Impact of COVID-19 on Employees Training and Development: A Case Study of Marks & Spencer

Research
Methodologies
TOPIC: To evaluate impact of COVID-19 on
employees training and development. “A case study of
Marks & Spencer”
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ABSTRACT
Organisations and employees are needed to go hand in hand in the path of progress and
development. Various dynamics and changes bought by business environment requires
organ9isations to keep pace with these developments to ensure its growth and remain in
mainstream, securing competency and growth and prosperity. Since employees are most
important resource of organisations who are sitting at various positions and departments in
organisations are the one who are responsible of not only undertaking various tasks but also
making desirable plans of executing any change. Thus, their upliftment or enhancement in
performance ensures development of organisation. Therefore, every organisation does
development of employees through an important function of Human Resource management,
Training and development. Training and development is a set of activities that are useful in
imparting desired skills and knowledge in employees to inculcate and adapt necessary
developments, first by bringing developments in performance of employees. With addition to
that, this meta-analysis is being developed by extracting data from primary as well as
secondary data sources. This helped in presentation of this report ensuring its better quality
and also analysed reliability of data which is being used in this report.

Table of content
ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................3
Background.........................................................................................................................................4
Review of problem.............................................................................................................................4
Aim.....................................................................................................................................................5
2. LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................................................................7
Benefits of training and development on employee's performance..................................................7
Impact of COVID-19 on training and development programs introduced by managers and leaders
of M&S company................................................................................................................................7
Ways by which Marks & Spencer could effectively redesign its training and development program
under the COVID lock down conditions..............................................................................................8
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.............................................................................................10
Research Philosophy.........................................................................................................................10
Research approach...........................................................................................................................10
Data Collection.................................................................................................................................11
Data Sampling...................................................................................................................................11
Questionnaire design........................................................................................................................11
Ethical Consideration........................................................................................................................12
TIME PLAN............................................................................................................................13
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................15
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.INTRODUCTION
Training and development play significant role in the business organisation as it is the
subsystem which focuses on the improvement of the performance of the employees (Ahmad
and et. al., 2017). Training is defining as the educational process in which main focus is on
improving the skills and abilities of employees and gaining more knowledge. Furthermore,
training and developing is the primary function of the human resource department within the
organisation as they are responsible for managing the employees of the organisation (Beagle,
2015). Training and development program is design according to the needs and requirements
of the organisation in order to achieve its desire goals and objectives. According to current
situation of employees the training program is design so that they would able to enhance their
skills and abilities.
Background
Marks & Spencer has made its brand name in marketplace by providing quality goods
and services to its customers across the globe (Bandura and Lyons, 2015). It is the British
multinational retail company established in year 1884 by Michael Marks & Thomas Spencer.
The company is dealing in wide range of products such as clothing, home products and food
products. It has expanded its business in international market as its products and services are
preferred by customers. As company is operating at global level so need to focus on its
strategies and its implementation in effective and efficient manner (Hurtle, 2015). Marks &
Spencer is having large employee force and its management is difficult hence HR department
need to take corrective measures so that it would able to manage its employees and help in the
accomplishment of organizational goals and objectives. As with light to the fact that, every
business enterprise irrespective of its working scope i.e. small scale or large scale, has been
impacted by coronavirus in their various operational activities. M&S is chosen for conducting
this research paper, as respective company has wide market presence including 1038 stores in
UK and 481 around the world and operates its operational activities in various regions of in
international market. Therefore, this company will depict great deal of information and suits
best for covering aims and objectives of this research paper.
Review of problem
`This research paper will be based on analysing impact of coronavirus on training and
development programs organised by respective company. COVID-19 have disrupted many
sort of operations of Marks and Spencer. In fact, no other business was also spared from this
effect of pandemic. Considering Training and Development, it is one the major and prominent
task in an organisation as it is helpful for raising efficiencies of employees in a manner that
leads to their own development along with helping organisation to achieve more compatibility
in market. But even Training and development activities were halted, even when they are not
operation of organisation but a function of human resource department. Major reason for this
disruption can be attributed to the fact of restricted and curbed freedom of movement of
people. Marks and Spencer is a large scale organisation an it hires employees all around the
globe.
For training and development functions they were helpless because of curb on movement.
Also to support programmes under Training and development large scale gatherings were
required which were also prohibited. However these are sort of examples, whereas there were
many difficulties before Marks and Spencer to carry out training and development of
employees. This situation came as a big hit for organisation because the world after pandemic