About Tesco Plc
Discuss about the Exploratory Analysis Of Differential Effects Of Career Stage.
The purpose of this assignment is to provide an overview on the challenges of human resource management in the organization. The study discusses about how the balance between the career and family influences human resource management of the enterprise. The organization selected for this study is Tesco Plc. In today’s world, balancing family life and career has become the main problem for workforce. As several enterprise are streamlining their labour force to become lean and mean, it is becoming highly difficult for the workers to cope with the demands of career and family life. Balance between career and family influences the human resource department of the enterprise as it facilitates the employees to manage interface between family responsibilities and work (Blanchard, 2012). With the technological advancement and changing dynamics of workplace, the line between one’s personal life and career is rapidly narrowing. Now- a- days, it is vital for the human resource department to include benefits as well as services for employees owing to balance between career and family in employees policies. Career and family life balance not always creates new opportunities to the human resource department but also creates challenges if the department do not pay attention on the requirement of employees. However, balance between career and family is one of the critical issues in human resource management and has got important bearing on enterprise growth and workers positive perceptions. The study also provide recommendations to the human resource management of Tesco Plc for addressing issues faced by the employees.
Tesco Plc is one of the biggest multinational merchandise retailer and groceries that operates in several countries across Asia and Europe. It is the ninth biggest retailer in the globe accounted by revenues. The total number of employees working in this enterprise is 476,000. The core values of Tesco involve commitment to use its scale for commodity by being responsible leader. The company aims to enhance consumer loyalty and its business for helping it develop shopping experience for customers. Tesco have core vision is to be one of the highly valued business by the consumers they serve and the communities they operate. The mission of Tesco is to create value for the customers to earn their loyalty for lifetime. Tesco has well documented HR department that is in tune with business aims.
Balance between career and family life is one of the broad concept in the field of human resource management that signifies prioritizing between ambition as well as career of employees on one hand and their family life and responsibilities on the other hand. Balance between career and family is mainly about finding appropriate balance between one’s work and family life as well as feeling comfortable with work as well as non- work commitments (Darcy et al., 2012). The balanced workers apt to feel more encouraged as well as less stressed out during work, which in turn reduces the conflicts between the human resource management and employees. Wheatley (2012) has found that Tesco Plc with information collection system offers wide range of balance between career and family priorities. Besides this, Tesco motivate their employees by several methods in order to help them to balance between their career and family. Moreover, Tesco also apt to enjoy higher workers retention rates, which in turn influences its HR management to reduce time- consuming training to the employees.
Balance between career and family influencing human resource management in Tesco Plc
The HRM of Tesco Plc is aware of their employee’s requirements as well as provides them with huge flexibility, thereby allowing them to combine personal spheres and work for meeting personal and professional target. The HR department of Tesco Plc introduces work- life practices as it serves as an important tool for retaining and attracting their employees (Deery & Jago, 2013). The adoption of work life practices helps the HRM of Tesco to improve the employees work performance, reduce cost relating to loss as well as replacement of skilled employees, decrease direct as well as indirect cost relating to absenteeism and customer satisfaction.
According to Burke & Westman, (2013), balance between one’s family and career influences the HR department of the organization to plan flexible work schedules for the employees so that they can have better focus on work and complete the task within specified time. Tesco implemented flexible work schedules with the ambition to enhance guaranteed hours. Moreover, this also helps the HRM to reduce employee’s absenteeism and turnover while increase their job satisfaction. Apart from this, it also guarantees the HR department of Tesco to improve the quality of workers such as commitment as well as loyalty of employees, increase in their productivity and so on. As the employee’s now- days become more stressed in order to balance between career and family, it leads to reduction in their level of performance. Thus, effective implementation of practice also helps Tesco’s HR department to reduce health as well as stress cost of employees. In addition to this, balance between employee’s family and career also influences Tesco’s HRM to improve their employees skills as well as capabilities by investing in training programs. Furthermore, this also influences the HR managers of Tesco to improve on their policies and procedures relating to their work life schedule. The employee’s work- life balance program influences the HR management of this company to improve their recruitment procedure, turnover cost, attraction and retention of employees. Tesco integrated their plans in order to offer their employees huge opportunity to manage their work with family life.
According to Goodman (2012), balance between one’s family and career also creates several challenges for the HR management of Tesco Plc. Recent evidences reflect that as flexible work schedule integrated by HRM of Tesco provides freedom of work location and working hours to the employees, it leads to failure of completing the task within specified time as few employees are weak in self- management. Moreover, flexible work location also causes discord as well as striferelationship among the colleagues owing to lack of communication with staffs and clients. Apart from this, as flexible work options needs workers to work during odd hours, it aggravates the balance their employee’s family life and career. In addition to this, adoption of effective program by HRM of Tesco regarding work- life practices usually ends up in several compromise of employees. Wheatley (2012) opines that telecommuting is one of the vital elements in the balance between family and career but these technologies sometimes brings about adverse impact on HR management of Tesco such as invasion the privacy. Owing to telecommuting system, the human resource managers of this organization expects the employees to respond to the work communications during their personal time. Thus, telecommuting did not facilitate to balance career and family life but in turn raise up conflicts between the employees and the managers. However, balance between family and career sometimes adversely influence the HRM of this company even if they integrate different policies and practices.
Challenges faced by HR managers in creating work culture that supports work-life balance
It has been evident from recent facts that the HRM of Tesco faces many issues before implementing as well as integrating initiatives regarding work- life practices. As the employees today are not looking at the enterprise for job but also wants it to take care of their work- life balance, it influences the HRM of Tesco to improve their policies and procedures relating to this. Moreover, the HR managers of Tesco are integrating new means for assuring that their workers get more time to spend quality time with family. Before integrating such measures and practices, the enterprise assess whether its work culture permits as well as supports initiatives relating to work life or not. In addition to this, such practices also influence Tesco’s HR managers to look at the business in completely different way as well as support the workers as individuals with huge priorities beyond workplace.
The employees of Tesco manages success in career and family life by adopting different ways such as by remaining flexible, creating daily or weekly planner and so on. The workers of this company who have children and are mainly confronted with career as well as family demands generally prefer to have choice of the work hours that are linked to the programs relating to flexible work hours. Besides this, they also feel attached to the HR managers for offering such kind of practices and policies regarding work- life balance. In addition to this, Tesco’s staffs also balance career and family life by creating daily or weekly planner. This planner however allows the staffs especially the women to utilize their time wisely as well as efficiently (Khan & Agha, 2013).
As per (), career – family conflict is usually viewed as stressor of individuals. Several research has documented that the conflict between career and family mainly domains several number of negative consequences for the individuals. It has been seen that career-family conflict is generally associated with indicators of poor health as well as impaired well – being such as – less life satisfaction, high stress level, high emotional exhaustion levels, depression levels and so on. However, both family to career and career to family conflict are mainly associated with adverse impact for the employees. The research conducted on Tesco reflects that conflict in career and family leads to adverse impact on their health of the employees. Todd & Binns, (2013) found that family- career conflict have adverse relationship with the job- life satisfaction. It has been evident from recent facts that this career – family conflict has more association with the exhaustion in women. This means that the women employees in Tesco are facing this problem more as compared to male employees. Overall, this adversely influences the HRM of Tesco as poor health of the employees leads to absenteeism, high turnover rate, intention to quit the job, lower performance and so on.
Recommendations for addressing work-life issues and improving employee retention
If the workplace is dominated by women, then the human resource managers have to face several problems relating implementation of policies as well as procedures. As women spends more time on the family responsibilities, imbalance or conflict between family and career adversely impacts the organization that is dominated by female (Mani, 2014). The career –family balance programs adopted by the HR managers of Tesco might not be effective. The main reason behind this is that the managers of Tesco always do not receive proper support from the senior management if females dominate the workplace. Apart from this, as women dominate the workplace, then this also impacts on the decision taken by the human resource managers regarding career- family practices. However, the HR mangers of Tesco always cannot take the appropriate decision regarding implementation of certain work- life practices, which in turn adversely affects the performance of others employees (Kim, 2014). In certain circumstances, conflict arises between the male and female employees and thus this adversely affects the work culture. In addition to this, such issues hampers the productivity of the employees, thereby leading to low growth in business. The research conducted on Tesco reflects that the HR managers do not face such challenges as the workplace is not dominated by the females.
The research conducted on this enterprise also reflects that adoption of certain practices by HR management relating to career- family life balance for enterprise effectiveness might be compromised by lack of proper utilization of these practices. It has been evident from certain facts that the workers remain totally unaware of their career- family life entitlements after the adoption of these practices. The barriers that HR managers of Tesco face in integration of career-life practices are described below-
Managerial support- This is taken into account as one of the factors that influence the career – family balance. The managers play vital role in success of the work- family program as they are in the position to motivate or demotivate workers effort for balancing their work as well as family lives. The supervisors of this company support the implementation of responsibilities and paid work , which in turn influences the employees to take up provided work-life (Peters et al., 2014).
Enterprise time expectations- This is considered as another factor which affects supportiveness and uptake of the career- family policies. Long working hours is generally identified as the signal of productivity, motivation and commitment. The research conducted on this company highlights that most of the employees works extra time for meeting their target.
Opportunities of career- The third factor that is connected with barrier to successful integration of work life practices is perception of adverse career consequences. Recent evidences reflect that provision of career- family practices enhanced workers commitment towards this enterprise but only to that extent in which workers feel free in using such practices without any adverse consequences to their career. The perception that utilizing career- life balance practices might have adverse effect on their career prospects, which in turn acts as the powerful demotiovator for the workers use of such practices.
Support from co- worker- Recent facts reflects that the employees who utilizes such practices mainly suffer adverse perceptions from co-workers. It has been found that the employees who uses work –life balanced practices were mainly perceived by the co-workers as having low enterprisal commitment levels, which in turn impacts allocation of enterprise rewards like resentment from colleagues, salary backlash, advancement opportunities (Shanafelt et al., 2015).
The following recommendations given will help the HR managers of this enterprise to address various problem faced by their employees. These are given below-
- The mangers must begin steps for accomplishing career- family balance by organizing different workshops, foreign trips, various events such as fashion shows, cultural fests and so on. However, the family members of the employees can help to balance their career and family through these workshops.
- The managers of this company must educate as well as train their employees regarding how to power various elasticity selection for creating productive business environment. They should also help the employees by providing family friendly policies which in turn creates flexibility in work.
- The HR managers of this company must integrate different kinds of compensation as well as benefit to the employees so that they can deal with the problems relating to career- family balance.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that career- family balance is one of the important problems in the human resource management field and thus has got crucial bearing on workers positive perceptions and enterprise growth. As the employees faces several issues in balancing their career and family, this influences the HRM of this enterprise to implement various work- life balance policies. However, these policies help the employees to balance their career and family responsibilities in effective way.
References
Blanchard, M. H. (2012). Work… life… balance?. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 119(1), 177-179.
Darcy, C., McCarthy, A., Hill, J., & Grady, G. (2012). Work–life balance: One size fits all? An exploratory analysis of the differential effects of career stage. European Management Journal, 30(2), 111-120.
Deery, M., & Jago, L. (2015). Revisiting talent management, work-life balance and retention strategies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), 453-472.
Goodman, A. (2012). Work–life balance. In Physicians’ pathways to non-traditional careers and leadership opportunities (pp. 25-34). Springer, New York, NY.
Jones, F., Burke, R. J., & Westman, M. (Eds.). (2013). Work-life balance: A psychological perspective. Psychology Press.
Khan, S. A., & Agha, K. (2013). Dynamics of the work life balance at the firm level: Issues and challenges. Journal of management policy and practice, 14(4), 103-114.
Kim, H. K. (2014). Work-life balance and employees’ performance: The mediating role of affective commitment. Global Business and Management Research, 6(1), 37.
Mani, V. (2013). Work Life Balance and Women Professionals. Global Journal of Management And Business Research.
Peters, P., Poutsma, E., Van der Heijden, B. I., Bakker, A. B., & Bruijn, T. D. (2014). Enjoying new ways to work: An HRM?process approach to study flow. Human resource management, 53(2), 271-290.
Shanafelt, T. D., Hasan, O., Dyrbye, L. N., Sinsky, C., Satele, D., Sloan, J., & West, C. P. (2015, December). Changes in burnout and satisfaction with work-life balance in physicians and the general US working population between 2011 and 2014. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 90, No. 12, pp. 1600-1613). Elsevier.
Todd, P., & Binns, J. (2013). Work–life balance: is it now a problem for management?. Gender, Work & Organization, 20(3), 219-231.
Wheatley, D. (2012). Work-life balance, travel-to-work, and the dual career household. Personnel Review, 41(6), 813-831.
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