Strategic HRM: Analyzing Problems and Solutions for Aldi Supermarket

This report examines the human resource management challenges facing Aldi supermarket, particularly issues related to employee underpayment, overwork, and high turnover. It addresses research questions concerning the impact of remuneration on productivity and whether the focus on profits overshadows employee welfare. The research design involves sourcing secondary data from books, magazines, and Aldi's official website to analyze working conditions and employment planning. The findings highlight the importance of personnel planning, including workforce involvement, skill development, and the effective use of working time. Recommendations include improving workplace conditions, optimizing personnel planning, and addressing the balance between labor costs and employee well-being to enhance overall organizational performance. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for Aldi to invest in its human capital to maintain a competitive edge in the global market. Desklib provides access to this and many other solved assignments for students.

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Management
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Executive Summary
Human resource management has been a major problem facing retail stores in the
country. Aldi as an international brand has had major issues in managing and planning for their
employees. It is recommended to start the introduction of personnel planning with the
involvement and release of personnel, while it should be considered both intra-supermarket and
external to the enterprise labor markets. In general, intra-enterprise staff involvement should be
considered more promising, as workers increase attachment to the enterprise, strengthen their
confidence in their own career growth. In addition, in this case, the period of adaptation of the
employee will be shortened, and the administration will have an idea of his knowledge and
abilities. In the case of organizational and technical changes, the released employees get new
places within the enterprise, in which case they should look for employees on the external labor
market only to fill the lower vacancies. For all vacancies of managers and specialists, a reserve
should be formed. Specialists who are part of this reserve should purposefully improve their
qualifications, replace managers during their holidays, business trips, etc.
Introduction- Aldi Supermarket
Aldi supermarkets commonly known as ALDI, is a brand of German discount
supermarket chains that have over 10,000 stores in 20 countries worldwide. The supermarket has
an estimated turnover of 50 billion euros in the countries of operations. The supermarket chain
was founded in 1946 by two brothers Theo and Karl Albrecht after taking over their mothers’
store. The supermarket is headquartered in Essen in Germany (Armstrong, and Taylor, 2014).
Aldi consists of two companies Aldi Sud and Aldi Nord which have been operating separately

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since 1966 and have different headquarters. There are 35 individual separate companies
operating under Aldi Nord while Aldi Sud operates about 32 regional companies operating in 20
countries.
The problem with Aldi is that it has an issue with its human resource management in
most of its stores. The employees in some countries are underpaid and overworked and therefore
there is a high human resource turnover. In the work a detailed analysis of the working hours of
the employees of the enterprise was carried out when planning the use of human resources. The
questions of the organization of the workplace are considered, recommendations are given for
planning the working time of the employees, equipping the workplaces and their workplace
equipment (Bratton and Gold, 2017). The success of a modern company like Aldi is wholly and
entirely determined by the effectiveness and quality of training of its employees. To date, the
value of a successful company is only 25% of its tangible assets, and the remaining 75% are
intangible assets, namely human resources. Aldi is just the same as other organizations. In this
paper, will examine how the management of the company's human capital affects the economic
performance of its activities and the company's place among similar ones on the global market
(Jackson, Schuler, and Jiang, 2014).It is known that in the country there is a shortage of skilled
workers in high-tech enterprises, in particular, because the labor succession of generations has
been violated.
Specify research questions which address the management problem/decision.
Some of the research questions include;

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1. how does productivity and efficiency of employees is affected by remuneration?
2. Is the supermarket centred on profits forgetting the employees welfare?
This problem will increase in the conditions of creating new jobs in high-tech sectors of
service and retail. Sustainable Development and it is obvious that these jobs cannot be staffed
with low-skilled migrant workers.At the same time, it should be noted that at the present time
most entrepreneurs have no economic interest in replacing living labor with materialized ones,
i.e. in the replacement of workers engaged in unskilled manual labor, expensive equipment
(Brewster, Chung, and Sparrow, 2016).
Availability of access to cheap unskilled labor inhibits the process of reducing manual
unskilled labor, the release of people engaged in heavy work and in conditions that do not meet
the hygienic labor standards. On the other hand, in the conditions of creating high-tech jobs, the
role of personnel planning in enterprises is increasing, which is due to the lengthening of training
terms specialists. Thus, the preparation of a skilled worker for a high-tech enterprise can be 8-10
years (Brewster, and Hegewisch, 2017). Obviously, the preparation of skilled workers must
begin long before the appearance of such jobs. Personnel planning can cover the following areas:
- the need for personnel, - the involvement or reduction of personnel, - the use of personnel, - the
development of personnel, - the costs of maintaining staff. Every enterprise must implement a
planning meeting its needs.
Long-term hiring is especially important for high-tech enterprises, since in this case,
substantial investments are required in training, training and retraining of new personnel. In
addition, the management of the enterprise should be sure that the employee after training at the

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expense of the enterprise will not go to work for a competitor (Chelladurai, and Kerwin, 2017).
The principle of seniority, in which the boss is always older in age than his subordinates,
encourages older professionals to share their knowledge with young people, since they do not
view young professionals as their competitors.
Research design
Aldi food stores and supermarkets have many employees in each of the store it operates.
The main research design methodology is a questionnaire while others may use an interview to
get information from the employees and the management. The research questionnaires may have
questions regarding employees’ salaries, working conditions and promotions.
On the other hand, Stakeholders are groups, organizations or individuals that are influenced by
the company and on which it depends (owners, clients, employees, business partners in the
production chain, etc.), outsourcing of employees requires certain costs of the search and
selection procedure. In addition, the salary of such employees is usually higher than when the
vacancy is filled by the current employees of the enterprise (Collings, Wood, and Szamosi,
2018). At the selection stage, the most suitable candidates from the reserve created during the
search and recruitment are considered. It is recommended to give preference to candidates who
have the highest qualifications for performing actual work in the position they occupy, and not to
those who appear to be most suitable for promotion. An objective decision about the choice can
be based on the following characteristics: - education, - professional skills, - experience
(experience), - medical characteristics, - personal characteristics. Interviews and tests are the
most widely used methods of selection. Preliminary planning of staff reduction allows mitigating
social problems (Knies, Gould-Williams, and Vandenabeele, 2017).

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Carry out the research. Sourcing from ONLY secondary data.
Secondary data is found from books magazines and internet sources concerning the
management. The website of Aldi has a lot of materials associated with employees and
employment planning. The organization has more than 80,000 employees worldwide. In some
country they are paid above average wages while in some they are paid minimum wages with a
lot of working time and a lot of work.
The employees' work is characterized by the use of their working time, as it is an indirect
estimate of labor costs. In fact, economists cannot estimate labor costs directly (for example, the
amount of calories expended) and measure them usually by the number of hours worked, and for
the total number of workers - by the number of hours worked. Initially at any enterprise it is
necessary to determine the fund of working time, which can be given to production (the
maximum possible fund). To do this, from the calendar fund, absenteeism should be removed,
which are mandatory (days off, holidays, regular holidays). Absences that are optional (illness,
absenteeism, absence with the permission of the administration, etc.) are usually associated with
the qualitative characteristics of the personnel themselves (Kramar, 2014). The likelihood of
such non-attendance increases with the increase in the proportion of young people, disabled
people, persons who have returned from places of detention, etc. Here we should pay attention to
the indirect contradictions between the interests of employers and the state. In particular, the
state is interested in full employment of young people, since it is at an early age that certain
norms and ethical standards are formed, but this is not always reflected in the position of the
administration of enterprises. Probably, the state should force or encourage employers to recruit
young people by setting quotas or corresponding tax incentives. When planning the use of

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personnel, two tasks should be solved: 1) planning the working time of the company's personnel
for a certain time; 2) planning jobs with the prospect of expanding opportunities company and
taking into account the introduction of technological product and process innovations. When
planning the working time, the company's managers are obliged to determine for the specific
terms, sequence and stages of performance of official duties by employees for a certain period of
time, with the possibility of adjusting plans in the course of their work activities and changing
the working conditions.
Analysis of findings
In addition, while minimizing the costs of physical labor, psychological and mental
energy of employees, which allows them to more effectively and successfully solve their tasks to
increase productivity and reduce production costs [1]. The employee, in turn, independently
solves the actual tasks facing him, for example: - draws up his list of tasks assigned to him and
the terms of their fulfillment; - independently determines the priorities of the performed work; -
develops a personal timetable for performing work; - makes changes to the schedule work
performed when obtaining an urgent task or solving urgent tasks - independently monitors the
deadlines for the performance of work - timely informs its management about the circumstances
that prevent the timely implementation (Reiche, Harzing, and Tenzer, 2018).The list of tasks,
schedules and deadlines for their implementation are compiled on the basis of the following: 1)
the developed and approved employee work plan for a certain period; 2) associated instructions
of the management for this employee; 3) additional tasks from adjacent departments of the
company; 4 ) applications from suppliers and customers of other companies, 5) additional issues
arising in the process of the main task. It is very important in your work to determine and think

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over the criteria for assigning cases to the category of special knowledge miscible. In this case,
the principles of Pareto and Eisenhower can be used, and these tasks must first begin to fulfill the
assigned tasks. [5] The next important condition that contributes to the successful
accomplishment of the tasks is the ability to delegate authority and responsibility to subordinates
(Sikora, and Ferris, 2014). Usually it is recommended to delegate tasks of less important, but
urgent. Insufficient delegation is considered as the main reason for manager overload. However,
before delegating assignments to employees, the manager must be assured of their competence
and must follow the following procedures.
Recommendations and Conclusions
First of all, it is necessary: prepare in advance for the meeting and state the final result
without unnecessary reasoning and unnecessary conversations, 3) do not be distracted by
extraneous conversations in your workplace by phone, discussing the company's news, reducing
the time for smoke breaks and drinking tea, The second component in planning the use of the
company's human resources is planning work places (Swart, Hansen, and Kinnie, 2015). It
should be noted that if the workplace has a low technical equipment (capital adequacy), then talk
about the effective use of personnel, even with full use of working time is impossible. in the
social aspect - this is the scope of the individual worker's activity, which determines the quantity
and quality of tasks to be performed by this employee. It is an indicator of the employment of the
country's able-bodied population, as well as an indicator of the efficiency of the enterprise and
the criterion of the quality of life of a person. In the economic aspect, it is the primary source of
receipt of the employee's salary and profit by the enterprise. Technologically, it is the main
indicator of the production process, an indicator of the company's efficiency and competitiveness

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in the market (Tian, Cordery, and Gamble, 2016). Jobs can be classified according to the
following criteria: At the workplace, you need to have everything that is required to do the job.
To do this, a detailed plan of the work to be done and to purchase all necessary items and tools. It
is desirable to minimize unnecessary movement of the employee, not related to the performance
of immediate work.

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References
Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Brewster, C., Chung, C. and Sparrow, P., 2016. Globalizing human resource management.
Routledge.
Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A. eds., 2017. Policy and practice in European human resource
management: The Price Waterhouse Cranfield survey. Taylor & Francis.
Chelladurai, P. and Kerwin, S., 2017. Human resource management in sport and recreation.
Human Kinetics.
Collings, D.G., Wood, G.T. and Szamosi, L.T., 2018. Human resource management: A critical
approach. In Human Resource Management (pp. 1-23). Routledge.
Jackson, S.E., Schuler, R.S. and Jiang, K., 2014. An aspirational framework for strategic human
resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), pp.1-56.
Knies, E., Boselie, P., Gould-Williams, J. and Vandenabeele, W., 2017. Strategic human
resource management and public sector performance: context matters.

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Kramar, R., 2014. Beyond strategic human resource management: is sustainable human resource
management the next approach?. The International Journal of Human Resource
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Reiche, B.S., Harzing, A.W. and Tenzer, H. eds., 2018. International human resource
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Sikora, D.M. and Ferris, G.R., 2014. Strategic human resource practice implementation: The
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Swart, J., Hansen, N.K. and Kinnie, N., 2015. Strategic Human Resource Management and
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