitted. Today, majority of the companies get their works including discovering the answers for the inventive and new business related issues from bunches. Those that are perceived with the significance of bunches uniting from various different foundations as well as identities are termed as effective associations. Professor Joe Distefano of the International Institute of Management Development (IMD) directed an investigation and found that, if inspected successfully, it would become evident that the gatherings of the highly productive and performing people outflanks the normal gathering of different people in terms of critical thinking.
Additionally, it was also presented by the professor that an astounding as well as an uneven perspective of the issues are given by the specialists who normally tends to share intellectual instruments arranged typically. It was also found interestingly, that even though an assorted gathering has lesser instruments than the lone specialists, they overcome this gap by pointing out alternative views as well as encounters and thus accordingly enhance and improve the possibility and probability of an arrangement encompassing all from coming into effect. Scott Keller along with Collin Price wrote a book namely, “Beyond Performance” and thus based on the research conducted by them it can be stated that ultimate competitive advantages is build by the great organizations with key strides in the execution of an effective program of decent variety (Bazigos, De Smet and Schaninger, 2015). In order to get the full interest from the more substantial association, the business company should first begin with clearing all the targets that are to be carried out by the group of the senior administration. Secondly, a reality base must be build up by the associations by properly understanding the present situations as well as insights and from different outlooks. Thirdly, all the commendable firms should focus on the activities that repeat with the assorted gatherings by forming separate activities to improve their investment. Lastly, by characterizing the administrative show and fabricating federation. With the adaptation of the approaches mentioned in the essay, Sainsbury will be successful in achieving the position of supportable competitive advantage in the competitive business market.
Conclusion
This essay has laid focus on Sainsbury’s human resource management that is the second largest supermarket brand in the United Kingdom. The essay also contains various approaches and models that many of the organization adopt, in order to manage and bring development in its human resource working conditions. Further, various policies and practices that a business organization adopts in order to manage the equality and diversity has been described here, along with the presentation of the benefits achieved by the organization after implementing these policies. The essay also describes the achievement of the competitive advantage in the market by making proper use of the equality and diversity related approaches within the environment of the workplace as well as in the organizational structure. With the summation of the analysis presented above, it is concluded that human resource is one of the crucial as well as an expensive resource of any business entity. Hence, managing this resource is considered as one of the most important task for organization to do.
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