Human Resource Management Practices in Asda: A Report

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ICON College of Technology and Management
Faculty of Business and Management Studies
BTEC HND in Business
Human Resource Management
Tutor: Dr Reza Aboutalebi
Submitted by:
Full Name: Wali Bokharob
ID No: …………
Session: April 2019
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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 3
LO1.................................................................................................................................. 4
LO2:................................................................................................................................. 9
LO3:............................................................................................................................... 14
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 22
Reference list................................................................................................................. 23
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Introduction
The Human Resource Management is a key function in every business organisation,
which is responsible for the working of all the individuals in the organisation. From the
report below, we will learn about the different functions, objectives, and purposes of
HRM. The different approaches to selection and recruitment have also been discussed.
In addition, various job practices and employee relation factors are mentioned. For
better understanding of the recruitment and selection processes, examples of
employment processes in Asda have been provided in the report. The effects of the
HRM practices on the employers and employees are discussed below. Different HRM
practices like providing training and development and providing flexible working options
will be also discussed here. Moreover, the report also discusses about the various
Employee legislations. Lastly, different activities performed by the HRM department like
interviewing candidates, formation of job letters will be done to have a better idea about
the functionalities of the department.
Established in 1949, Asda Stores Ltd is the second largest retailing company in the
United Kingdom. The company’s headquarter is in West Yorkshire and was founded by
Peter and Fred Asquith and Sir Noel Stockdale. The company deals with production and
sales of grocery, and general merchandise. Moreover, the company also provides
financial services (Asda.com, 2019).
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LO1
In the report below, a firm knowledge about Human Management Resource is provided
and it’s purposes, objectives, and functions have also been discussed. Further, we will
be learning about the different approaches used by HRM for recruitment and selection
of new candidates. In addition, implementations of these approaches have been done of
Asda, to initiate better learning.
P1: Explain the purpose and the functions of HRM, applicable to workforce planning and
resourcing an organisation.
As stated by Noe et al. (2017), Human Resource Management is referred to the efficient
management of all the individuals in an organisation to ensure effective and successful
functioning of the organisation. This approach helps the organisation to achieve
success in the dynamic competitive market environment.
Purposes of HRM are:
 Internal management of the customer: The human resource management
targets at implementing policies in an organisation those are required to hire and
maintain a high quality of workers.
 Matrics: The HRM is responsible for efficient communication with all level of
employees in an organisation. Therefore, to control the costings and work
efficiency, the HRM uses metrics.
 Staffing: The main purpose of the HRM is to retain and manage the high quality
workers.
 Employee Relations: The HRM ensures a healthy relationship with the
employees. Cultural awareness is also the main purpose of HRM (Cascio, 2015).
 Laws: Every company follows a set of decorum and legal rules. The HRM
ensures that the laws are updated and followed in the company (Armstrong,
2015).
Objectives of HRM:
 Societal: The HRM targets at minimising the negative impact of social and
ethical needs of the employees (Bratton, 2015).
 Personal: The HRM trains and prepares the new and existing employees to
every changing business environment.
 Functional: The HRM enhances the employee’s performance and motivation. It
also delivers the compensation and benefits to the employees.
 Organisation: The HRM is responsible for managing the relationship between
the employees and the recruitment of new employees (DeCenzo, 2016).
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Functions of HRM:
 Recruitment: The responsibility of the HRM is to appoint new candidates with
the skills and abilities that are beneficial for the company.
 Compensation: The HRM ensures that all the employees are paid according to
their skills and position in the company (Brewster, 2016).
 Benefits: The HRM ensures that different policies like health and dental
insurance, and retirement plans are properly delivered to the employees.
 Performance appraisals: The promotions and termination of employees are
implemented by HRM with the help of proper analysis of yearly work by all
individuals.
 Legal Laws: The HRM makes sure that the company is up-to-date with the
policies and The safety treatments of the employees are properly formulated
(Storey, 2014).
Four common business objectives:
 Survival: The biggest objective of any business is to adapt and survive to the
new challenges and business environments.
 Increase in sales: This objective has a positive impact on the success of a
business and includes efficient and proper use of the inventories, resources, and
the workers.
 Increase in profit: A business’s prime target is to achieve profitable revenues
over the cost of production, which ensures stability to the organisation (Jeston,
2014).
 Growth: This is the key objective for all the businesses. The individuals in the
company can enjoy profitable shares by using their resources and finances very
carefully.
Role of HRM:
The human resource management ensures that candidates with innovative and proper
skills are recruited and the proper use of the inventories is done, therefore increasing
the sales. The HRM also trains and educates the new and existing employees with the
changes in the business environment.
Hard v/s Soft HRM:
Soft HRM Hard HRM
Links to theory X Links to theory Y
Employees treated as individual Employees treated like liabilities
Strategies are long term The focuses on strategies are short term.
Leadership is Democratic Leadership is Autocratic
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The organisation structure is tall The organisation structure is short.
Table 1: Differences between Hard and Soft HRM
(Source: Created by the learner)
P2: Explain the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to recruitment and
selection.
Best Fit approach to recruitment: This approach ensures that the HR recruitments
should work in agreement with policies and situations of the organisation and is
considered as vertical arrangements of organisation principles and HR strategies
(Ekwoaba, 2015).
Strengths: Helps the organisation to recruit individuals who are suitable for the current
environment and help to cope up with the changes in the environment.
Weakness: The biggest weakness of this approach is that it is implemented after the
change, fails to define the inter-connections in the company and is not efficient in
continuous changing environment.
Best-Practice Approach: This approach is a pre-defined set of practices that can
benefit the recruitment of any organisation in any industry.
Strengths: Helps any organisation to improve, regardless of the business environment.
Weakness: Has a negative impact on employee cooperation, and the appropriate best
practice approach can never be formulated.
Internal Recruitment: These are referred to recruitments that happen inside the
organisation, like promotions, and transfers.
Strengths: Leads to the motivation of the employee and improvement of their skills. In
addition, consumption of money and time is less.
Weakness: No new thoughts or skills are introduced to the organisation, and manual
labour needs cannot be met through this process.
External Recruitment: These are referred to recruitment processes that take place
outside the organisation, like the recruitment of labours and educational institutions.
Strengths: Increases the work rate and new ideas are introduced in the organisation.
Weakness: The requirement for money is very high and consumes a lot of time.
Different Selection Procedures:
 Structured interviews: This tests the communication skills and presentation of
the individual. It delivers a better knowledge of the organisation to the candidate.
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 Telephone and video interviews: These interviews are done to recruit
individuals from mainly overseas. These techniques help the company in a case
where there are lots of candidates.
 Psychometric Test: These are the test that is used to measure the knowledge
of the individuals. This also determines the individual’s ability to adapt the
required roles in the organisation.
 Induction: This is the process of helping the new employee to adapt to the
company cultures and environment.
 On boarding: These techniques are used to familiarise the new employees in
the company with the help of lectures, meetings, etc.
Advantages that can be acquired by Asda by using this recruitment approaches:
Asda is the second largest supermarket retailer in Britain. The retailing industry
undergoes many changes, so with the help of Best Fit approach, the company can
ensure that it recruits the best workers suitable for the prevailing environment and make
profits. The external employment will help to recruit all the lower level workers that will
work in the diaries and factories with the help of advertisements. The internal selection
will help the company to increase the motivation of the employees.
Disadvantages that the company will face:
The Best-fit approach will only help to recruit employees, which will be temporary, and
needs to be changed after a certain time. On the other hand, external recruiting
consumes a lot of time and money, which might affect the revenues of the company. In
addition, the internal approach will not make way to fresh ideas and innovations.
Recruitment by International companies:
Advantages:
 Increases corporate philosophy and culture
 Recruitment process through local talent pool helps in reducing communication
problems
 Helps to recruit individuals from different cultures, which leads increase in
employee-customer relation in all those cultures
Disadvantages:
 The consumption of money for these recruitment processes is high
 Establishing a common corporate culture is difficult
 The employees often fail to understand the conditions in the native places.
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Conclusion:
From the above study we learn about the advantages and disadvantages of the different
recruitment approach used by HRM. We have also learnt how the HRM is important for
every organisation. Four types of approach have been discussed, and their
implementations have been done on the Asda, a British retail company.
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LO2:
Introduction
The following part is going to ensure proper benefits that are associated with HRM
practices within an organisation. The requirement of training and development, and
implementing different job description process has to be analysed and hence they are
going to be explained in details in this report. The explanation of numerous HRM
practices on the company success and increasing the productivity will be elaborated.
These are one of the most important phases of improvement and hence they are
detailed in the following part.
P3: Explain the benefits of different HRM practices within an organisation for both
the employer and employee.
HRM practices are the essential feature to make the company obtain its goals and
objectives. There are different job design methods to consider and they are given
below.
Job design: it is the core functionality of the Human Resource management, which
involves the inclusion of the job specification and the credentials needed in the potential
candidate to be recruited in the company.
Training and Development: The training and development is the procedure initiated
after the recruitment of fresh candidates in a company. The training is given to9
accommodate the employees to the work structure of the particular company.
Flexible working: this kind of working is necessary to maintain a healthy environment
in an organisation; the flexible working is the right of every employee from his/her
employer. The flexible working requires the flexible time hours of working, and the
eradication of excessive work pressure.
Performance Management: the performance management is only initiated when the
employee are trained and motivated adequately, by providing them with a healthy
environment to work. These factors provided by the Human Resource management can
improve the performance of the employees.
Enlargement method
In this process, the job is enhanced in a horizontal process. The employees from same
level are going to perform different duties to perform assiduously and effectively (Cook
and Forde, 2016). For example, the production managers of ASDA perform managerial
tasks but during job expansion, he might perform as a worker.
Enrichment method
This is a motivational process and the job is enhanced in a vertical process. The
expansion helps in motivating the people by giving them new challenges to work on
(Wood, 2018). The main challenge is having a mixed job responsibility where the other
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organisational level’s job responsibility has to be fulfilled by the employees. For
example, ASDA’s production manager may have to work as the inventory manager
during product storage.
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Benefits of good ‘job design’ for both employee and employer
The job design analyses the factors needed to make the job successful and effective in
an organisation. The job design marks out the tasks and responsibilities needed to be
fulfilled by the jobholder.
From the psychological perspective, the employers will have a team of subordinate
workers who are efficient in making sudden job decisions as they have faced many
challenging environments in the beginning of their career (Guest, 2017).
Training methods
The training methods are adapted by different personalities in a various ways so that
they can effectively implement them in different situations. The various methods are
Simulation, coaching and role-playing.
Simulation
Simulation based training helps in making basic equipments useful. The process
includes handling different real world scenarios because this makes them more efficient
in handling different situations. The main aspect of the training process is involving
technical modification and related learning’s. For example, the Asda billing process may
get evolved with newer technologies and the employees of the segment has to be
abided by the change (Kim and Shim, 2017).
Coaching
Apart from theoretical modification of an employee, practical modification is also
considered important. The best option is making a team which will help in coaching the
employees who have least amount of experience. An example Asda can apply coaching
for the employees from the sales line up in order to keep them motivated.
Role-playing
It is a process of imitating the job that has to be performed in future by an employee.
The process helps in learning, improving and developing the skills that are associated
with the job role. For example, employees of ASDA has to make sure that they are
ready for the opportunities and for that reason they have to make a role-play of different
activities of a specified job role.
Benefits of proper training and development for both employee and employer
With proper training, an employee will achieve expertise that can be used in different job
roles. On the other hand, with a proper development, in day-to-day activities the
employee profile will get stronger than before.
The employer will have trained employees who will be ready for any kind of job that is
given to them. This will assure proper development of the job role and functionality off
the employee, which will indirectly help the employer for providing quality, assured
services and improved revenue generation.
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Difference between the Electronic Methods and Conventional methods (e-HRM
and Traditional HRM)
e- HRM Traditional HRM
 It is a method of Human resource
management which is technology
oriented
 The traditional methods involves the
activities done manually and without
the support of the technological
advances
 The e HRM involves more than one
person in the job and handle the
company human resources
activities
 In traditional human resource
management only one manager
was sufficient
 The help of technology will make
the operations more effective
 Example: Asda have online
methods, and have a department
where a Engagement Analytics
Manager is appointed to fulfil the
role of employment engagement.
 The traditional HRM Process
includes a series of activities ,
which was tedious and time
consuming
Table 2: Difference between the electronic methods and traditional methods of
HRM
(Source: Created by the learner)
P4: Evaluate the effectiveness of different HRM practices in terms of raising
organisational profit and productivity
The HRM practices involves many activities other than recruitment and performance,
the discussion will be related to “performance management” and “flexible working”.
The performance management is a total integrated system, where the job description is
required and is concerned with the employee job and it ends when the tenure ends.For
example, Asda maintains group interaction, problem solving and analysing performance
according to the behaviour of the employees. The employees have rights to ask flexible
working from their employer which will ensure the performance management and its
operations.
The performance management can be done in five steps, they are
 Planning of performances
 Executing the plans
 Evaluation
 Reviewing the performances
In Asda, performance management is generally setting plans, setting goals, ongoing
processes of training and development so that the workers in the office develop to
contribute to the success of the company. The company follows an integrated system
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