Equality and Diversity in Marks & Spencer: Policies and Challenges

This report discusses the policies and challenges of Marks & Spencer in managing a diverse workforce. It covers recruitment, facilities, discrimination, disciplinary procedures, reward, and training. The report also highlights the challenges of managing a diverse workforce, including legal considerations, relevant employment legislation and standards, and human rights. The HR policies and strategies of M&S are also discussed.

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7/25/2018

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Contents
1. ntrod ctionI u ...................................................................................................................................2
2. indin and Anal iF g ys s......................................................................................................................2
ecr itment Proce o i er e ro p in MR u ss f D v s G u &S.................................................................................4
acilitie and pport or t e di er e or ro pF s su f h v s w kg u s.............................................................................4
i crimination and e al opport nitieD s qu u s........................................................................................4
i ciplinar proced reD s y u s.................................................................................................................4
ealt and a e or in conditionH hy s f w k g s.............................................................................................4
e ardR w ..........................................................................................................................................5
or in o rW k g H u s...............................................................................................................................5
omen and c ild la o rW h b u ...............................................................................................................5
Trainin and e elopment o emplo eeg D v f y s......................................................................................5
3. or orce i er it and alit in MW kf D v s y Equ y &S......................................................................................6
allen e or mana e di er e or orceCh g s f g v s w kf .........................................................................................6
e al on iderationL g C s s..........................................................................................................................7
ele ant mplo ment le i lation and tandardR v E y g s s s...........................................................................7
man ri tHu gh s.................................................................................................................................7
4. r ani ational policie and trate ie o MO g s s HR s g s f &S.........................................................................7
5. ecommendationR s.........................................................................................................................8
6. oncl ionC us .....................................................................................................................................8
e erenceR f s...........................................................................................................................................10

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1. Introduction
Marks and Spencer Group is a major multinational retailer company in the UK. The Marks
and Spencer Company is also known as M&S or MS. Mark and Spencer established in 1884
by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. M&S currently operates more than 1000
retail outlets in the UK and has more than 85,000 employees who serve more than 33 million
customers in a week (Marks and Spencer, 2018). M&S is one of the nation’s leading sellers
in clothing, food, and home products and it continuously expanding it. The head office of
M&S is in London. M&S was the first retailer Company that achieve £1 billion tax-free profit
in 1998. Currently, M&S operates its business in 53 countries with the commitment to their
core values of inspiration, innovation, integrity, and in touch.
The M&S has a diverse range of employees having different culture and values, but M&S
committed to providing an equal opportunities policy that applies on all. This policy and
procedure not only cover the recruitment and selection process, but it applies to the initial
phase of training and development, performance appraisal, promotion opportunities and
eventually to retirement. M&S is known for its women employability approach where female
workers are more in numbers in comparing to male employees that creates gender equality
problems for the organisation. In recent days, the rapid organisational transformation of M&S
creates a number of issues related to their workforce and Human resource management. This
transformational change in the company leads to a widespread change in the company's
behaviour and attitude and putting high pressure on its employees and their performance. It
was an emergent change where the employees of the M&S, had to develop and adjust to new
ways of a flatter organisational structure. They also have to develop their self-according to
the new ways of operations under the new business unit. In this report, we will discuss the
policy and procedure of M&S and their current issues related to the workforce management.
2. Finding and Analysis
The Mark and Spencer Company is one of the largest retailers in the UK and focusing on
providing quality clothing, food, and home products to its customer with its intention to
provide the right thing, in right way, for their customers, colleagues, suppliers, shareholders,
and its communities. Every organisation has some goals and objectives that can be achieved
through the integrated efforts of various resources including human resources. A proper

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organisational structure helps to achieve these targets and goals without any wastage of
resources (Barak, 2017). The size of the organisation determines the size and levels of
organisational structure (EwijkVan, 2011). However, M&S is a large retail business
organisation, which follows the flat organizational structure. Thus, M&S has limited levels of
management between top-level administrative officers and bottom level front-line employees.
This organisation structure allows freedom and authority in decision-making to the lower
level employees in M&S. This structure pyramid reduces the communication between upper-
level employers and baseline employees, which allows rapid decision-making and action. As
of 1st April 2017, M&S has more than 85000 employees, including 61,640 (72%) female
employees and 23,869 (28%) male employees. The focus of the M&S group is on women
employment and this is clearly shown in the figure of 2018 employee diversity records. The
number of female senior managers in M&S is also 42.7% (Marks & Spencer, 2018).
Source: M&S Gender pays gap report 2018.
M&S leads the way in many existing diversity and insertion initiatives. The M&S recognize
as the best company of women employment from last seven consecutive years. The M&S
group is known for their strong flexible working policy and balanced gender equality network
not only at the bottom level, rather in the Board of members group as well. The M&S is
committed to maintaining at least 30% female representation in the Board of Members group.
Therefore, the top priority is given to the female employees and their employability in the
M&S organisation (Wilson, 2014).

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Recruitment Process of Diverse Group in M&S
The M&S considers all the statutory rights of the country where it recruits people. It supports
and respect for international human rights rules and regulation all over the word during
recruiting employees for the organisation. The company establishes and implementing all the
appropriate policies and procedures, which follows the local national law, and follows the
company’s value and ethics in all the countries where it operates its business (Bond and
Haynes, 2014). The M&S also provides a clearly written and understandable form of
information about its employment term and conditions, arrangements, including wages,
working hours, and holidays. The company is focusing on providing permanent employment
wherever it is possible.
Facilities and support for the diverse workgroups
The M&S Company focuses on providing an adequate working environment for its
employees and a fair remuneration in turn of their works and performance. It does not matter
from which culture or country their employee belongs.
Discrimination and equal opportunities
M&S treated its employees equally irrespective of their gender, race, age, culture, colour,
religion, belief, martial, disability or working hours. M&S is committed to providing a
discrimination, harassment and victimisation free environment for their employees regardless
of their culture or diversity, where all decisions are relating to achieving the organisational
objective and free from biased (Wormely, 2016). The working culture of M&S focuses on
improving the work performance of an individual and the performance appraisal is based on
their individual merit.
Disciplinary procedures
M&S ensures that all the employees give their best to the organisation and are aware of the
standard performance level. It ensures that they give their best in their performance by not
doing any misconduct, avoiding poor attendance and behaving in a professional way with the
focus on supporting improvement.
Healthy and safe working conditions
M&S provides a safe and clean work environment including working accommodations and
working conditions for both male and female employees. The commitment of the company
includes preventing any injuries and accidents during work (Marks & Spencer, 2016).

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Reward
M&S provides the reward to their employees without any biased regardless of their country,
culture or colour. Regardless of where the employees work in the world, they are paid
regularly and on time. M&S provides fair remuneration and wages for their employees and
deductions are based on legally allowed rules according to the local company and wages law
(Petty, 2016).
Working Hours
M&S ensures that working hours of all the employees comply with the national laws,
relevant international standards, or benchmark industry standards. The total working hours in
a week must not exceed than 60 hours in a week. Any overtime above contractual is
voluntary. If it exceeds than 60 hours, then it will only be allowed in special circumstances
where national labour law permitted for more than 60 hours of working (GOV.UK, 2013).
Women and child labour
The M&S retail company make sure that not employing anyone younger than the minimum
legal age for employment in the country. M&S not providing work for those people who are
below 15 years or 18 years of age. It also ensures that those people are not eligible for doing
any work who are not completing the compulsory age of education. The M&S provide safety
for women employees. M&S provides travelling facilities for the work at night and make sure
that they are safe and secure during and after the job (Fiona, 2015).
Training and Development of employees
M&S provide training and development opportunities for all the employees including female
workers. The training and development facilities support to improve both business and
personal performance of the employee (Bierema, 2010). Women are the key of M&S
Company who are very large in numbers. Therefore, M&S gives special attention to the
training of female employees.
In order to always ‘do the right thing in the right way’ for its customers, the M&S group
always consider the global principles and international standards regarding, human rights,
labour rights, women's empowerment and safety and sanitation (Green et. al., 2015). It
follows the rules and regulations of various international standards and benchmark for their
successful operation of business all over the world.

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3. Workforce Diversity and Equality in M&S
As M&S always focuses on spread the business operation all over the world by increasing
their international presence and build a leadership position in top retail markets, it is essential
for the company to proper management of diverse workgroup. As a futuristic company, M&S
has to focus on its diverse workforce and its need and requirements from the company. The
HR policy of the company ensures that there should not be any biased based on gender,
culture, or colour etc. in any country where the M&S operates its business (Johnsen, Tatli,
and Ozbilgin, 2013). M&S always provide work training for its employees and evaluates
their works on the performance basis. The employees with high performance are often
selected for more challenging roles. To manage workforce diversity and equality, the M&S
launched a women's network that was created in 2014 to promote the progress of women and
provide the facilities to connect with the world enlarge their mentoring and networking
opportunities (Kim, 2008). M&S known for its workforce diversity, thus it provides equal
opportunities for the employees who belong to a different culture, community and countries.
The M&S launched a program name ‘Marks and Start and Make Your Mark’ to provide
equal employment opportunity for all the peoples. The different culture and types of people
make M&S stronger and encourage everyone to be who they want to be. The M&S responds
to the needs and desire of their customers and employees by fulfil their needs and desires and
feels pride. The ‘diversity and inclusion’ strategy the company wants to increase opportunity,
innovation, diversity, creativity and personal development for others. The M&S also invested
in a number of pilot schemes that support women and employees of the organisation from
different place and culture.
Challenges for manage diverse workforce
Manage the diverse workforce in a large organisation such as M&S is a challenge for the
company. Managing diversity is a more complex task than simply differentiate people
according to their culture. A large number of diverse peoples are not easy to handle if the
organisation is not prepared in advance to deal with their differences, values, and combating
discriminations (Kossek, Lewis, and Hammer, 2010). Then the skills and training of
managers play an important role to handle the types of issues in the large organisations. M&S
known for its workforce diversity, but it is also facing the various challenges to manage this
large diverse workforce. These challenges are as follows:

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Legal Considerations
M&S has to face normally the legal challenges related to work, wages, working
environments, and human rights law, which varies from country to country. It creates a
problem for the organisation to balance organisational policy and procedures with the law of
other countries regarding the workforce management.
Relevant Employment legislation and standards
Law and standards in different countries related to work and wages are different. This is one
of the major problems to manage different rules and regulations of the countries and merge
with the organisational rules and regulations.
Human rights
M&S faces problems related to human rights complaints from the different workplace of
other countries. Although M&S follows the international standards of benchmark and
standards related to work and wages, it cannot be possible to ignore the local law related to
work and wages; neither can it ignore local human rights rules and regulations (Rice, 2010).
M&S faces problems when it has to face different response to authority, communication,
shame, encouragement, and law related to work. M&S cannot respond or behave everywhere
in the same way. Apart from these challenges, the M&S face cultural and contextual conflicts
(Lyons, 2018). The M&S need to train its employees and develop different programs that
harness their diversity and make them sensitive towards different cultures at work.
4. Organisational policies and HR strategies of M&S
As M&S operates in the highly competitive retail market, it is essential for the M&S to retain
and train its employees for its long-term sustainability and growth. HR policies of M&S help
the company to reinforce it when necessary. In fact, HR operation is a key element in M&S
organisational strategy to retain highly skilled employees for its business operation in various
countries. M&S is known for its large number of talent hiring from different countries
(Thompson, 2018). The M&S provides equal opportunity to the people from the different
geographical background. This is a part of their HR strategies to expand its business
operation all over the world. The M&S keep in mind their organisational objectives and make
all their decisions according to their long-term plan and goals. It gives a competitive
advantage to the M&S over its competitors. The company review the changes in attitude and
application of the internal policy of the organisation. M&S conducted regular training and

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staff awareness programs that support the equal opportunity aim of the company (Warman,
2012). M&S comply with the legislation of their partner country where it operates its
business and communicates to their stakeholders about their responsibility to protect the
company and individual both by following ethical work at the workplace and in the
organisation. The HR policies of the company also consider the security and safety of the
disabled employees and people connected to the company by adjustment in the policies and
ensure that they are not placed at a substantial disadvantage by a practice or policy that exists
at M&C (Peretz and Fried, 2012). The HR policies of the company take care of its employees
and ensure that there should not be any biased based on their diversity. This HR approach of
the M&S provides a competitive advantage over others and helps to sustain in the market
even after the higher competition.
5. Recommendations
The organisation structure of the M&S is a flatter structure that provides freedom in decision-
making for its employees, but they cannot be able to increase the sale of the organisation
from the last few years. To remove these problems M&S needs to understand the work-
related issues and try to work on them. M&S should provide proper training and development
programs for its new employees and proper HR practices needed for management of the
diverse workforce. The M&S should try to retain their employees that save money and time
for the organisation. M&S should give preference to those people who think about the
company and its future. M&S recruits a large number of people from other countries, thus it
is necessary to take care of cross-cultural issues and values. The selection of employees
should be based on behavioural characteristics and their individual knowledge and skills.
6. Conclusion
Marks and Spencer is a leading retail company in the UK, which is very well recognized
organisation in the retail business of clothing, food, and home products. The company is well
known for its workforce diversity and women employment. The major focus of the company
is to provide equal opportunity for all in employment by doing the right thing in a right way.
However, in current days, the company is facing problems regarding their diverse workforce
management and low footfalls at their outlets. The main problem behind this is a big
transformation in the business organisation where small revenue organisations are forced to
shut down because of low footfalls. M&S is hiring new employees from different countries

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and provide training to them for operating the business in different countries. This
transformation of the organisation needs a proper HR practice and management of the diverse
workforce. However, it creates problems for the organisation such as putting high pressure on
its new employees and their performance. For future growth and improving its sells in near
future, the company has to focus on employees, selection and training be considering the
organisational long-term objective. The company should also focus on proper HR practices in
the organisation to manage their large size of the diverse workforce.

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