Human Resource Management in Tesco

This document discusses the role of Human Resource Management (HRM) in Tesco, including its functions, recruitment and selection approaches, and the benefits of HRM practices for employees and employers. It also highlights the significance of employee relations in HRM decision-making. The document provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of different recruitment and selection methods and explores how HRM practices can increase organizational profitability. The subject of the document is Human Resource Management, and it is relevant for students studying HRM or related courses. The document type is an essay or research paper.

Unit 3- Human Resource
Management

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................3
Purpose and functions of HRM...................................................................................................3
Strengths and Weaknesses of different approaches to recruitment and selection.......................5
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................7
Benefits of HRM practices for the employees and employers....................................................7
Effectiveness of HRM practices in increasing the organisational profitability...........................8
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................9
Significance of employee relations in HRM decision-making....................................................9
Key elements of the employment legislation and its impact on decision-making....................10
LO 4...............................................................................................................................................10
Implementation of HRM practice..............................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Human resource Management plays a very important role in the organisations as they focus
on the welfare of the employees as well as the organisation. It does the role of managing the
people so that they become able to achieve better performance. It is responsible for handling all
the aspects of the employees such as human resource planning, recruitment, training,
compensation, maintaining employee relations etc.
Tesco is the British multinational retailer company which deals in manufacturing and selling
of groceries and general merchandise. It is headquartered in England, UK. It became the third
largest retailer in the whole world on the basis of the gross revenues. It performs its operations in
many countries across the world and has its established shops in those countries. It is also the
market leader of groceries in UK (Tesco, 2020). The report will mainly focus on the human
resource management in Tesco.
Various functions of HR will be highlighted along with the strengths and weaknesses of
approaches of recruitment and selection. Furthermore, it will also describe the benefits of HRM
practices for the employees, employers and the organisation. The report will also discuss the
importance of employee relations and the major elements of the employee legislation. The HRM
practice will also be implemented through examples.
LO 1
Purpose and functions of HRM
Its main purpose is to provide constant support to the HRM issues so that the employees
can be lined and organisational goals can be achieved. It needs to make the job and deal with the
job i.e., the employees. In order to perform jobs, identification of someone must be done so that
right person can be selected for the job. The job from selecting the qualified employee to
providing training and assessing the performance along with rewarding them, all are performed
by the HR department. Along with all these, it also focuses on maintaining healthy relationships
among the employees along with resolving the conflicts (Cook, MacKenzie and Forde, 2016). Its
main goal in Tesco is ensuring the availability of competent and willing workforce to the
organisation. It coordinates the people of the organisation so that they become able to achieve the
goals of the organisation, fulfilling the needs of the staff, maintaining employee satisfaction and
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many more. This is achieved by HRM by the use of people, processes and technology which
focusses more on internal environment rather than the external.
The HRM of Tesco performs various functions which are as follows:
Figure 1: Functions of Human Resource Management
Source: HRM, 2020
Planning: Under this, the HRM of Tesco analyses and identifies the needs of the organisation
regarding the need of certain kind of people, suitable number of people so that the HRM can
shape the other important processes in the organisation such as recruitment and selection,
learning and development and many more. It focus on the future of the organisations.
Recruitment and Selection: This involves attracting the people so that they can work in the
company and selecting the best, qualified and skilled. The company must have a stronger
employee brans so that it does not face any problems in recruiting and selecting the best and
highest potential candidates. Various recruitmnet tools are used by Tesco to do the same.
Performance Management: This is to ensure that the employees remain engaged and
productive as this manages the performance of the employees through good leadership,
feedbacks etc. This eliminates the gap between the workforce of today an tomorrow (Adam,
2018).
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Rewarding: This function is not to be missed as it enhances the motivation of the employees as
they are provided with rewards including the financial as well as other rewards such as career
opportunities, better culture, work-life balance etc.
Industrial relations: Under this function, HRM of Tesco maintains and cultivate the
relationships with the labour unions and the other members. This helps in eliminating the
conflicts which can be proved to be beneficial in the times of crisis.
Strengths and Weaknesses of different approaches to recruitment and selection
The process of recruitment and selection plays a major role in the success of the
organisations as when it is done effectively, it can help in gaining the best and the qualified
candidates as employees. There are various methods in which the HR of the organisations can
perform these functions. Tesco also uses many methods which are as follows which will have
their own strengths and weaknesses:
Internal recruitments
These focus on recruiting the employees from the organisation itself. These can be done
by promotions, transfers or switching the part-time employees to full-time and vice versa.
Through this, the company can give various opportunities to the existing employees so that they
become motivated to give their better every time to get promoted.
Strengths: This method is cost-effective and helps in boosting the morale of the employees. It
also helps the companies to retain the top talent and also contributes in reducing the employee
turnover. If Tesco uses this for recruiting the employees from the organisation itself, then the
staff feels more motivated for working harder and giving their best (Rahdari and et.al., 2020).
Weaknesses: On the other hand, hiring from the organisation itself, leads to a limit in the
number of potential candidates. Also, the company can also miss out many fresh and innovative
ideas which can be gained by hiring the new candidates. This may also result in many conflicts
because they think their colleagues have been promoted and they did not get the promotion.
External recruitments
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This method involves recruiting the candidates from outside the organisation instead of
giving the existing one the opportunities. This gives the outsiders the opportunities to become a
part of the particular company. The company uses various tools for recruiting the candidates
from outside and not from the existing workforce. These can be done by subscribing to the job
boards, posting ads online or in local newspapers. Under this, Tesco can get many options to
gain the talented employees instead of promoting and giving opportunities to the existing
employees.
Strengths: This will give broad range of options regarding the talents and skills of the
candidates. They can have many fresh ideas and the innovative opinions which can help the
company to gain competitive advantage as their employees can help to make innovative
strategies and policies.
Weaknesses: This is more expensive and also the company has to train the employees rather
than enhancing their skills. Automation tools used under this are unable to make justified
decisions as they scan the candidate’s resume and if they do not find some required keywords
then they reject it which is totally unjustified. This can sometimes miss the real talent and skills.
Selection
The methods used for selecting the candidates are different in every organisation. Mainly
it is done through the interviews and testing. It can be face-to face also and through online
platforms also.
Strengths: This type of pre-employment testing helps the HR managers to analyse the skills of
the candidates and the ways in which they fit into the company. In comparison to interviews,
tests are considered to be more objective and reliable as it does not lead to biased decisions.
These tests mainly depend upon the quantifiable insights which helps in eliminating bias (Rese,
Ganster and Baier, 2020).
Weakness: It does not help in identifying the whole picture and may be the candidates are not
honest which impacts the decision making. Also, some tests are considered as ambiguous
impacting the results.
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So, after analysing different approaches of recruitment and selection and their strengths and
weaknesses, it can be identified that Tesco must use the external recruitment as the approach of
recruitment so that it can gain many opportunities regarding the fresh opinions and innovative
ideas and can become able to gain the competitive advantage. In the selection process, Tesco
must consider the pre-employment tests along with face-to-face interviews, collaborative hiring,
group interviews and various other selection methods.
LO 2
Benefits of HRM practices for the employees and employers
There are various practices which are performed by the HRM and the best practices
which can be adapted by the HRM of Tesco are as follows:
Providing security to employees
This is the most important practice for the employees as well as employers. The main
reason which forces the candidates to come to work is the employer who enables the employees
in providing themselves and their family. This security concept is very essential for underpinning
the activities of HR which enables the employees to give time to themselves and the families
after going from workplace to home.
Employers: It helps in improving the bottom line as the competition is increasing day by day, it
is not possible for the company to make large investments on the recruitment and training of the
employees so the job security helps them in retaining the employees so that they can stick
together for long time and can work on the dynamic projects and can contribute in the
innovation. This helps in bolstering the culture of the workplace (Ali and Akter, 2018).
Employees: This is done by giving formal and informal contract between employers and the
employees which makes the employees stress free and they become able to do more productive
work which give them many opportunities to enhance their learning and development.
Selective hiring
This involves recruiting the candidates who can add much value to the organisations.
Under this, the company cannot hire anyone, they need to hire only those who can prove to be fit
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for the company. This involves hiring the exceptional people because they are able to add the
most value to the business.
Employers: This helps the employers to gain competitive advantage along with proving
themselves capable of hiring the highest potential employees among the pool of candidates. They
also get chances to be aware of the digital and innovative recruitment and selection tools which
helps in selecting the best employees (Sissons and Green, 2017).
Employees: It helps in enhancing the employee productivity and morale leading to their
increased satisfaction. This will also enhance their value and reputation as they were selected out
of many employees because of their exceptional skills which were not possessed by others.
Effectiveness of HRM practices in increasing the organisational profitability
The various practices of HRM helps in increasing the profit and productivity of the
organisation. Tesco can use the following HRM practices in order to increase its profitability:
Self-managed and effective teams
When the teams of the organisation are self-managed and effective, this increases the
employees’ motivation and they become able to work in much better way. This will increase the
profitability of the organisation. If the teams are not managed then this will lead to
misunderstandings and conflicts which will demotivate the employees and they become unable
to perform the tasks and achieve the organisational goals (Cook, MacKenzie and Forde, 2016).
Training in relevant skills
This is true that the employees are not perfect at the initial level. They need to be aware
of the goals and processes of the company. they need to develop and enhance certain skills which
can help them in performing the tasks and increasing the profitability. To make the employees
remain frontrunners in the field, training plays the most important role in this. As the technology
is growing rapidly, it is must to enhance the learning and development of the employees such
that they can prove to be contributing in the productivity and profitability of the organisations.
Fair and performance-based compensation
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If the right people are hired in the company, they need to be compensated above average.
In giving good compensations to these employees, company can make the best use of the skills
and talents of the employees as they add the most value to the company (Alam and Raut-Roy,
2019). This can be in the form of financial compensations or decreasing the workload etc. This
creates a sense of ownership in the employees which helps them to create trust in the company
which motivates them to do good for the company which increases the profitability and
productivity.
LO 3
Significance of employee relations in HRM decision-making
The employee relations basically define the efforts of the organisation and especially the
HR department to develop and maintain the positive relationship with the employees. For this,
the HRM of Tesco helps in preventing and resolving the problems or issues and also the disputes
between the management and the employees.
Tesco if focusses on maintaining the employee relations can face so many benefits which are as
follows:
In general, the HRM of Tesco can become able to engage, understand, motivate and keeping
their employees.
This was observed that the companies having better employee communications can help in
increasing the rates of the employee engagement. If there is and improved engagement for the
employees in all the processes involving the decision making also, then the employees feel much
valued and strives hard to give the best opinions as their opinions contribute in the decision taken
by HRM. This also increases the satisfaction of the employees which boost their productivity.
Companies having the structured employee relations enjoys higher productivity and profitability
which helps the HRM to take the decisions (Potdar and et.al., 2018). If the employees are aware
of the goals and tasks then they will strive harder to achieve the goals. This benefits the HRM as
it doesn’t have to face the problems among the teams. This also helps in increasing the employee
retention as this is the most important problem in the companies to be solved. If there are good
employee relations, then they must know what is going on in the company as if this does not
happen, it can make the employees isolated and the HRM becomes in dilemma to take the
decisions (Razalan and et.al., 2017.). HRM must take the regular feedbacks from the employees
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regarding the work life so that they can be improved and helps the HRM o take significant
decisions. Also, this is done to enhance the experience of the employees which can help in
making the workplace healthy which motivates the HRM to take effective decisions.
Key elements of the employment legislation and its impact on decision-making
There are various legislations in UK which are followed by the employers of the
companies like Tesco to increase the effectiveness of the decisions of HRM. Some of those
legislations are as follows:
Employment Rights Act 1996: This provides rights to the employees in critical situations such as
unfair dismissal, maternity and paternity leaves and redundancy etc.
The equality Act 2010: This helps in preventing the discrimination in the workplace and the
process of recruitment. It also helps in protecting the characteristic which do not have impact on
the workplace decisions.
Employment Relations Act 1999: Under this Act, various rights are established at work which
helps in working for trade union recognition and also industrial actions (Beitzen-Heineke, Balta-
Ozkan and Reefke, 2017.).
The elements considered in the laws of UK which must be focussed upon are equal opportunities
of work for finding the job, affirmative actions which favours others, labour and business
benefits, employ unions and other labour affairs, employment’s healthy quality for staff etc.
(Filimonau and Gherbin, 2017).
LO 4
Implementation of HRM practice
The HRM practices like recruitment, selection, training & development, providing
compensations and many more must be implemented effectively to analyse the best effects of
them on the employees, employers and the organisation itself. The main aim of these practices is
to establish workplace standards, regulations and policies so that misconduct or the employees’
discrimination can be avoided. The most important practice of HRM is the recruitment and
selection which must be implemented effectively in Tesco so that the company can become able
to recruit the best and the talented employees. The example of one such job role i.e., Human
Resource Manager in Tesco is given below:
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Job specification
Job description
Name of the company: Tesco plc.
Job role: Human Resource Manager
Experience: Experience of at least 2-3 years in the HR field in any reputed retailer company.
Qualifications: MBA in HR or related field.
Skills: Communication, administrative, proactivity, advising, coaching, knowledge and expertise,
Analytical, Empathy, compassion, ethical, discretion etc.
Roles and Responsibilities:
 Developing and implementing the strategies of HR to align them with the strategy of
business.
 Managing the recruitment and selection process.
 Supporting the current and future needs of business through the motivation, engagement
and development (Moran, 2016).
 Strives hard for nurturing a positive working environment.
 Maintaining the pay plan and program for benefits.
 Analyse the needs of training and monitor the programs for the same.
Interview Questions:
 What do you mean by HRM and its contribution in achieving the organisational goals?
 What are the qualities which can help you to become an effective HR manager?
 Tell some strategies which you can implement for the welfare of the employees as well as
organisations?
 Which type of environment do you prefer to perform your tasks efficiently?
Job Offer
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Offer Letter
From: Tesco plc.
Email message:
Dear candidate,
The company congratulates you as you are selected as the HR manager in our established retailer
company in UK. You are employed as a full-time employee in our company for the mentioned
job role and looking forward to have you on-boards as soon as possible (De Kerviler, Demoulin
and Zidda 2016). Based on your experience, skills and qualification, the company hopes that you
can take the company to the higher level.
The company is offering you the payment which is described as below:
CTC £ABC
Basic pay £XYX
Allowances
EPF deduction £YXZ
ESIC deduction £CBA
Salary in hand £PQR
You can make your decision regarding the joining, but this is valid till your estimated joining
date i.e., ABC 2020 in the company in UK. Kindly revert back on this email id as soon as you
accept the offer.
The company is excited to see you on board soon.
Thanks and regards,
Tesco plc.
CONCLUSION
The report focussed on the HRM of Tesco which is the leading market player of retailers in
UK. It was initiated by mentioning the purpose and functions along with the merits and demerits
of recruitment and selection approaches. It also mentioned the effectiveness of HRM practices in
benefiting the employees, employers and the organisation. The importance of the employee
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relation was highlighted in the HRM decision-making and the HRM practice of recruitment was
implemented by giving an example. Various litigations of employment were also shed light
upon.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adam, M., 2018. The role of human resource management (HRM) for the implementation of
sustainable product-service systems (PSS)—an analysis of fashion
retailers. Sustainability. 10(7). p.2518.
Alam, S. and Raut-Roy, U., 2019. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Reward Strategy at Tesco:
Evidence from Selected Stores in UK. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations. 55(1).
Ali, M.J. and Akter, S., 2018. Human Resource Management (HRM) Practices: A Case study on
Arcadia Group, UK. Global Journal of Management And Business Research.
Beitzen-Heineke, E.F., Balta-Ozkan, N. and Reefke, H., 2017. The prospects of zero-packaging
grocery stores to improve the social and environmental impacts of the food supply
chain. Journal of Cleaner Production. 140. pp.1528-1541.
Cook, H., MacKenzie, R. and Forde, C., 2016. HRM and performance: the vulnerability of soft
HRM practices during recession and retrenchment. Human Resource Management
Journal. 26(4). pp.557-571.
Cook, H., MacKenzie, R. and Forde, C., 2016. HRM and performance: the vulnerability of soft
HRM practices during recession and retrenchment. Human Resource Management
Journal. 26(4). pp.557-571.
De Kerviler, G., Demoulin, N.T. and Zidda, P., 2016. Adoption of in-store mobile payment: Are
perceived risk and convenience the only drivers?. Journal of Retailing and Consumer
Services. 31. pp.334-344.
Filimonau, V. and Gherbin, A., 2017. An exploratory study of food waste management practices
in the UK grocery retail sector. Journal of Cleaner Production. 167. pp.1184-1194.
Moran, S., 2016. What Impact has Work-life Balance on Employees Job Satisfaction in the
Retail Sector in Ireland? (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin, National College of Ireland).
Potdar, B. and et.al., 2018. Yours ethically: The role of corporate social responsibility and
employee engagement in shoplifting prevention. International Journal of Retail &
Distribution Management. 46(9). pp.835-849.
Rahdari, A. and et.al., 2020. Exploring global retailers' corporate social responsibility
performance. Heliyon. 6(8). p.e04644.
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Razalan, D.M. and et.al., 2017. Local retailers’ perspectives on social
responsibility. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management.
Rese, A., Ganster, L. and Baier, D., 2020. Chatbots in retailers’ customer communication: How
to measure their acceptance?. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. 56.
p.102176.
Sissons, P. and Green, A.E., 2017. More than a match? Assessing the HRM challenge of
engaging employers to support retention and progression. Human Resource
Management Journal. 27(4). pp.565-580.
Online
HRM, 2020. [ONLINE]. Available through: <http://www.whatishumanresource.com/human-
resource-management>
Tesco, 2020. [ONLINE] Available through :< https://www.tesco.com/>
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