Managing People at Marks and Spencer

This assignment examines the management practices of Marks & Spencer, focusing on induction and training programs, their impact on employee performance, and various leadership styles employed within the company. It also discusses challenges encountered during training processes and provides potential solutions. Additionally, the report explores the relationship between organizational structure and leadership styles at Marks & Spencer.

Managing People

INTRODUCTION
Managing peoples is organization is quite important for every firms. This report helps to
assess transferable skills and capability such as cooperation, negotiation and leadership. The
chosen company for this report is Marks and Spencer which is one of the largest retail company
in UK. The listed firm offers variety of products to their customers and report presents how
induction and training programs support and lead to greater performance and output. Moreover it
also describe some challenges faces by a company and also provide some recommendations in
order to solve those. Further report also present some management and leadership style and it
also shows how organizational structure influence the culture within organization.
1. Presenting how induction and training programs lead to greater performance and output.
Induction: It is a simplest process under which someone is introduced into a new job and
organization. Even it is a first step towards a gaining of an employee in order to make employee
comfortable in a company.
Training: It is an action or developing a person with any skills and knowledge in order to
achieve or improve one's capability, capacity and performance as well as productivity. In the
context of Marks and Spencer, HRM always provides training to their new employees so that
they helps to raise their productivity level and working performance.
Benefits of training and induction In Marks and Spencer:
 High Morale: Employees of Marks and Spencer who receive training sessions have
increased their confidence and motivation so that they give best output for the company.
 Lower cost of production: Training helps to eliminate risk because of trained personnel
because it make better and economic use of material and equipment. So that it helps to
reducing and avoiding waste and raise production level with great performance.
 Encourage productivity: Marks and Spencer encourage employees and spends money to
provide training and induction session to their employees. In this way company makes
them comfortable within a working area and then gets a result of high performance and
then provides best result for their company.
 Well- equipped employees: through training programs of a company. Employees learn
how to carry their duties and services. A well trained employees comes to feel more
1

confident while performing their duties and then it ultimately gives benefits to their
customers.
Challenges and solution faced by Marks and Spencer during training and induction
process:
 Hectic Employee schedule: during process of training, company faces problem because
of hectic schedule and there is a risk that training which adds to stress. As employee are
quite busy in their schedule that is why training are not effective is such a way as it
should be.
 Solution: By avoiding face to face training on weekends and using a micro- learning
approach will help to deliver best output for Marks and Spencer. By well communication
with their employees and always get to know their problems will help to overcome this
situation.
 A dispersed workforce: as Marks and Spencer have diverse working environment that is
why training and induction can be quite hard and as a result it creates some miss-
understanding and lead to some cultural differences. For example, in a quoted company
some cultures are less comfortable with being vocal on some online forum.
 Solution: By using some social tool, it can be avoided such as video- conferences.
Management of M&S must clarify their training goals.
 Time and resources are limited: Sometimes company finds that there is lack of time
and resources which cannot lead to a better training sessions. Therefore, this is consider
of of the biggest challenge faced by a company.
 Solution: As company investing good amount in training session because it provides
better results in a form of best productivity. If time is limited company must uses digital
techniques in the training material because it gives best result. Management of a company
must provides best learning style so that employee encourage themselves.
 Lack of engagement: It is another biggest problem faced by Marks and Spencer.
Engagement is quite important in three level such as cognitive, emotional and
behavioural. As a result poor knowledge retention, passive learning and commitment lack
always contributes to challenges in training and development.
2

 Solution: Company always use best practical example, case scenario in order to keep
their employees engaged. Must establish an active learning culture and make employees a
part of that culture so that it can boost emotional engagement.
2. Presenting management and leadership styles
Leadership style is a simplest manner and approach which provide direction,
implementing plans and also motivating peoples in order to achieve all defined goals of a
company. There are so many styles which are describe below:
Transformational Leadership: under this, they inspire staff with their effective
communication and also by creating an environment of intellectual input. Leadership who follow
this leadership style, require more oriented detail managers so that they successfully
implemented their strategies into the working areas.
Autocratic Leadership: It is an advance version of transactional leadership style and
leaders who follow this they have a significant control over the staff. This style is mostly suited
in those company where jobs are fairly routine and require limited skills, such as military
organizations.
Democratic Leadership: Another name of this style is participative leadership style in
which leaders are ask to their employees for an input before making final decision. If such
leadership style is follow in many organization then as a result workers usually feels job
satisfaction and company can benefited from best creativity. But sometimes it is consider as a
slowest process and not hep to take quick decisions.
Situational Leadership: Under this leadership style, leaders adopt style as per situation
required but it does not mean always help to take best decision. For example, in any organization
if the leader, may opt democratic style when discussing commercial direction with their seniors
then suddenly switch to bureaucratic strategy when relating with new factory protocols.
Bureaucratic leadership: it is used when an organization is highly regulated or have
administrative environment. Under this, leaders makes sure that people follow the rules and carry
out some specific task such as health and safety etc.
3