Developing Effective Relationships Among Workers

The assignment explores how introducing certain HR practices can foster a positive work environment. By encouraging collaboration and sharing ideas, thoughts, and responsibilities, both full-time and part-time workers can develop effective relationships with each other. Additionally, providing benefits such as incentives and bonuses can help increase job satisfaction among part-time employees, leading to reduced labor turnover and increased employee retention.

Understanding People
in Organisation

Table of Contents
Question 1: Principles of scientific management with advantages and disadvantages for both
employer and employee of Stockington Store........................................................................1
Question 2: Personality Testing for analysing the effectiveness of recruitment process at
Super brand Store...................................................................................................................3
Question 3: Comparison of different characteristic of jobs carried out by Grocery Team and
Nightshift Workers.................................................................................................................4
Question 4: Implementation problems and barriers to learning for Super brand in training and
development programs...........................................................................................................5
Question 5: Comparison of leadership approaches adopted by managers of Checkout and
Grocery...................................................................................................................................6
Question 6: Reasons behind occurrence of conflicts among part-time and full-time employee
on Nightshift with techniques to resolve the same.................................................................8
REFERENCE.................................................................................................................................10

Question 1: Principles of scientific management with advantages and disadvantages for both
employer and employee of Stockington Store.
Stockington is one of the branch of Superbrand which has received a sales turnover of
£1m weekly. Under this branch, currently near about 500 employees are working including a
team of 31 managers (Rakodi, 2014). These workers are employed on either the basis of full-
time or part-time. Along with this, some are employed on temporary contracts also during peak
seasonal period so that requirement to meet demand of customer can be accomplished
appropriately. Currently, this store is incorporated into 6 main departments that are Warehouse,
Administration, Check out, Grocery, Homeware and Entertainment. Each of these stores is run
by department and assistance managers who give per day report about number of sales to senior
management team. This team includes 3 deputy managers and one store manager. Among these
six departments of Stockington, Checkout and Grocery are considered as largest stores where
leaders are also employed to lead team members.
In order to develop collaboration among team-members and managers of different
departments, owners of this company has applied some effective principles of Scientific
Management Theory. The main objective of this theory is to simplify jobs or roles and
responsibilities of workers which would automatically increase their productivity and level of
performance as well. In 1909, Taylor has published this theory i.e. 'The Principles of Scientific
Management' which helps in generating ideas for building cooperation among workers,
managers, leaders and senior management team of an organisation. As per this concept, it has
evaluated that workers at stores can only be motivated by giving high or sufficient amount of
salary. For example: “Giving a fair pay for particular day's work', aid in encouraging workers to
give best performance by giving satisfied services to customers. In addition to this, if staff
members will not give required result then they will also not get equally incentives as others.
This would also helps in exploring desired result which would leads to gain high revenue as well.
Along with this, scientific management theory also aid managers of Stockington to hire right
candidates at right place (Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2015). Along with this, selecting the best people
for a particular job refers as another crucial factor for workplace efficiency.
Principles of Scientific Management
According to Taylor, there are four main principles of scientific management, that are
mentioned as below:-
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 First Principle: Replace "rule of thumb” method for determining the most efficient way
in order to perform a specific task appropriately. It can possible only by a developing a
science for identifying weaknesses and strengths of each worker.
 Second Principle: The another principle of scientific method is to provide training to all
individuals as per requirement of business. With this assistance, it is also necessary to
assign roles and responsibilities to each worker as per capabilities and skills of them. This
would help in extracting best performance of staff members as well by giving job
satisfaction.
 Third Principle: It states that performance of workers should be monitored on regular
manner in order to ensure that they are working in desired manner or not. Furthermore,
managers should give instructions and specified direction to employees so that they can
work in highly efficient manner.
 Fourth Principle: Owners should define proper roles and responsibilities to each
managers and workers. In this regard, adequate amount of time should be provide to
managers so that they can formulate plan for organising training, monitoring worker's
performance and more.
Advantages and disadvantages of Principles of Scientific Management Theory:-
Advantages Disadvantages
 The main beneficial part of using
scientific management theory is that it
helps in enhancing production because
it concentrates mostly on steady
improvement rather than rapid changes
(Renko and et. al., 2015). Thus, it aid to
bring friendly relationship among
workers and managers which changes
are created in steady manner.
 This theory also makes managers to
have a good control on production
process and employees as well. As it
decreases autocracy by stimulating the
 Applying this kind of principles
required huge amount of capital and
time for evaluating weaknesses of each
worker, organising training and
development program, monitoring each
performance and more. As planning
gives advantages to business but it also
makes works inflexible and rigid as
well. Therefore, it directly leads to
decrease productivity of business.
 Giving high incentive to productive
workers as compared to less-productive
sometime leads to increase labour
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senior management to adopt effective
leadership style.
turnover as well. This would another
major weak point of scientific theory of
management.
Question 2: Personality Testing for analysing the effectiveness of recruitment process at Super
brand Store.
Personality testing is a key factor in a recruitment process which is essential for an
organisation on daily basis for success of the organisation. In this context, it is essential for a
chosen organisation i.e. Super brand to know use of personality testing to measure effectiveness
of recruitment process. This would help managers in finding right person for a right job. It is
essential for managers of this to make their workforce effective and productive in a business
environment (Dekker, 2016). Currently, this retailer company is continuously failing in
recruiting an appropriate candidate which can satisfy their target customers. Therefore, in this
regard, managers have introduced personality tests which is based on 'Big Five' and incorporated
into online application process. This technique helps in identifying those applicants who eagerly
wants to work with this company as well as will enjoy to give outstanding customer services. HR
managers of Super Brand also organised regular team-briefings. These briefings are started with
each department where managers will give clear instruction to workers about per day target.
They will also provide information about per day sales, its impact on staff pay incentives and
bonus, new offers and more. This would aid to check how many employees are more energetic
and work with full enthusiasm.
Apart from this, Personal testing is a time consuming process and undertakes lots of
efforts which leads to dissuade an appropriate candidate in moving forward with its application
process. In this context, it can be the reason for Super brand continuous failure in satisfying its
potential customer needs (Brown 2015). It creates lack of diversity in an organisation which may
lead to inefficiency in a workforce. It cannot guarantees an organisation that an employee is
perfectly suited for a particular job as it involves a huge risk. In this testing there is lower
turnover of staff of the candidates who have same traits. If Super brand continues to use this
testing then it will help an organisation in detecting interpersonal characteristics of a candidate
that should required to do a particular task. It will also help an organisation in making its
workforce effective and efficient for a longer run as compared to its competitive organisations. It
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also helps managers of Super brand in identifying appropriate questions that should be ask in an
interview.
Personality training is not only the process of recruiting but also helps managers of a
company in identifying strength and weakness of candidates who are appeared for an interview.
So according to this context, it is concluded that there are some advantages and disadvantages of
using personality testing (Cameron and Green, 2015). If Super brand has other option by which
they can make their organisations workforce efficient and productive then they can opt to both
testing methods which will help them in retaining its productivity for a longer run. According to
this, if super brand wants to continue personal testing in their recruitment process then they will
have to overcome these disadvantages of personal testing to achieve their set goals and objective.
Question 3: Comparison of different characteristic of jobs carried out by Grocery Team and
Nightshift Workers.
In Grocery department of Stockington branch covers 5 main areas that are- chilled foods,
frozen foods, bakery, dried goods, fruit and vegetables. At this store, fewer members under a
small team are worked to manage entire work (Thornborrow, 2014). Instructor of this company
has noticed that managers of this department used to shift roles and responsibilities of each
worker on daily purpose. This may lead to develop product knowledge in each staff member so
all become able to provide best services to customers. The main work of employees in Grocery
department is to ensure that high sales can be obtained on each day. For this process, they give
cooperation to managers in developing various strategies. For example- To reduce wastage
which may cause due to spoilage of food or expiry date, on weekly basis, they selected those
products which may expired within a week. After then they put them on separate basket at stores
and offer on less price rates. This would lead to increase sale prices as well as enhance
productivity of business also.
While in case of Nightshift department, it has the smallest number of workers in the store.
The main responsibilities of these staff members are replenish the shelves from late night
delivery before opening of the store (Posavac, 2015). Among these workers, five are employed
for full time and they get support by another team of members who work as a part time. Along
with this, there is an HR manager too who give instruction to staff members in what manner they
have to perform. But instant providing instruction about do work perfectly or in speed, manager
enrol itself in cleaning the over left wastage of food products, packaging and more.
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Thus, in both cases workers have played different role in giving their contribution in
achievement of business objectives. Here in Grocery store, employees are responsible to give
services to customers and deliver food products. While in Nightshift departments, workers are
appointed to clean the store before 7 a.m. in proper manner.
Question 4: Implementation problems and barriers to learning for Super brand in training and
development programs.
Super brand is a retail organisation of UK which has approximate 1,000 stores in large
and medium sized supermarkets. Along with this, 450 of them also established in smaller
‘convenience’ local stores. Although there is an intense market competition in retail sector where
organisations are facing a challenging economic environment. Yet Super Brand has acquired less
but consistent growth in terms of sales and revenue. The organisation mainly deals in food
retailing sector but it also offers a small collection of some household products, clothing and
entertainment items like CD’s and DVD’s. Current mission of this retail organisation is to
become ‘First Choice for Food Value’. It creates organisational value by delivering best quality
of products to customers on time. To gain best performance of employees, its management team
has provide proper information about mission and values of business to them (Christensen and
et. al., 2014). Apart from this, managers have also organised induction programme to new
workers to make them familiar with new working environment. Including training program, this
company also provide internal management development programme for existing managers and
staff members so that they can work in more efficient manner.
Currently, in order to provide amazing services to customers by completing their order in
short period of time, owners of Super brand have decided to replace monitoring system of stores
by new hand scanners. In this regard, staff members are needed to learn concept of this
technology. Therefore, managers have organised training program for workers which trains them
about how to use such hand scanners technology for collecting data (Dixon, 2017). Furthermore,
it also tell them the way to download scanner data to the system, run computerised reports and
interpret overall details for making adjustment in stock's level as per order.
In this regard, they provide following two types of training:-
(a) Video Based Learning:
It can be used in stores for providing training of new hand scanner to it's employees. It
will also helps a store in reducing its training costs and challenges that arises at the time of
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training. It is also easy for employees of a store to learn because its just like watching a movie. It
is considered as an effective medium used by many stores to train their employees about new
technical products effectively and efficiently. It reduces the planning and efforts that are used in
personal trainings.
(b) Virtual Environment
It can be used by stores for generating awareness about new technical product to their
employees. In this, stores use virtual training coach who engages with the employees to make
them understand how to use the particular product. It generally used by stores to bring the human
touch in their training process which will make this process enjoyable. It is an effective medium
to target young forces working in stores, where they can create their own virtual training coach,
build their own challenges and collaborate with others in a learning process (Hamari, Sjöklint
and Ukkonen, 2016). It builds greater connectivity among employees working in stores.
Barriers in Implementation of learning program:
 Unwillingness to develop professionally: The main barrier behind implementation of
learning program at workplace is unwillingness of workers to take such sessions. If
people not take participate in such activities or un-interested in taking such lessons, then
they cannot develop their professional skills as per requirement. In context with Super
Brand store, it currently introduces a hand scanner technology for increasing efficiencies
of operational working (Buechler, 2016). Therefore, to understand this technique and
learn how to work on the same, it is compulsory for all workers to take learning sessions.
But if they show unwillingness to learn this procedure, then desired outcomes cannot be
obtained.
 Shortage of innovative ideas: If idea behind training program is not so innovative and fail
to gain attention of workers then, it also comes as barrier in obtaining the required
outcomes. As currently Super Brand has introduced a hand scanner technology at store,
therefore, it covers an innovative idea where workers can work more efficiently to give
best services to customers.
 Lack of facility: If there is a shortage of facilities like improper arrangement of training
program, technological tools such as projectors which make visual learning possible etc.
then it also create barrier in training sessions. As Super Brand is provided video-based
and virtual training to workers to learn them the concept of hand scanner technology.
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Therefore, for this purpose, any shortage of resource will directly impact on fruitful
outcomes of training
Thus, to overcome from all such barriers, it is necessary for HR and other store managers to
encourage workers to give their participation in launching new technology successfully
(Armstrong and Taylor, 2014). They should motivate staff members to take learning sessions as
it will develop their professional skills as well as give opportunity to increase level of knowledge
as well.
Question 5: Comparison of leadership approaches adopted by managers of Checkout and
Grocery.
The Grocery department mainly deal with managing food section which includes chilled
foods, frozen foods, bakery, dried goods, fruit and vegetables. During checkout process, HR
managers have noticed that staff members are being scheduled to work on different areas weekly
purpose. They have evaluated that shifting workers on different areas may leads to cause various
problems related to product knowledge. But instead of this, they have examined that all workers
are brilliant in giving amazing customer service and make interaction with them. Along with this,
team members of Grocery had also won reward for giving best quality customer service during
last year. But despite this, as compared to Grocery Store, Checkout has the largest number of
employees who are appointed for full-time and part-time. Along with this, maximum workers
that are near about 90% are appointed on par-time purpose. Thus, under both conditions that are
Grocery and Checkout Departments, managers have applied different-different leadership
theories. For example: Contingency Leadership is applied at Grocery Department to enhance
more productivity of its staff members. While Situational Leadership theory helps in resolving
conflicts among staff members of Checkout (Zou and et. al., 2014). In this regard, contingency
and situational theory both act as a great relevance to managerial practices and deal with various
situations.
Contingency Theories: This theory of leadership mainly focus in special variables which
are related to environment that can able to determine which kind of leadership style is suitable in
a best manner for certain situations. It is all about maintaining a balance between needs,
behaviours and context. Effective leaders can able to identify needs and wants of followers after
that adjust behaviour. This theory mainly put their focus on task requirements and organisational
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cultures and policies. It is generally important for practising managers to take proper
consideration of the situation.
Situational Theories: It defines that leaders have ability to choose perfect course of
actions which are based on variables that are situational. For certain kinds of decision-making
leadership style of different nature can be appropriate (Holloway and Hubbard, 2014). This
theory also allows leaders or managers to change their leadership style as per demand of
situation. For example: If a team-leader wants to resolve conflict among workers then in this
situation, laissez faire style needs to be adopted. While if business wants outcomes in any how
situation then they adopt autocratic style, where workers are forced to do work as per
requirement.
Leadership Theory Strengths Weaknesses
Contingency  The main beneficial
point of Contingency
theory is that it
provides flexibility in
management style as
well as concerns on
people-oriented and
task-oriented
leadership style.
 Under this theory,
opinion of every
worker is matter in
making changes and
development of
business.
 This theory is reactive
but not proactive in
nature therefore if
managers concerns
about task-orientations
then cannot encompass
with people-
orientation.
 If instant action has to
be taken within
department then this
theory fails to show its
effectiveness because
opinion of workers
cannot be taken for
quick decisions.
Situational  This theory of
leadership helps in
developing flexibility
at workplace. Along
 It fails to influence
leaders-subordinate
prescriptions where
both of them are
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with this, it also give
advantage to managers
to develop effective
relationship with
workers.
 It can be applied on
type of situation as
well as give highly
effective outcomes as
well.
allowed to work in
own manner. So, it
creates conflicts
among them.
 Changing leadership
style according to
different-different
situation often take
much time when
instant result is needed.
Question 6: Reasons behind occurrence of conflicts among part-time and full-time employee on
Nightshift with techniques to resolve the same
Nightshift Department has least number of employees who are appointed for full-time, part-time
and in hike period, some workers are appointed for contract basis also. But to leads to create a
large gap or conflicts among them also. During inspection, upper management have noticed that
there is low interaction between workers of part-time and full-time (Rolstadås and et. al., 2014).
Therefore, they have weak relationship too which leads to create various issues like high labour
turnover at this store. Therefore, the main reason behind occurrence of conflicts among part-time
and full-time workers is ineffective HPW (High performance working) practices. Along with
this, instead giving instruction to workers how to help each other in cleaning the store, Night
Shift Manager itself busy in cleaning process. At tea break the full time and part time members
of staff sit separately which shows that there is no bondage in them too. Therefore, it is
recommended to its HR manager to introduce some HR practices by which relationship among
workers can be developed. It includes group-related activities where both members of full-time
and part-time will have to work with each other for completing a task. Thus, when workers work
is such activities then they can share ideas, thoughts and responsibilities with each other. This
would develop effective relationship among them as well. Along with this, by giving benefits to
part-time workers like incentives and bonus, help in developing job satisfaction in them. This
would also leads to reduce labor turnover of Stockington and increase retention of employees for
longer period as well.
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REFERENCE
Books and Journals
Rakodi, C., 2014. Urban livelihoods: A people-centred approach to reducing poverty. Routledge.
Ridley-Duff, R. and Bull, M., 2015. Understanding social enterprise: Theory and practice. Sage.
Renko, M. and et. al., 2015. Understanding and measuring entrepreneurial leadership style.
Journal of Small Business Management. 53(1). pp.54-74.
Dekker, S., 2016. Just culture: Balancing safety and accountability. CRC Press.
Brown, A. D., 2015. Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of
Management Reviews. 17(1). pp.20-40.
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to
the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Thornborrow, J., 2014. Power talk: Language and interaction in institutional discourse.
Routledge.
Posavac, E. J., 2015. Program evaluation: Methods and case studies. Routledge.
Christensen, T., and et. al., 2014. Organization theory and the public sector: Instrument, culture
and myth. Routledge.
Dixon, N. M., 2017. The organizational learning cycle: How we can learn collectively.
Routledge.
Hamari, J., Sjöklint, M. and Ukkonen, A., 2016. The sharing economy: Why people participate
in collaborative consumption. Journal of the association for information science and
technology. 67(9). pp.2047-2059.
Buechler, S. M., 2016. Understanding social movements: Theories from the classical era to the
present. Routledge.
Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Zou, W. and et. al., 2014. Identifying the critical success factors for relationship management in
PPP projects. International Journal of Project Management. 32(2). pp.265-274.
Holloway, L. and Hubbard, P., 2014. People and place: the extraordinary geographies of
everyday life. Routledge.
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