Overview of the organization
Discuss about the human resource management issues in Woolworths, the leading retail grocery store in Australia.
The purpose of this paper will be on the building of the strategic analysis of the chosen organization and develop the human resource management plan. A human resource management plan is one of the most important issues in the organization that will be important for the achievement of the objectives. The organizations like to implement the plans for the betterment of their operations to make more market profits. The main purpose of the organization is to provide their internal and external stakeholders the best opportunities for the enhancement of skills and providing better services. The mission, vision and values of the organization are really very important in all the contexts.
The organization that has been chosen for this assignment is Woolworths limited. The human resource management has many responsibilities in the light of the employee performance, recruitment, selection and many other issues. They have to design the best plans for their employees to give the best efforts and aligning their efforts to the betterment of performance. The key performance indicators (KPIs) have to be kept in the vision as well. The internal and external environment of the chosen organization will be analyzed in this paper to find out the strengths and weaknesses.
Woolworths limited is one of the most dominating retail companies in Australia. The headquarters of this company is situated at Bella Vista in Australia (Woolworths.com.au, 2018). They operate in the retail industry. The total number of employees of this company is around 111,000. The retail supermarket of Woolworths is considered to be one of the biggest successes in the retail market history. The retail industry is very much competitive since two of the biggest rivals of Woolworths are Coles and Wesfarmers (Woolworths.com.au, 2018). They sell various types of products like the groceries, magazines, DVDs, household products, health and beauty products, stationery items and many more. They offer their customers with the brand value that helps them to stay loyal towards their brand. The product line of Woolworths is very strong and they are well reputed for their products all over the country. In the light of their success and dominance in the retail industry, their HRM plan could be developed firmly (Truss, Mankin & Kelliher, 2012). It can be recommended that the HRM plan should be compact and cater to the needs of the customers and the employees. The employee handling is a very crucial aspect in the retail industry because the employees do not stick at a single company for a long time (Brewster, 2017). They migrate to other companies just to create a better resume with more experience. This is why it is very much important to retain the employees in a better way.
Woolworths has been a leading brand in the retail industry for many decades now. This is why they look to dominate this industry by gaining the trust and loyalty of the customers (Hill & Alexander, 2017). They give the most preference to their customers. Some of their priorities in their industry are:-
- To build a team that will focus on customers and store-led (Woolworths.com.au, 2018).
- To generate a sales momentum in providing food and ensuring the sustainability (Benn, Edwards & Williams, 2014).
- To make betterment in their drinks business to provide the customers with much value and convenience to the customers (Woolworths.com.au, 2018).
- To deliver their shareholders with the best values in their portfolio business
- To provide the customers with the systems excellence and providing end-to-end customer service
Strategic Plan of Woolworths
The mission of Woolworths is to help the members of their team so they can get the financial security. They want to provide the customers with the better financial services in the industry (Woolworths.com.au, 2018).
The management of Woolworths wants to be the best loved retail service all over the country and engage their operations at the heart of the community. One of their major objectives of Woolworths is improve their network efficiency. They always want their customers to provide the best services indeed (Woolworths.com.au, 2018). They want to provide their customers with the value-for-money products. They want to invest a huge amount of money for the enhancement of their supply chain management.
The organization Woolworths is facing several challenges in the competitive business environment in the retail industry. They are facing a fierce completion with the companies like Coles and Wesfarmers. It has been seen that the market growth for Woolworths has been slowing down in the recent times. Another challenge they are facing is the market discounting.
New market entries have posed a big challenge in front of Woolworths as well because the entry of Aldi in Australia has been a real setback for them (Hendry, 2012. The morale of the employees has gone on to be very weak from all the aspects. The German retail organization Lidi is also trying to enter the German markets. The market share of Woolworths is going down and the employees are leaving them because their rivals are paying better than them (Arnstrong et al., 2015).
Strengths
- Woolworths has the capacity to bring down the labor and production costs.
- It has been providing the products to the customers at a cheap price so they are much trusted by their loyal customers.
- They have a very strong presence in the household items, toys for kids and products according to special seasons (Johnson, 2016).
- They have been an icon in the advertising world.
- They sell the products manufactured by their company only.
Weaknesses
- They sometimes extend the offer periods of some products for a long time.
- They have not been able to compete with their rivals in terms of using the new technologies (Pettigrew, 2014).
- The decision making framework for the higher authority managers is very poor.
- They do not have the proper idea about product quality and low prices.
Opportunities
- They can improve on their technological aspects.
- They should offer best products at a lower price than their competitors.
- They should offer wide range of products indeed (Pettigrew, 2014).
Threats
- They are facing huge competition from their arch rivals (Wu, 2012).
- The competition is very much fierce since the other retail companies are extending their non-food items.
Political
Australia is a politically stable country. The performance of Woolworths will depend a lot on the political environment of Australia (Gupta, 2013). The political conditions of the country are very much compliant with that of the foreign direct investment. The foreign investors might be able to agree to supply the raw materials to them just because of this political stability.
Economic
The recession and unemployment factors have raised a bog issue in the economic matters of Woolworths. The great recession in the last few years has changed the business performance of Woolworths to great deal (Newton, 2014). They had a faced a major financial crisis as they had to close their business operations in the country.
Social
Woolworths has given the central priority to the satisfaction of the customers. This is why they want to provide the best quality products to them. They want to provide the customers with a unique selling experience (Gupta, 2013). They want to ensure the customer loyalty through their product brand value.
Technological
They are looking to implement the RFID technology into their business operations (Jia et al., 2012). They want to improve their inventory management as well through the use of the proper technologies. They want to implement the different technologies in their logistics and supply chain management in order to improve their business operations.
The HRM practices in Woolworths have been playing a very essential role in the sustainable development of the organization. The HRM department always plays a very instrumental role in the employment and selection in the organization. As the employees have to be efficient and cautious, the HR managers look to recruit the right people by measuring the communication skills with the customers (Bratton & Gold, 2017). They look to achieve the strategic objectives of the organization and focusing on the individual employee needs properly. As the employment issues and fierce competition is troubling Woolworths badly, the HR managers will look to follow the customer oriented approach to regain the trust of the customers.
Challenges Facing the Organization
This has been one of the major issues for the HRM of Woolworths. They have to utilize several HRM policies and make relevant changes in those. They have to find the most suitable employees for the jobs in the organization who will be dedicated to their work (Bratton & Gold, 2017). They have to ensure that the employees have the basic skills to cope up with the challenges in the retail industry.
The second most important thing for the HR managers is to provide the proper training to the employees for the skills development. They should take up the training programs for the employees who lack some definite skills in the organization (Bratton & Gold, 2017). This will probably improve their business performance. The proper training facilities should ensure the competitive advantage for Woolworths.
The staying of the employees in one retail company is not for long. This is why Woolworths should pay more money and facilities to their rivals than their competitors. They should maintain the industrial standards in terms of standard pay (Van Dooren, Bouckaert & Halligan, 2015).
The performance management of the employees is a very important thing for the HRM. The HR managers should make sure that the employees who perform very well can get the rewards (Van Dooren, Bouckaert & Halligan, 2015). The performance appraisals should take place for the employees and this should motivate them indeed.
The HRM department should always follow the open communication system with the employees to maintain a good relationship. The active participation of the HR management should provide a better organizational performance. So the managers must maintain appositive labor relationship with the employees. They should punish the employees who violate the rules of the organizations or commit some unethical works.
Woolworths might apply some HR techniques that should be helpful for them to get the best results for the organizational success of Woolworths.
Developing workforce planning
The HRM department should always take up some important techniques for the betterment of the workforce (De Bruecker et al., 2015). They should follow the advanced approach according to which they should build the workforce by mixing the employees from different cultures. Thus they can improve their operations in a business environment free of cross cultural conflicts.
Flexibility in HR designs
The organizational development of Woolworths will require practicing the flexibilities in the HR design. The flexible model should be followed by the HR managers. This should be useful for the organizations in the best ways because the flexibilities will bring the sustainability in the business operations. The efficient HR management facilities should be provided to all the stakeholders.
Employee motivation
The employees should be motivated by the human resource department of Woolworths. It has been seen lately that the employees are suffering from weak morale (Lazaroiu, 2015). This is why the human resources department should conduct effective research program and find out the issue that are troubling them. Then they should ask for the suggestions from the employees on how to improve the situations. They should also motivate the employees to work harder and achieve the business objectives of Woolworths.
SWOT Analysis of Woolworths
Development in leadership
The leadership effects in Woolworths should be looked after by the human resource managers. Thus they should put more focus in implementing the democratic leadership. Thus they should be able to know about the ways they can overcome the challenges (Bhatti et al., 2012). The feedback from the employees should be helpful for the HR managers to put in practice.
The HR managers should always implement the strategy of developing the workforce planning by interviewing with all the employees individually.
The managers should implement the proper HR design into the business operations of Woolworths by measuring the business challenges and seeing at their capacities to overcome them (De Bruecker et al., 2015).
The HR managers should also consult with the leaders of the organization and ask them to mix with the employees in order to lead with them with example (Lazaroiu, 2015).
The HR managers should also thrive to motivate the employees within the organizational structure. The organizational culture should also be changed by the managers as well.
The HR managers are mostly responsible for the recruitment and selection, training and development of the employees. The key performance indicators (KPIs) of the HR managers should be addressed in Woolworths so they can deliver better services to their customers (Parmenter, 2015). The KPIs are the average interviewing costs, the performance management of the current employees, the rewards and recognitions for the employees in all the departments, average age of retirement, average salary, average training costs of all the employees and many others (Parmenter, 2015) If the HR managers provide the employees with the proper wages they will gain the trust of the employees as well. Thus the HR managers should work with collaboration and provide the most unique selling experience to the customers. They should also focus on the use of the technologies in Woolworths for best outcomes.
Conclusion
This paper can be concluded by saying that Woolworths has been facing several problems in their business operations lately. The internal and external environments of the organization have been discussed in this paper along with the challenges faced by them. The mission, vision and HR challenges have been discussed as well. The ways in which the Hr managers of Woolworths can cope up with these issues have been highlighted and the HRM plan has been designed. This will be very much beneficial as this would enhance the business performance of Woolworths.
References
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Benn, S., Edwards, M., & Williams, T. (2014). Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.
Bhatti, N., Maitlo, G. M., Shaikh, N., Hashmi, M. A., & Shaikh, F. M. (2012). The impact of autocratic and democratic leadership style on job satisfaction. International Business Research, 5(2), 192.
Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Brewster, C. (2017). The integration of human resource management and corporate strategy. In Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 22-35). Routledge.
De Bruecker, P., Van den Bergh, J., Beliën, J., & Demeulemeester, E. (2015). Workforce planning incorporating skills: State of the art. European Journal of Operational Research, 243(1), 1-16.
Griffin, R. W., & Pustay, M. W. (2012). International business. Pearson Higher Ed.
Gupta, A. (2013). Environmental and pest analysis: An approach to external business environment. Merit Research Journal of Art, Social Science and Humanities, 1(2), 13-17.
Hendry, C. (2012). Human resource management. Routledge.
Hill, N., & Alexander, J. (2017). The handbook of customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement. Routledge.
Jia, X., Feng, Q., Fan, T., & Lei, Q. (2012, April). RFID technology and its applications in Internet of Things (IoT). In Consumer Electronics, Communications and Networks (CECNet), 2012 2nd International Conference on (pp. 1282-1285). IEEE.
Johnson, G. (2016). Exploring strategy: text and cases. Pearson Education.
Lazaroiu, G. (2015). Employee motivation and job performance. Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, 14, 97.
Newton, P. (2014). What is the PESTLE Analysis?.
Parmenter, D. (2015). Key performance indicators: developing, implementing, and using winning KPIs. John Wiley & Sons.
Pettigrew, A. M. (2014). The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge.
Truss, C., Mankin, D., & Kelliher, C. (2012). Strategic human resource management. Oxford University Press.
Van Dooren, W., Bouckaert, G., & Halligan, J. (2015). Performance management in the public sector. Routledge.
Woolworths.com.au. (2018). {{metaController.metaData.title}}. Woolworths.com.au. Retrieved 20 April 2018, from https://www.woolworths.com.au/
Wu, J. (2012). Technological collaboration in product innovation: The role of market competition and sectoral technological intensity. Research Policy, 41(2), 489-496.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
