Overview of Sainsbury
Discuss about the Strategic Leadership and People Management for Sainsbury.
The capability to manage people in the organization and operative leadership is important for the success of any business or team of members. Despite the fact that whether it is a group or a business will eventually operate towards achieving shared goals and it is very essential to have somebody who can take together every element or it is an important member of the team to attain the objectives (Durham, 2012). This report is being prepared in order to represent how whether human resource management practices and leadership of Sainsbury Company are effective for the organization or not. In order to do so, the report will explain various practices of human resource management that company use and leadership strategies.
In the United Kingdom Sainsbury is called as the second biggest chain of the supermarket, comprising 16.9% share of the United Kingdom’s supermarket sector. John James Sainsbury is the founder of the company and established it in 1869, with the first shop in Drury Lane in London. Sainsbury is one of the earliest adopters of the concept of self-service retailing of United Kingdom.
The vision of Sainsbury is to become the most trusted chain of retailing, where people come and enjoy shopping. The company regularly invest in its store’s infrastructure, stock, and they try that their channel offers excellent services to the customers (Sainsbury, 2018).
The time companies get included in the innovation, they require innovative and creative people, who can take the risk, have high tolerance power, and are flexible (Arulrajah, 2014). It is important for a business to adopt practices of human resource management that can help in encouraging and motivating employees to be innovative and creative (Ling and Nasurdin, 2010). Sainsbury has adopted a centralized policy of human resource in which every decision is taken by the top management. The central objective of the company is to fulfill the needs of the customers appropriately and offer investors effective financial return. The aim of Sainsbury is to provide right opportunities to all the employees so that they can develop their capabilities and can receive a reward for their contribution to the business success.
The Sainsbury hire around 150000 employees and possess near around 19 million consumers who regularly visit their stores (Sainsbury, 2018).
It is the procedure of identifying potential employees and inspiring and encouraging them to appear for the job in the company (Yu and Cable, 2013).
Human Resource Management Policies of Sainsbury
Job analysis offers information about the job and what are the characteristics that are important to operating the activities (Landau and Rohmert, 2017). This type of data which is presented in the form of job description and specification supports executives to decide which candidate to hire from the pool.
Sainsbury Company provides various opportunities of job in its different stores available in the market. They search for the candidate with effective customer skills and jobs are obtainable in technical, stockroom, and clerical position. Dual contracts, term time contracts, and flexible contract provide change to the employees to perform the job on the time hourly basis. The opportunities of the job are promoted on the in-store job board, at the jobcentre plus, and in the local newspaper. The company is planning to open various central and local stores in different towns which are creating vacancies in advance. The staffs are recruited in Sainsbury in every two or two months to offer staff training.
Recruitment for Graduates
Every year approximately 100 graduated are recruited by Sainsbury and 70 of them operate in the stores. Recruitment of graduates is done online at the recruitment website of Sainsbury. The graduates are offered training in every aspect (Annual Report, 2015).
Work Experience
Offer is provided to the student to visit the stores of Sainsbury for the part-time job. All these jobs are arranged at the domestic level. Students who require a letter of work experience in the diverse department for the particular time duration.
Sainsbury invites people and asks them to provide their letter of applicant and curriculum vitae’s.
After this company shortlists the candidates and this process is done by the recruitment manager.
Interview Stage- It is one of the important stages of the process as various questions are prepared to judge the knowledge of the candidates.
An apt person is selected who suits best to the requirement of the company
At the starting of the training, every trainee is offered with a common summary of the company and perfect understanding of their responsibilities and rights. Training undergoes a general introductory training programmer for the first eight weeks of their employment period. In this programme, the one-day introduction is provided which is followed by an intensive programme which involves aspects such as food safety, customer care, working practices, and store security.
The training is offered at Sainsbury so that the performance of the employees can be improved which will result in enhancing the brand image of the company. Besides this, training is offered so that employees feel comfortable.
Sainsbury’s Recruitment and Selection
The competitiveness and growth is based on its capabilities to maintain diversity and gain its benefits. Sainsbury equality and diversity policy is a very important portion of company’s business plan. All equality and diversity are expected to add value to enhance both customer services and sales.
Sainsbury Company has planned and created a programme of standard development and employment very beneficially for their employees as per their needs. Career and development programme comprises Colleague discount card, Family-friendly policies, Pensions, Annual bonus scheme, save as you earn, career breaks, parental leave, life insurance, childcare vouchers, share purchase plan, a programme of social association award for long service.
The contribution of human resource management policies of the company is very rich. The programme of employee loyalty has helped it in winning the CBI human capital award. The company has around £80 million payments as a bonus for 127,000 employees in order to encourage them and increase their loyalty towards the organization. Besides these HRM policies has contributed towards the growth of the company. Due to these policies company has successfully opened a new supermarket in the UK in order to promote its 10 minutes’ drive. The revenue of the company also increased from 25.83 billion British Pounds to 29.11 billion British pounds in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Contingency Theory
The Contingency Theory of human resource and leadership discusses that there is not one single method of leading and managing a team or company and that all the styles of leadership must be dependent on some circumstances, which reflects that there are few people who work by putting their best efforts in some places; but perform very poorly if those elements are taken out from them (Anzalone, 2018).
Sainsbury Company has various stores at different locations which involve diverse people who perform the job and offer services to the customers on behalf of the company. All these stores daily deal with different situations which are not atoll identical to each other, the, therefore, the managers of the company follow contingency theory because they have to perform differently in all the situations and need to provide different solutions by using diverse method for the situation. The executives of the company who follow this theory possess various traits that support them in thinking differently in various situations and offer solutions according to them (Shodhganga, 2016).
The managers of Sainsbury Company are capable enough to recognize the needs, behavior, of their employees as well as their stakeholders and according to that they perform and make strategies that motivate them.
Training and Development at Sainsbury
Leadership is said to be an art of influencing people or team to perform in order to attain the goals of the organization. Leadership is effective when it is based on the thoughts, however, won’t occur unless those thoughts can be interconnected to others in a method that helps in engaging them to perform the way leader wants (Ward, 2018).
Sainsbury involves effective leaders in the organization who helps in motivating the employees and makes them work according to the organization conditions. The leaders of the company follow some styles due to which they are capable to handle all the situations (Sainsbury, 2018).
Democratic Leadership Style- The management of Sainsbury has adopted a leadership’s democratic style which is also called as participant leadership where the voices of the employees are heard at the time of decision making (Parés, Ospina, and Subirats, 2017). The leadership of Sainsbury influences employees and because of this, the company regularly offer good services to its consumers. It must be seen that the executive give maximum emphasis on the appointing leaders in every department to manage the process of the organization. The management provide roles of leadership to people in the company such that everyone gets clear image about their responsibilities, in order to execute the strategic decisions by effective communication by conducting meetings and follow up on the employees to confirm that they are not wandering away from offering excellent services and to confirm that the business functioned efficiently. For instance, the duty managers in every store lead the decision-making process that helps the store operations. At all the stores of Sainsbury, managers perform daily audits and solve problems in the company and also doe operational routine.
The democratic leadership style has supported company in performing activities in decentralized format and information is forwarded from the top management to the lower level employees and all the employees feel free to talks and offer their operative ideas that have helped the company is growing. The management of the company empower their employees and they are also taken as the essential asset of the company (Kane and Patapan, 2014).
The leadership of Sainsbury Company allows them to offer various benefits to the employees who resulted in increased productivity and performance of employees as well as the company. For instance- Loyalty of employee- Reward, training, and development programme of Sainsbury Company has made its staff members become loyal in the company.
Diversity at Sainsbury
It is suggested to the Sainsbury Company to present new products which will offer a comparative advantage to the company over their challenges.
Sainsbury Company should open its local stops placed in the centre of the city and not at the borders of the city. Customer often select local shops in place of supermarkets in order to save their money and time it they does not want to do bulk purchase as unquestionably in big stores frequently they buy more than what they have planned.
Conclusion
In the conclusion, it can be said that human resource management practices and policies of Sainsbury is very effective and has supported it in managing people in the organization effectively. The company conducts recruitment and selection procedures to hire skilled candidates for the company. The HRM of the company increases the potential of all the employees in the company. The business’s human division of all the business is performed by the human resource at Sainsbury Company in order to confirm that strategy of employee development is linked to attain the goals of business. Sanisbury Company make use of strategy of HRM to improve its financial position; it has utilized recruitment and selection tactics in order to offer opportunities of job to maximum number of people and choosing the best skilled candidate for the work by the process of selection. Along with this, it offers training so that they can place right candidate at the right place and eventually provide best results to the company. Moreover, the training programs help in developing the behaviour and attitude of the employees so that they can survive in the business environment. Besides this, Sainsbury management thinks that maintaining diversity in the business is considered as the best method to get new and innovative ideas in the business. Further, the report has discussed about the leadership of the Sainsbury Company which has helped them in maintaining their workers and get the best work out of them.
References
Annual Report (2015) We will make our customers’ lives easier [online]. Available from https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/j/LSE_GB0767628_2015.pdf [accessed 19 June 2018]
Anzalone, C. (2018) Structural Contingency Theory in Human Resources [online]. Available from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/structural-contingency-theory-human-resources-38519.html [accessed 19 June 2018]
Arulrajah, A. (2014) Human Resource Management Practices And Innovation: A Review Of Literature [online]. Available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314238350_HUMAN_RESOURCE_MANAGEMENT_PRACTICES_AND_INNOVATION_A_REVIEW_OF_LITERATURE [accessed 19 June 2018]
Durham, J. (2012) Developing Effective Leadership and People Management Skills [online]. Available from https://www.lifecoachexpert.co.uk/leadershipmanagingpeople.html [accessed 19 June 2018]
Kane, J., and Patapan, H. (2014) Good Democratic Leadership: On Prudence and Judgment in Modern Democracies. 1st edn. U.K: Oxford University Press.
Landau, K., and Rohmert, W. (2017) Recent Developments in Job Analysis. 1st edn. U.S: Routledge.
Ling, T.C, and Nasurdin, A.M. (2010) Human Resource Management Practices and Organizational Innovation: An Empirical Study in Malaysia. The Journal of Applied Business Research, 26(4), 105-116.
Parés, M., Ospina, S.M., and Subirats, J. (2017) Social Innovation and Democratic Leadership: Communities and Social Change from Below. 1st edn. U.K: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Sainsbury (2018) About us [online]. Available from https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/about-us/our-vision [accessed 19 June 2018]
Sainsbury (2018) Colleague engagement [online]. Available from https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/making-a-difference/our-colleagues/colleague-engagement [accessed 19 June 2018]
Sainsbury (2018) Our Management [online]. Available from https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/about-us/our-management [accessed 19 June 2018]
Shodhganga (2016) Models and Theories of Human Resource Management [online]. Available from https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/155771/16/13_chapter%203.pdf [accessed 19 June 2018]
Ward, S. (2018) Leadership Definition [online]. Available from https://www.thebalancesmb.com/leadership-definition-2948275 [accessed 19 June 2018]
Yu, K.Y.T., and Cable, D.M. (2013) The Oxford Handbook of Recruitment. 1st edn. U.S: OUP USA.
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