Human Resource Management Practices at Burberry

This report examines the HRM practices at Burberry, including the purpose and functions of the HRM department, critical analysis of recruitment and selection approaches, benefits for employees and employers, and the effectiveness of HRM practices for profit and productivity. The report also explores the significance of employee relations and employee legislation in HRM decision-making, as well as the application of HRM practices in the context of work at Burberry.

Unit 3- HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................3
P1 Purpose and Functions of HRM department of Burberry......................................................3
P2 Critical Analysis of approaches to recruitment and selection................................................4
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................6
P3 Benefits of HR management practices in Burberry for employees and employers...............6
P4 Effectiveness of HR management practices for profit and productivity of Burberry............8
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................9
P5 Significance of employee relations and its impact on HRM decision-making......................9
P6 Employee legislation and its impact on HRM decision-making..........................................10
LO 4...............................................................................................................................................11
P7 Application of HR management practices in Burberry in context to work..........................11
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................15
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................16

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management refers to the practice of management of people in a
company or organisation for attaining higher productivity. HRM aims to maximize the
effectiveness of workers and employees by optimising all functions like staffing, hiring,
compensation, payroll, training and development, defining and designing job roles (Cheng and
Hackett, 2019). Burberry is an international clothing company based in London, England which
specializes in trench coats and other clothing accessories like leather goods, fashion accessories
etc. This report will study the HRM practices of Burberry for restructuring the departmental
practices as a part of the organisational change. The report will highlight the basic scope and
purpose of HRM in context of resourcing Burberry with talent to fulfil company objectives. A
description of benefits of HRM for employee and employer and effectiveness of the practices for
increasing Burberry’s productivity will be given. The significance of employee relations along
with employee legislations affecting HRM decision-making will be studied. Apart from this the
report will illustrate the application of HRM practices of recruitment and selection in Burberry
through completing individual document portfolio including job description, CV, documents for
interviewing, job offer and rationale.
LO 1
P1 Purpose and Functions of HRM department of Burberry
Human resource management is the description of the department in the organisation
Burberry which is a formal system that is devised for the purpose of managing employees,
workers and staff that work within the company (Wiernek, 2018). The fundamental purpose of
human resources manager of Burberry is to take the performance and productivity level of the
employees at the luxury fashion house to its maximum and effectively optimize the productivity
of the workers. The primary mission of HRM is acquisition, development, retention of talent,
aligning the workforce together with the company and contribute to the growth of the business
(Cheng and Hackett, 2019). It is also termed as a strategic approach to acquire, motivate, manage
and develop the employees of Burberry along with developing and shaping the corporate culture
of the company. The position and structure of HRM in Burberry is subdivided into career,
individual and organisational areas. Individual development happens through training,
performance appraisal, career development through career management and succession planning
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while organisational development through change programs, maximising employee performance,
talent management etc.
The functions of the HR are positioned at the theoretic centre of the company that has access to
all areas of the business. The key responsibilities that Burberry’s HR department performs are:
 Workforce planning: The Human resource management at Burberry conducts analysis,
forecast, planning of employee’s demand and supply, assessment of gaps, determination
of interventions for talent management. Apart from that Burberry aims at recruitment and
selection of right people with right skills and competencies during the right time of
requirement at the appropriate job roles and positions so that it coincides with the
mandate of company’s strategic objectives (Wiernek, 2018).
 Employee development and training: the selected employees by Burberry are given
appropriate training programs for various job roles like dealing with high end customers,
designing clothes as per industry standards and managerial and operational roles through
workshops, on-the-jo training, educational programs and periodical development
programs to ensure employee productivity.
 Performance appraisals and employee compensation: It is a major function of HR
management to regularly evaluate the performance of its employees and give then
feedback. HRM gives quarterly reviews to its employees. HRM also deals in
compensation and employee benefits related matters including payroll processing and
employee issues.
 Contribution to business process: HRM also works in respect to dissemination of
guidelines, monitoring behaviour of the employees, development of employee
engagement activities, motivational practices, dealing with the grievances of workers and
acting as a mediator between workers and top management (Gormally, 2019).
P2 Critical Analysis of approaches to recruitment and selection
The process of recruitment and selection plays a major role in the progress of the
companies like Burberry. Recruitment and selection go hand in hand which results in the
functioning of organisation and effective planning. When this is done effectively, it helps in
attracting the top talented and skilled candidates which can in turn helps in building a result-
4

driven team. There are various methods which Burberry use in order to recruit the candidates and
to select some of the qualified ones from the pool of candidates.
Approaches of Recruitment
This is the process in which the company searches for the talented individuals which can
contribute by achieving the goals of the organisation. It is the most important function of the
human resource and the processes of planning. This also affects the various other important
processes of the companies like training and development, performance evaluation,
compensation management and many more. Though the advanced technology has brought many
changes in the recruitment and selection processes but both the processes are equally important
to attract the talent and hire the right people for the company (Denisa, 2018). It is a systematic
approach which is performed by Burberry in number of ways as follows:
 Internal Recruitment
This is the method of recruitment in which the company recruits the candidates from the
company itself to cut costs and give flexibility to employees to pursue the new paths. This can be
implemented by transfers or promotions. Burberry can also do this by allowing the existing
employees to switch their full-time job to part time and vice versa.
Strengths: This method is cost effective and helps in boosting the morale of employees. It
enhances the employees’ motivation which forces them to perform better.
Weaknesses: This creates a limit regarding the number of potential candidates (Opute, 2020).
This also misses out the fresh ideas and new perspectives which are usually brought by new
candidates. This also leads to conflicts.
 External recruitment
This method gives the opportunities to the external candidates who do not work with the
company. The company uses automation tools to analyse and screen the candidates. This can be
implemented by subscribing to job boards, resumes databases, posting ads online or in
newspapers etc.
Strengths: This gives many options to the company in terms of fresh ideas.
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Weaknesses: This becomes more expensive and time consuming. Sometimes, software
disqualifies the candidate even when qualified but the resume is not well formatted.
Approaches to Selection process
After recruitment, candidates are selected through interviews or testing.
 Interviews
These can be online or in person at the organisation.
Strengths: The whole personality can be revealed such as communication skills, behaviour,
etiquettes etc.
Weaknesses: This can lead to wrong interpretation because of the dishonest answers of the
candidates.
 Testing
Tests can also be taken at the workplace or online through various platforms.
Strengths: This reveals the academic skills of the candidate by giving a quantifiable insight. It
eliminates bias (Kang and Shen, 2017).
Weaknesses: This can be ambiguous which effects the results.
Among all the approaches, Burberry must use the external recruitment for gaining candidates
with new ideas and for selection, the company must use pre-employment tests along with face to
face interviews, collaborative hiring etc.
LO 2
P3 Benefits of HR management practices in Burberry for employees and employers
For employees: Burberry’s human resources practices tend to empower employees in
various ways. HR management ensures that the rights of the employees are protected and that
workers operate within the scope of the employee legislations and employment. Burberry
introduces frequent training and development workshops for its employees to keep them updated
with the latest fashion trends and keeps growing as an innovation-based organisation. It aims at
making the workplace productive and enhancing the organisational culture through employee
engagement activities such as team building exercises, employee rewards and competitions.
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Burberry provides stock options for encouraging employee participations, and provides various
rewards and recognition to motivate the workforce (Thomas and et.al., 2020).
Being a luxury clothing brand, the employee rewards tend to be of high stature such as
international vacations and trips, digital gifts for top performers, employee of the month awards,
special parking spots and rewards for person who deals most effectively with the high-end
consumers and holiday bonuses. There are employee promotions and job transfers whenever the
managerial and operational employees outperform. Apart from that, human resources benefit the
employees by being a mediator between the employees and top managers and resolving their
disputes. Human resources assist employees with any problem they face in the organisation
related to provision of information, payroll processive, induction, management issues, conflicts
resolution, employee legislation. Human resources also conduct employee performance
appraisals, transitioning processes and succession planning to help employees in the company
for their career development and management (Aust Matthews and Muller-Camen, 2020).
For employers: Human resource management helps the management and employer of
the company by being the medium of communication for passing on important guidelines,
regulations, changes, strategic plans and company objectives to the employees working at
various levels. HR department of Burberry is continuously working on talent management
practices like workforce planning so that the management never remains unproductive. The
recruitment and selection process conducted by the human resource management teams at
Burberry aims to select the best talent in accordance with the needs of the employer and keeping
in mind the corporate and nosiness strategy of the company (Liu, Chow and Zhao, 2019). The
human resources influence the organisational culture by embedding the vision, mission and core
values of the company in the workplace through guidelines, policies and regulations. HRM
manages the conflicts between employees and employers and deal with the workers unions by
resolving issues so that employer doesn’t face any major losses and company keeps being
productive. Human resources help employers to attain wider organisational objectives through
practicing strategic plans and reducing the employee turnover by continuously keeping the
employees motivated and engaged. They apply approaches to retain the tale in Burberry so that
they don’t shift to competitive luxury clothing companies, which is a major problem in the
fashion industry (Galetić, and Klindžić, 2020).
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P4 Effectiveness of HR management practices for profit and productivity of Burberry
Human resources department is important for the organisation in increasing its revenue
and overall productivity. HRM deals with the various problems that affect the profit at an
international level like provision of job allowances, resolving problems of employees, selection
of the right talent for Burberry in context of clothing designers, managerial roles, customer
support and sales executives and other operational roles. They administer the salaries, evaluate
employees, assess job satisfaction, provide job trainings etc. The HR managers coordinate theory
key performance indicators to coincide with business objectives (Škudienė, Vezeliene and
Stangej, 2020).
Hr practices like employee engagement that Burberry adopts has led to a major revenue
growth, strong display of company culture and an increase in shareholder value. The operating
margin of shareholder returns has also increased. It was also observed that HR practices like
leadership styles and stimulation of innovation in the company increased the brand value through
training programs and enhanced the internal operations. There are various basic functions of
human resource department that automatically handle the costs incurred by company.
Recruitment and selection are huge tasks for any international brand. HR processes
brings the right talent with appropriate skills and competencies after an efficiently devised
recruitment methodology. All the job descriptions fit appropriately with the required role and
best people are attracted in the process. An extensive selection process is undertaken by the HR
department of Burberry to select the candidate after many written and practical tests and in-depth
technical and HR interviews (Çolakoğlu, Chung and Tarhan, 2016). Employees are given
appropriate induction to the company and their working efficiency is kept in-check and
individuality of the workplace leads to maximum productivity.
The performance management strategies that Burberry devises for its employees to
evaluate and measure their performance tends to instil feelings of significance of work among
the employees. In turn, employees start focussing more upon getting good reviews by senior
management, increase the efficiency of their tasks and aim at achieving the targets and goals on
time. They use their skills, brilliance and knowledge to produce the highest quality of work and
impress the clients with clothing designs. The higher the number of satisfied clients, the higher is
the brand equity and revenue of Burberry (Chaudhry and et.al., 2019).
8

The reward and recognition system in Burberry are a major reason for employee
productivity and higher morale. There is a point-based system in the company where the more an
employee achieves, the better are chances of promotions and increments. This increases their
commitment towards work. Apart from this HR plays a significant role in reducing the employee
turnover by clarification of the terms and conditions of the company, dealing with employee
conflicts and issues, dealing with the demands of the employees to a level which is agreeable by
the company. While recruiting and hiring, HR carefully studies employees that suit the best
interests of the company apart from being skilled and talented. HR retains the talented and
skilled people who want to leave job by addressing their problems and even conducting exit
interviews to understand the reasons for employee turnover (Signoretti and Sacchetti, 2020).
LO 3
P5 Significance of employee relations and its impact on HRM decision-making
Employee relations is the ability and efforts from the company’s side to manage the
relationships between workers and employers. Burberry has a good employee relations program
in place which aims at giving a fair and constant treatment to employees at all levels and job
roles. Employee relation programs help in prevention of various problems that arise from
different situation at the work and bring a resolution. These are typically an element of the
human resources strategies that are designed for ensuring effectiveness of people for
accomplishment of Burberry’s mission (Van Buren, 2020).
The HR practices are planned deliberately to maintain a competitive edge in the fashion
industry. The employee relation programs focus upon employee related aspects like pay and
employee benefits, the support of work-life balance and ensuring safe working environment. The
employee relation program adopted by Burberry ensures that the human resource strategy
emphasizes and places a high value of employees by considering them as stakeholders in the
fashion business. Stakeholders are the parties that are affected by the decisions and operations of
the company and impacted by its success or failure. This is important as when employees feel
that they are being treated more than just paid labourers, they tend to feel valued and perform
their jobs with grater efficacy. The major role of creation of employee relations and deciding
how it goes depends upon the HR decision making. All the decisions taken by the Hr should
coincide with improving the employee relation goals (Zeller, 2020).
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Recommendations: HR has to conduct functions that allow employees to work
efficiently with their teams and with the managers. They can improve employee relations by
between co-workers by building cross functional teams. In this HR practice, employees from
various departments work together towards a shared goal by combining their skills. HR should
always take decision to encourage social interactions by celebrating all major milestones of
Burberry by activities such as team outings. Apart from that Hr should always plan to conduct
team building exercises for improving the problem-solving, team work efficiency,
communication and decision-making skills of employees (Van Buren, 2020).
For improving employee relations with the company, HR management has to conduct
meetings and face to face interactions between workers and managers where employees can
share their concerns, needs for changes, suggestions, improvements and the managers can be
rational and openminded to increase employee participation. HR should conduct surveys
regarding how employee feel and what support they need from the company to improve their
efficiency. These could include working from home policies, medical facilities, crèches for
female employees, or compensation related issues. Apart from the all decision of HR should be
aimed towards proper inclusion of employees in all relevant decisions of the company, following
corporate government and being transparent to the employees regarding challenges such as
finance, change implementation, and other decision-making processes (Pepple and Olowookere,
2020).
P6 Employee legislation and its impact on HRM decision-making
Employee legislations are referred to the laws and regulations that cover the rights of the
employees and workers and control their relationships with the employees. Burberry inculcates
all employee legislation in its HR policies and practices. Employee legislations govern all areas
of human resource management decisions from recruitment and selection to compensation.
The current employee legislations that affect Burberry in UK based offices are general
employment issues like: Recruitment and selection, number of working hours, employee
contracts, the status of the working employees which is ether contractual, full time. Part time or
flexible, Compensation and pay, entitlement to paid leaves, maternity/paternity leaves,
Retirement and redundancy, Health and safety, Anti-discrimination, Bullying and harassment
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laws, Data protection laws, Disciplinary laws and whistleblowing and Transfer of undertaking
related laws (Argyrou and Lambooy, 2020).
The present employee legislations that greatly affect HRM decision are:
 Employee Rights Act 1996: This law takes care of the basic rights of working employees
like child care leaves, provision for employees to request flexible working hours and
patterns.
 Equality Act 2010: This law states that all employees have to be treated with no
discrimination and equally and fairly in relation to age, gender, disability, race, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, civil and marriage partnership etc (Waughray and Dhanda, 2016).
 Health and safety at work Act 1974: This provision has laid down various duties for
employers in relation to employee health and safety from safety with computers to
dangerous chemicals.
 Pensions Act 2008: This provision in the UK law allows employees to get automatically
enrolled for primary pension in context to occupation and where the funds have to be
protected.
 National minimum Wage Act 1998: this employee right focuses on provision of right
compensation to employees which consists of a right to at least £ 8.21 for employees
older than 25 years (Fidrmuc and Tena, 2019).
LO 4
P7 Application of HR management practices in Burberry in context to work
As a new recruitment and selection process is being implemented in Burberry, a new job
specification and interview simulation has to be devised for completing the individual document
portfolio. As per the job analysis various positions and roles are made available in Burberry. The
chosen position is department manager (Wiranegara and Iffatunnida, 2017).
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1. Job specification
2. CV for person specification
12
Job description
Company name: Burberry Group Plc.
Job Role: Department Manager
Experience: A minimum of 3-4 years of experience in managing any retail department in
the fashion industry.
Qualifications required: A minimum of Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance or
related field, MBA would be advantageous
Skills: The candidate should be confident, results driven, should have statistical and
numerical aptitude, self-motivated, should possess organization skills, problem-solving
skills, inter-personal skills and should be excellent in communication.
Responsibilities:
 Recruitment, interviewing and orientation of new employees under the department
 Periodically monitor and evaluate the performance of employees
 Manage the budget and finance of the department and forecast relevant
requirements
 Set strategic and departmental goals for short and long-terms
 To ensure high level of productivity in staff members and motivating them
 Communication of job-related expectations to the staff
 Foster a productive work culture
 Ensure there is appropriate compliance to company and industry regulations.
CTC: As per industry standards and depends on the performance in interview (Mekpor and
Dartey-Baah, 2020)

3. Interview Notes
13
Curriculum Vitae
Name: Sharon Williams
Date of Birth: 26.02.1994 Email Id: [e-mail]
Gender: Male Contact Number:
Work experience:
Company Job title and role Duration
ABC Department Manager 2017-2020
XYZ Management trainee 2015-2017
Educational qualifications:
Duration Degree/Certificate University Percentile/ GPA
2013-2015 Masters in Finance ABC 9.4 GPA
2010-2013 Bachelors in business
administration
XYZ 8.9 GPA
Achievements and awards: XYZ
Technical skills: MS excel, SQL, MIS, Six Sigma Green Belt, PMP certification, Tally,
MS Visio, Database management and Analytics, SAP
Soft skills: Ability to work in teams, Interpersonal and communication skills, decision-
making skills, diagnostic and analytical skills, leadership skills, time management, people
management competence problem solving skills (Teixeira da Silva and Tsigaris, 2018).

 Describe the role of department store in attaining company objectives?
 How did you handle an underperforming employee in your previous position as a
department manager?
 What are the most important personality traits in a management level role?
 Describe some strategies to keep your employees motivated and what have you
implemented in the past?
 What are the unique skills and characteristics that make you suitable for this role?
(Weller and et.al., 2018)
4. Job Offer
14
Offer Letter
Email subject Line:
From: HR department Burberry ([e-mail])
Email message:
Dear candidate,
We congratulate you on your selection as the department manager of XYZ
department of ABC retail store of Burberry in the London branch. We are offering you a
full-time position as per the job role and look forward to having you on-board as soon as
possible. On the basis of your experience, design portfolio and interview, we hope that you
will take our company to the next level.
As per our conversation, we would like to offer you a CTC of: £XYZ and the details are as
follows:
CTC £XYZ
Basic Pay £XYZ
Allowances £XYZ
EPF deduction £XYZ
ESIC deduction £XYZ
Salary in hand £XYZ
If you decide to take up this role, your estimated joining date will be XYZ 2020 in the ABC
branch of our company. Please find attached the details of your job description and the
employee handbook (Roberts, 2020).
To accept this job, offer, kindly revert back to the company on this email id.
We are excited to see you on-board soon!
Thanks and regards,
HR manager
Burberry

CONCLUSION
From this report on importance of human resource management, it was concluded that
HR management of Burberry plays a significant role in managing all its employees in order to
increased productivity in the organisation. Various HRM practices like workforce planning,
recruitment and selection and talent management approaches are used by Burberry for increasing
the efficiency and productivity of the company. In order to increase the effectiveness of practices
and motivate and retain employees, HRM of Burberry can introduce employee engagement
activities, foster employee relation programs and participation, increase its reward and employee
benefits system, improve training and development practices and include extensive exit
interviews. The strengths and weaknesses of various internal and external sources of recruitment
were elaborated along with benefits of HR practices for employees and employers. The
employee legislations that were describes have to be appropriately aligned with HR policies and
regulations. The application of HRM activities were extensively describes through job
description, cv, interview notes and job offer examples of hiring a department manager.
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<https://burberrycareers.com/>
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