Tesco’s Business Strategy and Market Factors
Effective management of the human resources of the organizations is considered as a major success factor for the businesses. Human Resource Management (HRM) refers to the practice to recruit, hire, deploy and manage the employees of the business organizations. The main aim of this report is to analyze and evaluate the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of the approach of HRM in Tesco and to recommendations to increase the overall effectiveness of HRM in the company. Tesco is considered as the largest retainer in United Kingdom (UK) and the company has its business operations all over the world. It needs to be mentioned the Tesco has an employee base of 460,000 all over the world and thus, the effective management of these employees is a major need for the overall success of Tesco’s business (tescoplc.com 2018).
The main business strategy of Tesco involves in the creation of sustainable long-term growth of their overall business and the mean to achieve this is through worldwide expansion (Hill, Jones and Schilling, 2014). The major strategies focus of Tesco is on their five market factors; they are the core business of UK, the communities in which they operates the non-food product market, the retail sector and the international market. It needs to be mentioned that the company has separate strategies for each market factors. However, Tesco’s core objective of their business strategies is to become the most successful retailer all over the world by providing continues growth in the core UK businesses along with further development in the other business sectors like non-food market, other retail services like telecommunication, finance and others. The core UK business of Tesco is responsible for fetching almost 70% revenue of the group and around 310,000 people are employed here. Tesco has employed these employees in five different business segment of their business. As per Tesco, HMR is a major key to success of their business operations (Hill, Jones and Schilling, 2014).
The core of the human resource management of Tesco is their effective HRM goals and strategies. Keeping in mid the target of global expansion, Tesco has developed their complete and feasible HRM plan with the use of different HRM strategies for the management of their employees. The head of Tesco’s HRM related strategies is the Triple- headed approach for the management of their employees (Cascio 2018). Over the years, the company has become able to retain and recruit skillful and well-motivated employees. The introduced training and development program of Tesco is considered as the most important part of their HRM strategies. The HRM strategy of Tesco involves in the hiring of high quality graduates from leading universities. After the hiring of these gradates, Tesco train them in the ‘Tesco way’ in order to introduce them with the corporate structure and mentality of the company. However, it does not mean that Tesco only favors the graduates as the company provides equal opportunity and resources to each of the employees for the development of their skills so that they can progress through the company (Armstrong and Taylor 2014).
HRM Goals and Strategies of Tesco
Apart from the training and development program, Tesco has an option development program for their employees where the employees can select and learn the skills they require in order to progress through the next work level in the organization. It can be considered as a long self-guided career development program in Tesco. Another major part of the HRM strategies of Tesco is the development of communication and consolation of their employees (Brewster 2017). In this strategy, the aim of the company is to gain knowledge about the issues within organization affecting the employees with the help of feedback from them. For this reasons, the HRM managers of Tesco encourages the use of different communication channel to get feedback from the employees on different issues so that they can be resolved with the help of effective strategies. For this purpose, some of the most used feedback acquiring technique used by the managers of Tesco are staff questioning, face-to-face interviews and the use of in-house internet. Reward and benefit is the third major part of the HRM strategies of Tesco. The strategy of Tesco is to provide a wage rate that is higher than its competitors in order to get the competitive advantage over its competitors (Chelladurai and Kerwin 2017).
In order to support the above-discussed HRM strategies, Tesco has undertaken some effective and efficient HRM activities. Some of the major HRM related activities of Tesco are the talent analysis of the employees, the development of effective working environment within the organization, introduction of program to retain god performing employees and to ensure that all the employees are treated equally (Alfes et al., 2013). The introduction of this entire program by Tesco is essential to make the employees feel valued as they are the key of success. In addition, all these aspects help in increasing the self-worth of the employees as a highly-motivated workforce is a key mean to increase the overall profitability of Tesco. Most importantly, the introduction of all these programs is helpful to ensure the fact that the employees of Tesco work in a safe environment that is free from bullying so that respect can be given to all human beings (Alfes et al., 2013).
In order to maintain effective employee relation, the management of Tesco encourages their employees in working near their home; and it can be considered as a green initiative from the company as helps in cutting the fuel cost and the reduction in time in travelling to reach the workplace (Renwick, Redman and Maguire, 2013). Apart from this, Tesco has introduced working in shift in order to maximize the ability of their employees to work as the employees can select their shift timing as per their convenience. For example, a student can work with the company in evening shift without hampering his/her studies. Thus, this flexibility in working pattern encourages in the exchange of ideas and promoting the equality of faith in the workplace (Brewster, Chung and Sparrow, 2016).
HRM Activities Undertaken by Tesco
Most importantly, the HRM strategies of Tesco play an integral part in the development of a healthy and safe workplace. In this process, the company ensures that all the employees and staffs are aware of their right within the organization. For this reason, Tesco has complied with all the required legislative regulations related to workplace healthy and safety. Provide training on disaster management is a unique concept of the HRM of Tesco as it has positive effect on both their staffs and customers. The employees of Tesco is getting this training implies that the customers can shop in a safe place where the staffs are trained enough to save them from any disasters (Purce, 2014).
The above discussion shows the effectiveness and appropriateness in the HRM strategies of Tesco and there are not many areas to improvement. However, there are some areas in the HRM of Tesco that need improvements. In order to stay in the competitive and increasingly fierce market, Tesco needs to keep on developing sound HRM related strategies. For this reason, it is essential for Tesco to bring development in the HRM strategies so that the capacity of the employees can be enhanced. In the large workforce of Tesco, there are many senior employees having substantial knowledge and experience about the workings of the company (Marchington et al., 2016). For this reason, it is recommended to Tesco to use them to provide training to new employees. Apart from this, it is required for Tesco to provide effective training to the employees with expertise so that it can be made sure that their knowledge, skill-set and ability is up-to-date with the changing working conduction.
It is recommended to Tesco to keep on providing the above-mentioned training programs in order to ensure the benefit of the staffs from the enhanced competence of their employees and staffs (Budhwar and Debrah, 2013). It needs to be mentioned that Tesco complies with all the required laws and regulations for the payment of wages and rewards. However, it is recommended to Tesco to provide their employees with further benefit by establishing more accurate linkage between reward and performance. For this purpose, Tesco should connect the reward of the employees with the overall performance of their business. As per this recommendation, the salaries and reward of the employees will be increased in case there is an ncrease in the overall profitability of the company. This strategy will surely create a positive impact on the employees and staffs of Tesco (Brewster et al., 2016).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be observed that there is a positive connection between the overall strategies and HRM strategies of Tesco. The overall strategy of Tesco is to ensure the overall growth and global expansion of the business of Tesco. The above discussion indicates that the main aim of the HRM strategies of Tesco is to make their employees more efficient and productive by ensuring the fulfillment of their training, development and other needs as the company believes that satisfied employees will lead Tesco towards success.
References
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Tesco plc. (2018). Our businesses. [online] Available at: https://www.tescoplc.com/about-us/our-businesses/ [Accessed 19 Apr. 2018]