International Human Resource Management: A case study of Morrison’s UK

Running Head: International Human Resource Management
International Human Resource Management
A case study of Morrison’s UK
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Running Head: International Human Resource Management
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction...................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Background of the company...................................................................................................3
1.2 Company objectives (Vision/mission)....................................................................................4
1.3 Current business performance...............................................................................................4
2.0 Body of Discussion.......................................................................................................................5
2.1 HR strategies............................................................................................................................5
2.2 Employee development...........................................................................................................7
2.3 Employee relations and grievance handling.........................................................................9
2.4 Training....................................................................................................................................10
3.0 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................12
3.1 Conclusive Thoughts on Morrison’s practice......................................................................12
3.2 Critical Analysis in comparison to Asda..............................................................................13
3.3 Recommendations.................................................................................................................18
References........................................................................................................................................20
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Running Head: International Human Resource Management
1.0 Introduction
HRM or Human Resource Management has immense importance for a firm if it is to
achieve success in a competitive business sector like retail markets. HRM is no less
than an approach that is strategic in nature for ensuring that business development
is massively assisted by the joint performance of employees and management
together. In international business place, an approach like human resource
management puts some additional importance like overpowering competitors in
sense of service delivery, quality assurance and growth achievement. In addition to
this, long-term success in a competitive sector like retail is largely dependent on
HRM as this is viewed as adequate means of performance development as well as
performance delivery to survive in competition. In this article, the case study of
Morrison’s has been discussed.
1.1 Background of the company
Morrison’s is a UK based retail company with headquarter in Bradford in England. In
the UK this company is considered as the fourth largest supermarket chain. The
foundation year of the company was 1899 and William Morrison was the founder of
the company. The initial business of the firm was egg and butter stall in Rawson
market in Bradford, before it emerged as an important retailer in the UK. Until the
year 2004, the firm’s presence was limited within north England but its presence got
spread remarkably across south England along with Wales and Scotland. The major
reason for the firm’s expansion of business in southern England was the acquisition
of Safeway which was a supermarket chain of England with 479 stores. This
acquisition helped Morrisons to have its business presence across southern England
(Albrecht et al, 2015). Until the year 2016, the firm had 498 stores. Morrison’s is a
London Stock exchange listed firm and is included in the FTSE 100 index of
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Running Head: International Human Resource Management
organizations. Market share of the firm is also significant in comparison to Aldi but
behind some firms like Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Asda. While the full name of the firm
is Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, the business operation or trading functions of the
firm are carried out in name of Morrison’s.
1.2 Company objectives (Vision/mission)
Morrison’s believes that its business must march towards the fulfillment of a
commitment to customers and community. Hence it sets its vision and mission with a
considerable focus on its values. Thus the vision and mission of its business reflect
the overall values the firm does have. The mission statement of the firm is to offer
their several benefits to customers so that they feel that the best values for their
money invested in the purchase of products all through weekly shopping.
The vision of the company is to become a food specialist for every person. It wants
to differentiate its business from other major firms in competition in support of own
production and packaging facilities with an uninterrupted focus on quality aspects for
the satisfaction of customers.
1.3 Current business performance
Morrison’s stretched its businesses to Scotland and more parts of the Southern part
of England. This firm is now available to a considerable percentage of Households in
England (Bolman and Deal, 2017). The financial performance of the firm as interim
results for a half year till August 2018 denotes that group like for like sales without
considering fuel and VAT was 4.9 percent higher than 2017-2018. There is a 4.5
percent increase in revenue and the amount was £8.80bn. Profit before tax was
reduced by 29 percent and it was £142m in comparison to £200m of 2017-2018. Net
debt of the firm was reduced to £929m by £44m since 2017-2018.
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2.0 Body of Discussion
2.1 HR strategies
The companies have some core HR strategies which keep the employee
performance better and business expects to achieve growth. The company has its
own plant for manufacturing as well as supply chain which depend on a large
number of employees who keep the entire process operational by their effort and
skills. Thus need for better HR strategies is always important for the firm. HR
strategies of Morrison’s always consider HR functionalities. Talent management is
always focused part and along with succession planning depend on SAAS which has
a full form like software as a service system. Training and talent management are
important functions of HR professionals of the firm and this is helpful for the
company to upgrade the talents and performance of employees in the retail sector in
the UK. Morrison’s has a trade union named Union for shop, distributors and allied
workers known as USDAW in abbreviated form. The firm keeps its HR strategies in
the alignment with employee handling guidelines. People are the main assets of the
firm and are considered highly instrumental in bringing about success (Bloom, Sadun
and Van Reenen, 2015). Therefore USDAW expects that Morrison’s always conduct
practices and follow guidelines which are employee friendly and consider discussing
with the trade union before any practice is put into effect. Another significant aspect
of the HR strategy of the firm is that the business is also focused on corporate social
responsibility. Brewster (2017), stated that CSR is a business functionality while
taking this strategy into the ambit of HR strategy is not a fitting planning. This
argument has been canceled out by Chelladurai and Kerwin, (2017) saying that
people of a business firm need to be aware of societal functions of their
organizations and HRM professionals are right in this matter by arranging knowledge
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development programmes for employees to get to be aware of the corporate social
responsibility. This sensible and realistic operation of firms keeps them motivated in
their present engagement with firms’ operation of the business. A scholar like Cohen
(2015), is critical of the plan which is not adequately strategic. In this respect,
Morrison’s is often weak. But according to Conway et al (2016), leadership with
proper organizational vision is of better help to define strategy and planning to
employees and their better management to help top management. Morrison’s,
always puts an effort to keep its leadership appropriate as per the vision and culture
of the business.
Figure 1- The Harvard model as an HR management model
(Source: www.managementstudyhq.com)
This model is largely comprehensive with six components for Morrison’s. In this
model, important dimensions are stakeholder interests, situational factors, HRM
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