Role of International HR partners in the Retail Industry

This presentation discusses the role of International HR partners in the retail industry, focusing on their contributions to managing a diverse workforce. It explores the challenges they face and provides recommendations for future changes. The presentation also highlights the expectations for the retail industry in terms of technology integration and employee engagement.

Human resource management
Retail industry

Table of contents
Introduction
Definition of HRBP
Role of IHRBP
Change expectations
Identification of challenges
External stakeholders
HRBP contributions and KPI
PDP for HRBP
Recommendations
Conclusion

Introduction
• Human resource is a major factor for managing the international
business
• Managing the diversity among the global workforce (Marchington
2015)
• Managing the engagement and motivation level of the workforce
(Dobre 2013)
• Talent development according to the external trends

Definition of HRBP
• HRBP is majorly responsible of meeting the business
objectives in relation to the human resource
management
• It is also responsible for initiating the change process
related to the employees (Stone and Deadrick 2015).

Role of International HR partners
• Global retail industry is witnessing huge development
• Infusion of technologies and new concepts further changing the
definition of this sector (Jacobson, Sowa and Lambright 2014)
• Providing consultancy services in human resources related issues
in the retail sector
• Identifying the need for change
• Increasing the retention ratio in the workplace (Hecklau et al. 2016)

Cont.
• International human resource partners are also responsible for
making the human resources compatible with latest technologies
• Developing integrated solutions for effective tech development
process (Kehoe and Wright 2013)
• Enhances the value proposition for the employees

Difference between IHRBP & HRBP
IHRBP HRBP
•Catering to the larger and global
workforce
•Cultural factors are having higher set
of influences
•Diversity management is having more
importance
•More influence in the decision making
process
•Catering to smaller and region specific
workforce
•Cultural factors are having lower set
of influences
•Diversity management is having less
importance
•Low influence in the decision making
process

Future change expectations
• It is expected that retail sector will be more technology centric in the
coming years
• International human resource partner should also cover the
technological skills of the employees (Zhou, Hong and Liu 2013)
• Acting as intermediaries between employees and management
• Should focus more high performing culture

Changes in the retail industry
• Technology is becoming the front runner over the manual labor in
new retail development process
• Internal development elements are getting more integrated in line to
the global business trends
• Outsourcing is getting increased (Pantano 2014)
• More diverse skills are expected from the employees

Change in the role of HR business
partner
• Getting to manage more diverse workforce
• Cultural factors are becoming more important determinant
• Also covering the legal aspects in extensive manner (Collings,
Wood and Szamosi 2018)
• Initiating extensive performance management process

Identification of challenges
• Cultural differences are one of the major challenges for human
resource partners
• Recruitment of exactly skilled employees as per the requirements
• Initiating continuous process of skill development (Mu et al. 2015)
• Initiating different motivating factors for the employees

External stakeholders
• External stakeholders refer to the stakeholders, which
are having indirect impact due to organizational affairs
(Korschun 2015)
• They are not involved in the daily organizational affairs
• Customers, suppliers and government are the external
stakeholders

Influence of external stakeholders
• Changes in the requirements of the client bases
• Changes in the preference patterns of the end customers
• Changes in the business approach of the suppliers
• Changes in legislations of the governments (Brem and Viardot
2015)

HRBP contributions & KPIs
• Managing effective relationships between the internal stakeholders
• It can be identified by measuring the satisfaction level of the
employees
• Periodical up gradation of the skill sets of the employees
• It can be measured by determining the average performance level
of the employees

PDP for HRBP
What is needed? What should be done to achieve?
Human resource management planning
process
Tesco should have proper alignment between
their corporate objectives and human resource
approaches. These approaches should be
changed with time and external factors. Thus,
Tesco should have flexible planning process for
their human resource management.
Effective recruitment process Tesco should have effective and proper
recruitment and selection process that will
help in having right persons with right sets of
skills for the right job. Moreover, the
employees with having required technological
skills should only be selected.
Short term goals The employees should be given short term
goals, which can be achieved easily by them.
This will ensure that they will be motivated at
any point of time.

Required resources Success criteria Timeline
Support of the upper level
managers
Feedback from the targeted
employees regarding their
improvement
Within 6 months
Proper infrastructural facilities Comparison with the industry
benchmarks
Within 1 year

Recommendations
• It is recommended that skill sets of HRBP should also be
enhanced with time
• It is also important for them to cope up with the change
in the industry
• They should determine the change in the employee
expectations based on which the approach of HRBP
should be designed

Conclusion
• International human resource partners will hold more value for retail
sector in the coming years
• They will have to cover more diverse factors
• However, a few challenges will also be faced by them
• Changes in the external factors are one of the major challenges

Reference
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