Future Roles of HRM Practitioners in Woolworths

This study analyzes the future roles of HRM practitioners in Woolworths in response to changing demography in the workplace. It identifies challenges in HR planning and job design and suggests solutions for a multi-generational workforce.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Human Resource Management
[Woolworths Supermarkets]
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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Executive summary
The main purpose of this study is to analyse the future roles of the HRM practitioners in
Woolworths in response to changing demography in the workplace. This study identifies a few
future challenges to the HRM practitioners in context to their core tasks like HR planning and
job design. The changing demography requires multiple solution to be in place to provide a
workplace environment, which is in fit with the employees of all generations. The HRM
personnel need to be adaptable with the use of a few technologies like targeted recruitment
through social media platforms. This can help getting skilled and best-fit people. Moreover, job
design needs to be effectively handled, so that, motivation level in employees are not lost.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
2. Analysis of the potential impact of changing demography on the HRM, in regards to HR
planning and job design of Woolworths Supermarkets...................................................................4
2.1 Major demographics changes................................................................................................4
2.2 Impact on HR planning..........................................................................................................5
2.3 Impact on job design..............................................................................................................7
3. Conclusion and recommendations...............................................................................................8
References......................................................................................................................................10

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1. Introduction
The future of working life will be lot more different than what currently exists. This will
largely be due to five forces such as technological developments, social trends, globalisation,
demography and longevity, and low-carbon developments. Demography and longevity is the
most important of all in consideration to the future working life. The three key factors of
demography and longevity impacting the future working life are birth rates, generational cohorts
and longevity. Generational cohorts can be categorised into few distinguished generations such
as traditionalists, Generation X, Y and Z, and Baby Boomers (Chung, Chen & Lin, 2016). The
demography differences such as these will potentially impact the human resources practices.
These generations have distinguished choices for their work style, needs, skills, values and
attitudes towards work. They are also different in their performance, work habits and
achievement motivation. Dealing with generation cohorts is challenging considering that their
demands will be different.
Woolworths Supermarkets is being chosen for this study to identify and analyse the
impact of generation cohorts on the human resources practices of the company. The HR practices
in consideration are HR planning and job design. Woolworths Supermarkets is the leading
supermarket brands in Australia. The number of stores of this supermarket chain is close to 1000
and the number of employees is approximately around 115,000 (Woolworths.com.au, 2019). A
business that operates such a large platform is a matter of concern concerning the subject topic.
Woolworths Supermarkets can never afford having employee shortage in the company.
Additionally, the Company can never afford being incompetent to attract talented skills and
attain maximum employee retention rate.

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The main purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of demography changes on the
human resources practices of Woolworths in regards to HR planning and job design.
2. Analysis of the potential impact of changing demography on the HRM, in regards to HR
planning and job design of Woolworths Supermarkets
2.1 Major demographics changes
Evolving customer needs and fluctuating behaviours of stock prices are not only the
challenges or issues companies must counter these days. The workforce is also changing and the
future of the organisations rest on their shoulders. To be able to attract skilled people and retain
them as well it is important that the organisations have understanding of their diverse needs and
demands of their employees.
One of the major changes is an increasing participation of millennials in the workplace. It
is being believed that millennials are poised to change the face of the work in decades to come. It
is to be noted that an agile and a goal-oriented generation is ready to change the workplace
environment with their tendency to chase after big opportunities (Watts et al., 2016). They will
do it as if they have nothing to lose or else. Millennials have a never-ending desire in them to not
just get a job done, and go home but also to see how their efforts have paid off and are
contributing to a greater cause (Watts et al., 2016).
An ageing workforce is another generation, which possess dissimilar working
characteristic than of millennials. Notably, older workers possessing deep industry experience
have proved to be the assets to the organisations (Kraus, 2017). They can be and are great
problem solvers. They draw such skills in them from their long-standing relationships with the
employers. They can be the mentors to the next generation of employees, which are the

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millennials. However, many companies have no clue on how to provide these employees the
adequate amount of support, so that, they are flexible enough to act like mentors to the
millennials (Stewart et al., 2017).
Another demography change in the workplace is that more women are becoming a
regular part of the companies and men are increasingly becoming caregivers to their children.
This will require the employers to have full understanding of their employees and their personal
life demands. It is to maintain a fit between organisational policies, and individual’s needs and
demands of their personal and professional lives (Thriveni & Rama, 2018). Organisational
policies will need a revisit, so that, it drives the individual performance and fulfills their
personal-professional life.
2.2 Impact on HR planning
Woolworths is being chosen to understand the impact of demographic changes in
particular generation cohorts in the workplace. The operations in supermarket stores such as in
Woolworths can be divided broadly into two categories, front-end operations and back-end
operations. Front-end operations generally comprises of job positions like bag boys, bakers,
baggers, butchers, courtesy clerks, cashiers and deli workers. On the other hand, back-end
operations is supported largely by stock clerks, department manager and store manager
(Woolworths.com.au, 2019). Notably, front-operations is increasingly being shared by
millennials staff. On the other hand, the back-end operations is largely being dominated by baby
boomers (Stewart et al., 2017). The classification of workforce in this way is susceptible to two
major issues. These are attracting and retaining the millennials, and enabling flexibility into baby
boomers in consideration to technology and the working nature of millennials (Stewart et al.,
2017). The challenge is evidenced in a fact that human resources planning implies to finding and

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striking a fit between employees and jobs while avoiding manpower surpluses or shortages
(Windapo 2016).
The demography change will impact HR planning in Woolworths in number of ways.
Woolworths will soon be having an infrastructural change along its stores. There will be a corner
especially dedicated to a new “Ready-to-Go” section. This will be placed at the front of the store.
Customers can avail ready meals, sandwiches, salads and all from this section
(Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2019). It just presents an example of how Woolworths is undergoing
developments across its various business units. Now, a section like “Ready-to-Go” would require
some HRM policies governing the proceeding. Moreover, in-store managers will have added
responsibilities like ensuring that every newly introduced service goes well in terms of
productivity and service quality level. Moreover, in doing so the HRM practitioners must also
ensure that the employee feedback are addressed (Rasheed et al., 2015). The purpose of HR
planning is to help the company achieve its current and future goals. Hence, the HRM
practitioners in Woolworths should establish a healthy communication, so that, the newly
introduced service or product is feasible to the employees’ work capability and is also not
affecting their motivation level.
Woolworths is investing a good amount of time researching the likes and dislikes of
customers. They want to make their service even better than what it is at present
(Woolworths.com.au, 2019). Nevertheless, the additional efforts such as the one mentioned in
the preceded line will require the employees serving various job roles. Now, this can be
challenging for the company for various reasons. These are gender diversity in the workplace
and talent management (Rao & Tilt, 2016). Gender diversity means generations having diverse
preferences for the organisational culture, work nature, technology, work life balance and much

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more. The HRM practitioners in Woolworths will be tested for designing a workplace culture
that is suitable and feasible as well to all generations. Millennials prefer a social environment
whereas ageing population is very diligent and is not too much passionate for a social
environment (Buzza, 2017). Again, millennials love doing things quicker with the use of
technology; however, ageing population is not tech-oriented people. Baby boomers are tech-
oriented but they maintain a balance between technology and traditional way of working
(Bejtkovský, 2016).
The undergoing development works in Woolworths may also require recruiting fresh
people to have adequate number of people sitting in the bench. Generally, a recruitment process
attracts a healthy spending on the process. If it does not work will cause not just the loss of
money but also the waste of time. To avoid such things from happening the human resources
personnel in Woolworths will need to follow a modern and unconventional way to recruit
people. Indeed, targeted recruitment driven by the use of social media platforms is perhaps the
best answer to this situation (Topolovec-Vranic & Natarajan, 2016). The HRM practitioners in
the company will need to identify the social medial platforms where they can connect with
people and involve in a healthy inter-conversation. This would not just help in connecting to the
people but also conduct a cognitive assessment of their self-abilities and skills (Topolovec-
Vranic & Natarajan, 2016).
2.3 Impact on job design
Woolworths is committed to reduce their impact on the environment and be able to
perform more sustainably. Few of the changes are already in place. LED lights are becoming a
larger part of its stores. In addition, they are also switching to carbon-efficient air-conditioning
and refrigeration systems to be able to reduce the power consumption

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(Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2019). However, all this will not alone help and there are other areas
need to be addressed. These are the company’s contribution to the waste such as plastic waste. It
is to be noted the employees are now not just looking at the financial advantage they receive
from their employers but also the other factors. These are higher goals, impact on the
environment, the vision to change the world, and policies for labour and competition (Bretos,
Errasti & Marcuello, 2018). These trends suggest that the HRM practitioners in Woolworths
should focus on the employee experience. Woolworths should use some tools like the
employees’ “Journey Maps” to be able to know things that are not working for them at each
stage of this journey (Bretos, Errasti & Marcuello, 2018). This will help them accomplish the
“Job Design” appropriately.
Using journey maps the HRM practitioners in the company can accordingly utilise their
core tasks. These are job rotation, job enlargement, job simplification and job enrichment. Work
load on the employees will expectedly increase considering a concerned approach of
Woolworths towards business sustainability. Therefore, it is important for the HRM personnel to
effectively use their job rotation policy and indulge the employees in multiple tasks. However,
this may face some barriers such as the employee motivation. Notably, a low level of motivation
in employees implies to less encouragement towards the added job responsibilities. In such
situation, the HRM practitioners can use the factors of intrinsic motivation to motivate the
employees towards the added responsibilities. The best they can do is promoting “Work
Engagement” in the workplace. According to Shimazu et al., (2015), work engagement is
perhaps the most effective of all motivating factors for the employees. The HRM personnel in
Woolworths should use their job simplification strategy to make the enhanced set of works easier
to the employees. This would not just ensure an effective accomplishment of tasks but also a

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high employee motivation (Alam, 2015). Job enrichment should also be used to encourage the
employees. This will give them enhanced control and managerial access to perform their jobs
more efficiently (De Jong et al., 2015).
Nevertheless, the shifting paradigm in Woolworths in terms of increased addressing to its
environmental impact, business sustainability and infrastructural and technological changes
requires an excellent and controlled support from its HRM personnel.
3. Conclusion and recommendations
To conclude, it can be said that the changing demography will impact the core human
resources tasks or practices like HR planning and job design in the chosen company
Woolworths. The generation diversity that exists in the workplace create a lot of distinguished
challenges to the HRM personnel of the company. They need to find ways to strike a balance
between different generations in regards to work nature and the other factors. There is an
urgency for such initiatives to be taken considering a fact that Woolworths is undergoing through
the development phase in regards to various aspects like infrastructural developments. HR
planning should be introduced with a few changes like targeted recruiting from social sites. In
addition, job design should be appropriately handled, so that, manpower is effectively rotated
between works. While doing all these it is important that their motivation level does not get
hampered.
To recommend, it can be said that the HRM practitioners in Woolworths should
effectively be able to use technology and strategy to ensure a robust workforce. This will require
an appropriate use of technology such as the use of social media sites. This is required to be used
to interact with people, and do a brief assessment of their skills and the experience level.

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Secondly, job rotation and job enrichment should effectively be used to rotate employees
between the kinds of jobs and also to enhance their level of responsibility.

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Woolworths.com.au (2019). [online] woolworths.com.au. Available at:
https://www.woolworths.com.au/ [Accessed 10 Apr. 2019].