Role of Human Resource Management in Improving Employee Performance in UK Retail Industry: A Study on ASDA

This dissertation explores the role of human resource management in improving employee performance and productivity in the UK retail industry, with a focus on ASDA. It examines the concept of HRM, its impact on employee performance and productivity, and the benefits of improving employee productivity and performance for ASDA. The research methodology involves a deductive approach, survey technique, and probability sampling. The study concludes that HRM plays a vital role in managing employee performance and efficiency, and improving profitability and growth of the business.

To identify the role of human resource
management in improving employee’s
performance and productivity within
UK retail industry

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Background of the research....................................................................................................3
Research Questions................................................................................................................3
Research Aims and Objectives...............................................................................................3
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................4
What is the concept of human resource management within UK retail industry?.................4
How human resource management has impacted on employee’s performance and productivity
within ASDA?........................................................................................................................4
What are the benefits of improving employee’s productivity and performance for ASDA?.5
METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Background of the research
Human resource management plays a vital role within organisation as they manage the
employee’s lifecycle from starting to end in workplace. The department focuses on linking the
functions of human resource with the goals of business for improving the productivity and
performance of business (Hamid, Muzamil and Shah, 2022). They are also responsible for
designing a performance management strategy and measure the work efficiency accordingly.
Human resource management offers training and development benefits to employees for
enhancing the skills, knowledge and capabilities so that they can give better outcomes in
accomplishing the goals and objective of company (Reina and Scarozza, 2021). The chosen
organisation for this research is ASDA, it is a retail brand that serves groceries, financial services
and general merchandise. The organisation is second largest supermarket chain in UK and also
offers assistance for payment and insurance services and mobile phone provider.
Research Questions
 What is the concept of human resource management within UK retail industry?
 How human resource management has impacted on employee’s performance and
productivity within ASDA?
 What are the benefits of improving employee’s productivity and performance for ASDA?
Research Aims and Objectives
Research Aim:
“To identify the role of human resource management in improving employee’s performance
and productivity within UK retail industry” A study on ASDA
Research Objectives:
 To develop basic understanding about the human resource management within UK retail
industry
 To identify the impact of human resource management in enhancing performance and
productivity of employee within ASDA
 To determine the benefits of improving employee’s productivity and performance for
ASDA

LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature review is a written document that demonstrates the knowledge and understanding
of the academic literature on particular topic. It is written as research paper, thesis and
dissertation for situating work in relation to exiting knowledge. The goal of literature review is to
determine what exists in scholarly literature and also compare against findings resulting from the
current study.
What is the concept of human resource management within UK retail industry?
As per the opinion of Santana and Lopez‐Cabrales (2019), human resource management
is an activity of recruiting, hiring, managing, retaining and deploying the staff of business. The
role of human resource management is to manage the staff within company for achieving the
mission and reinforcing the culture of business. Objective of human resource management is to
efficiently make use of skills and abilities of each employee and also maintain ethical, social and
legal responsible policies and behaviors in workplace. Human resource management maintains
and builds positive staff experience with high quality of life and satisfaction so that they can
contribute their best efforts in accomplishing work (Yong and Mohd-Yusoff, 2016). They are
responsible for recruiting highly qualified employees, providing training and development
opportunity, performance management, assigning job role, team building, offering career
development opportunity and also integrating into labour law compliance. Human resource
management provides training and development opportunity to its employees for making them
competitive and improve their knowledge so that they can contribute their best performance in
accomplishing the target. They also take the responsibility of ongoing employee development so
that they can achieve their career goals.
How human resource management has impacted on employee’s performance and productivity
within ASDA?
According to Kehoe and Collins (2017), human resource management has created a great
impact on the employee’s productivity and performance within organisation as they focuses on
providing training and development opportunity and also improves the engagement level of
employees due to which they contribute their best output. HRM provides training and
development benefits to employees so that they can perform better and work with their full
potential for achieving the task. Through training and development program, Asda can increase

the morale and job satisfaction level of staff. It also helps in lowering the staff turnover which
helps in creating good image of brand. Training and development improves the productivity of
business by improving the knowledge and skills of staff (Curado, 2018). The human resource
management of Asda focuses on offering training and development opportunity to staff as it
helps in removing performance deficiencies which cause staff to perform at less than expected
level. The other way through which human resource management of Asda focuses on improving
the performance and productivity of employees is improving the engagement level of employees.
Asda organises social activities and fun activities in order to increase the engagement level of
staff.
What are the benefits of improving employee’s productivity and performance for ASDA?
As per the perspective of Baran, Filipkowski and Stockwell (2019), there are few benefits
which can be gained by company through improving employees performance and productivity
within workplace such a retaining employees, improves profitability, enhances productivity and
also attract more expertise staff (Arvanitis, Seliger and Stucki, 2016). Through improving the
productivity and performance of employees, the profitability and growth of Asda increases as
staff contributes their productive outcomes in achieving the business goals and objective. By
increasing employee’s performance and productivity, company can also retain their top
performers. Asda can retain their staff by fulfilling their needs and requirement so that they feel
satisfied while working in organisation (Huemann, Keegan and Turner, 2018). Company can
also improve their profitability by increasing the productivity and performance of employees.
When staff feels happy while working in organisation they give better output due to which the
profitability of business increases.

METHODOLOGY
Research methodology is a technique through which data is collected and evaluated in
effective and efficient manner. There are different types of methodologies which are used by
researcher they are as follows:
Research approach:
Research approach is a procedure of collecting and evaluating the data via effective
approach of research. There are mainly two approaches of data collection such as inductive and
deductive (Larshin and Lishchenko, 2018). In this research, deductive approach is used by
researcher in order to collect the data. Through using deductive approach, researcher develops
hypothesis on the basis of pre-existing theory and then implements the research approach to test
it. This approach is used with qualitative research techniques and also it explains the casual
relationship between concepts and variables.
Research Strategy:
Research strategy determines how researcher intends to carry out the work. There are
different types of research strategy such as action research, experimental research, surveys,
systematic literature review, interviews and action research. Under this research, survey
technique is used in order to collect the information. Survey technique is one of the effective
method through which data can be collected in systematic and smooth manner.
Methodology & tools:
In this research, the methodology and tool which is used by researcher is questionnaire.
The researcher will develop questions in order to ensure that the respondent further expands the
information (Pettey, Bracken and Pask, 2017). Through questionnaire, researcher can extract
data from respondent and also it is inexpensive and efficient way of collecting data if researcher
is not able to collect the information first hand.
Sampling Approach:
Sampling is a process of targeting particular segment of larger population. There are two
types of sampling such as probability and non-probability sampling. In this research, probability
sampling is chosen as it helps in reducing systematic errors and sampling bias (Bøe, Hognestad
and Waniganayake, 2017). Probability sampling increases accuracy of sampling error estimation.
For this research, researcher will chose sample of 30 respondents.
Ethical Consideration-

Research ethic is one of the useful and important tools within research as it helps in
completing the dissertation in ethical manner. There are few principles of research ethics which
helps investigator to complete the complete the research in effective and smooth manner are
confidentiality, inform content and privacy.

CONCLUSION
From the above information it is being concluded that human resource management is
one of the important departments of organisation that manage the overall performance and
efficiency of employees. Human resource management builds relationship between staff so that
they can collectively work together in order to accomplish the business goals and objective. They
play different roles and responsibilities within workplace such as conflict management, building
relationship, performance management, recruiting, retaining, improving employee turnover and
providing training and development opportunity. By fulfilling these roles and responsibilities,
human resource management improves the profitability and growth of business. Human resource
management deals with one to one disputes in order to maintained decorum and positive
workplace within organisation. Thus, human resource management helps in increasing the
performance and productivity of staff due to which they give their best performance in
completing the work.
Limitation of research:
Quantitative research is very expensive method to gather the data and also there is no
access to specific feedback. Through using this method, researcher can collect the data on
particular situation. By using quantitative research, researcher requires extensive statistical
analysis which is difficult to perform.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Arvanitis, S., Seliger, F. and Stucki, T., 2016. The relative importance of human resource
management practices for innovation. Economics of Innovation and New
Technology, 25(8), pp.769-800.
Baran, B. E., Filipkowski, J .N. and Stockwell, R. A., 2019. Organizational change: Perspectives
from human resource management. Journal of Change Management, 19(3), pp.201-219.
Bøe, M., Hognestad, K. and Waniganayake, M., 2017. Qualitative shadowing as a research
methodology for exploring early childhood leadership in practice. Educational
Management Administration & Leadership, 45(4), pp.605-620.
Curado, C., 2018. Human resource management contribution to innovation in small and medium‐
sized enterprises: A mixed methods approach. Creativity and Innovation
Management, 27(1), pp.79-90.
Hamid, Z., Muzamil, M. and Shah, S .A., 2022. Strategic human resource management.
In Research Anthology on Human Resource Practices for the Modern Workforce (pp. 1-
16). IGI Global.
Huemann, M., Keegan, A. and Turner, R., 2018, September. Human resource management in the
project-oriented organization. Project Management Institute.
Kehoe, R. R. and Collins, C. J., 2017. Human resource management and unit performance in
knowledge-intensive work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(8), p.1222.
Larshin, V .P. and Lishchenko, N .V., 2018. Research methodology for grinding
systems. Russian Engineering Research, 38(9), pp.712-713.
Pettey, G. R., Bracken, C. C. and Pask, E. B., 2017. Communication research methodology: A
strategic approach to applied research. Routledge.
Reina, R. and Scarozza, D., 2021. Human resource management in the public administration.
In Organizational development in public administration (pp. 61-101). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Santana, M. and Lopez‐Cabrales, A., 2019. Sustainable development and human resource
management: A science mapping approach. Corporate Social Responsibility and
Environmental Management, 26(6), pp.1171-1183.
Yong, J. Y. and Mohd-Yusoff, Y., 2016. Studying the influence of strategic human resource
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