Community Engagement: An Analysis of Morrison's Supermarket Operations

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, focusing on its community engagement practices. It begins with an overview of Morrison's, including its operational areas, size, structure, goals, mission, and values. The report then delves into customer expectations, a SWOT analysis, and the role of employees in achieving organizational goals. It explores the importance of training and development for employees and the skills and knowledge required for a sales manager. The report highlights Morrison's strengths, such as its effective supply chain and high-quality service standards, while also addressing weaknesses like its dependence on the UK market. Opportunities for product diversification and international expansion are also discussed, along with threats from competitors and the rise of online retail. The report concludes by emphasizing the significance of community engagement and its impact on the company's success. This report is a valuable resource for understanding Morrison's business strategies and community engagement efforts.

COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT - A1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Analysis and discussion of organisation..........................................................................................1
1. Area of operation, size, structure along with goals, mission and value..................................1
2. Customers expectations...........................................................................................................2
3. SWOT Analysis of Morrison’s Supermarket..........................................................................2
4. Role and support of employees in achieving organisational goals.........................................4
5. Training and development meaning and its important to organisations.................................4
6. Role & importance to the organisation...................................................................................5
7. Skills and Knowledge required for sales manager role...........................................................5
8. Training and development requirements.................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
APPENDIX......................................................................................................................................9
Training and development plan...................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Community Engagement is defined as a process which ensures proper and effective
involvement and participation of the community members or group of persons for addressing or
providing suggestion related to the company's proposal or for making changes in the policy in
relation with the business strategic plans & events, issues and projects. In this report, the chosen
organisation is Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, currently trading as Morrison’s which is one of
the fourth largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. The report will discuss about
community engagement process of Morrison’s Supermarkets. It will explain its area of operation,
size, structure, goals, mission and values. It will show what customers expects from Morrison’s
along with SWOT analysis to eliminate the risk factor. Also, how the employees' role support
organisation in achieving its goals will be discussed. Further, report will also provide deeper
insight about the extent to which training and development contributes in the success of firm.
Analysis and discussion of organisation
1. Area of operation, size, structure along with goals, mission and value.
Morrison’s Supermarket is one of the largest supermarket chain having its business place
in United Kingdom with its headquarter in Bradford, England. This firm is operating in UK retail
sector which in turn filled with high competition level.
Area of Operation - The company is providing a wide range of products such as Food &
Drink, Clothing, Books, Magazines, CDs, DVDs etc. It is one of the largest supermarket chains
which is offering a broad range of branded and own label products (Morrison’s corporate
history, 2019). The company is having it operation in UK with headquarter in Bradford.
Size– Company is having approx. 498 superstores with 132000 number of employees in
2017. The operating income of Morrison’s Supermarket earned from conducting business
operations was GB£458 million till 2018. On the other hand, the company's total revenue in 2018
was GB£17,262 million (Morrison’s corporate, 2019).
Structure – The organisational structure of Morrison’s Supermarket is hierarchical
because of its large & massive size of the business organization consisting of 498 superstores.
Goals – The goal of Morrisons Supermarket is to feed the world as cheaply as possible
i.e. stack it at high price and sell it at cheaper price. The company's main aim is to provide
customers with quality products and services at competitive prices. This in turn positively
contributes in company’s brand image and market share.
Mission– The mission statement of Morrisons Supermarket is to provide their all
customers with best value for money on their weekly shopping, wherever they live. The

company emphasizes on rendering better quality services at minimum cost wherever from they
are shopping.
Values – The values or beliefs of Morrisons Supermarket is based on meeting customer
satisfaction by delivering high quality services, ensuring stores having right technology and staff
structure for improving customer queue time (Morrisons corporate history, 2019). It also
believes that company will grow by adopting lower pricing mechanism.
2. Customers expectations.
By doing assessment, it has identified that Morrison’s customer base includes all the people
who requires grocery products. By offering wide range of grocery products, Morrison’s meet
need and expectation of its customers (Calabrese, Costa and Rosati, 2016). From Morrison’s
Supermarket, customer expects following:
1. Better quality of Services – To get high quality services is one of the major aspect that
customers expect from firm. The main aim of Morrison’s Supermarket is to feed the
nation with high quality services by making improvements in the technologies and
staffing structure so that customer don't have to wait for long at billing area.
2. Product at cheap price – When it comes to buying a product for consumption purpose,
then quality and low price is considered as one of the most important factor. Morrison’s
focus is on lowering the selling price of product for attaining high level of customer
satisfaction (White, 2015). This can helps in improving the growth performance and
profitability of the company.
3. Uniqueness in product and services – Customer always want unique and creative product
and services from company. Morrisons should emphasizes on meeting such needs of
customer by providing distinct, innovative product at cheaper price.
4. In the recent times, customers also expects that company performs business activities and
functions in an eco-friendly manner. In other words, business unit is required to lay focus
on waste management and recycling aspect for meeting customer’s expectation.
3. SWOT Analysis of Morrison’s Supermarket.
Strengths
1. Effective supply chain management – Company is having a well-established and
maintained supply chain. As most of the company's products get processed through
manufacturing areas of its own and then gets distributed.

2. High quality service standard – Morrisons Supermarket is known for offering the best
quality products and services at a very low or cheap prices to its customer across the
nation.
3. High customer satisfaction – The company because of its aim and objective of high stake
and low sell price is able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction (Bull and et.al.,
2016). The company also has maintained good customer relationship management.
Weaknesses
1. Depend on UK markets – Also, Morrisons is having its business operations mostly in the
UK market. It has not expanded its business over the world which limits the geographical
reach of Morrison’s when it is compare with other competitive brands.
2. Lack of technological aspect – Company's working culture, network and infrastructure in
terms of information technology or techniques is not much developed (Herliana, Lawiyah
and Aina, 2018). For this, company should organise training and development session to
make improvement for better productivity.
Opportunities
1. Diversification of products – The company can gain market opportunities by developing
organic products which is having demand in the market as customers are becoming more
health conscious nowadays.
2. Expansion in international market – One of the most important aspect for Morrisons is
that it has opportunity to expand its business operations over the world which will help
company in increasing its market share.
Threats
1. Competitive Environment – In UK, there are several firms which in offering similar kind
of products or services at discounted prices. Thus, company is facing major threats from
leading competitive firms namely Sainsbury, Tesco, ASDA etc.
2. Online retail business – The physical stores retail business of Morrison's can be hurt by
more businesses of e-commerce companies.

4. Role and support of employees in achieving organisational goals.
 In the context of Morrison’s, employee’s role in relation to achieving organizational
goals and objectives is significant. The rationale behind this, in service sector employee’s
present firm by offering services. Thus, by offering quality as well as satisfactory
services to the customers employees build customer loyalty and thereby contributes in the
achievement of organizational goals.
 Employee ensures that all the operational areas are managed and working effectively
towards attainment of goals with minimum cost of capital and maximization of profits
base.
 The most important role of employees, in Morrison’s, is to understand the demand and
preferences of company's customers and focus towards customer satisfaction and
retention (Hoque and et.al., 2018).
 They also focus on improving the quality of company's product and service which will
bring improvement in business performance & market position.
5. Training and development meaning and its important to organisations.
The term Training and Development is a process which makes emphasizes on making
improvement in the performance of individual employee and as a team. Thus, training is
considered as an educational process which increases the ability of employee by improving their
skills, knowledge, concepts which brings development in the overall business productivity,
capability.
Importance of Training and Development:
1. With the help of training and development process, employee performance and morale
can be improved. Moreover, after training they have better idea about the manner in
which activities need to be performed.
2. Effective training and development thus helps in improving job performance level as with
the help of proper training the operational efficiency will increase (Clarke and Higgs,
2016).
3. It helps in increasing the productivity of business and thus brings growth and success in
the organisation.
4. It helps in reducing employee turnover and absenteeism rate.

5. Training and development assists in improving skills, knowledge and competencies of
employees which ultimately helps in improving their performance and enables them to
attain organisational goals.
6. Role & importance to the organisation.
Sales Manager – A manager is a person who is capable of getting work done from others.
In Morrison’s, sales manager plays a vital role in developing strategies as well as policies in
relation to influencing customer decision making aspect and thereby revenue.
Importance of Sales Manager:
1. Sales manager ensures sales targets of the organisation to be met by making effective
sales strategies and plan.
2. Further, sales manager is also responsible for execution of plans, policies and strategies
developed by higher management team for improving sales of produts (Frost, 2016).
3. Along with this, manager is not only accountable for increasing sales but also
maintaining effectual relationship with customers.
4. Brand promotion and mapping of company's potential customer is another important role
of sales manager within Morrison’s.
7. Skills and Knowledge required for sales manager role.
For a sales manager increasing sales is not enough, he should possess proper and
adequate skills and knowledge factor for smooth functioning of organisation (Bredillet,
Tywoniak and Dwivedula, 2015). Following are the skills and knowledge which a sales manager
should have:
SKILLS – The sale manager of Morrisons should possess skills such as:
1. Should have coordination quality & capable of getting work done from others.
2. Should communicate ideas clearly & is capable of making sound decisions.
3. Have the ability to inspire, motivate and understand subordinates.
4. Capable of analysing and interpreting data correctly.
5. Appoint suitable candidate as salesman & evaluate performance for future growth.
KNOWLEDGE – Being a sales manager following basic knowledge helps Morrisons in
achieving success:

1. Should possesses information & knowledge about external factors affecting business
operations.
2. Should have proper knowledge of both present and future market trends & techniques to be
used for increasing sales.
3. Have full knowledge of short-term and long-term objectives of the company.
4. Should have information about pricing and marketing strategy of competitor's products (Li,
Peng and Martins, 2017).
5. Capable of determining and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of sales work force.
8. Training and development requirements
Now, technological advancements are increasing with the very high pace in every sector
including retail. Thus, Morrison should focus on conducting training in this regard so employee’s
would become able to perform in an effectual way. Along with this, employees must have
effectual leadership, communication and team-building skills for working effectually during
peak season. Hence, by organizing training in such areas Morrison’s can enhance proficiency
level of personnel and thereby would become able to attain success in the competitive arena.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that community engagement is a process of
involving and consulting from community members related to plans, policies, strategies
formulation or for making any changes for acquiring business goals. The report has discussed the
operational function of Morrison’s Supermarket which is having 498 superstores. The report has
also discussed about SWOT analysis of Morrison’s i.e. by making expansion of business in
international market with the help of effective supply chain and online presence, the company
can increases its sales and profit. Further, description about sales manager has been made whose
main emphasis is not only on increasing sales but should also maintain customer relationship.
The report at last has defined training and development concept. With effective training and
development, Morrison’s can achieve its aim of feeding nation with product at cheaper price and
maintaining high stake price.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Anitha, J., 2016. Role of Organisational Culture and Employee Commitment in Employee
Retention. ASBM Journal of Management. 9(1).
Baldus, B. J., Voorhees, C. and Calantone, R., 2015. Online brand community engagement:
Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research. 68(5). pp.978-985.
Bredillet, C., Tywoniak, S. and Dwivedula, R., 2015. What is a good project manager? An
Aristotelian perspective. International Journal of Project Management. 33(2). pp.254-266.
Bull, J. W., and et.al., 2016. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: A SWOT
analysis of the ecosystem services framework. Ecosystem services. 17. pp.99-111.
Calabrese, A., Costa, R. and Rosati, F., 2016. Gender differences in customer expectations and
perceptions of corporate social responsibility. Journal of cleaner production. 116. pp.135-
149.
Clarke, N. and Higgs, M., 2016. How strategic focus relates to the delivery of leadership training
and development. Human Resource Management. 55(4). pp.541-565.
Frost, S., 2016. The importance of training & development in the workplace. Small Business,
http://smallbusiness. chron. com/importance-trainingdevelopment-workplace-10321. Html.
Herliana, S., Lawiyah, N. and Aina, Q., 2018. SWOT ANALYSIS APPROACH ON SME'S
ENTREPRENEURIAL COMPETENCY. Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal. 24(2).
Hoque, A. S. M. M. and et.al., 2018. Role of employee engagement on compensation system and
employee performance relationship among telecommunication service providers in
Bangladesh. International Journal of Human Resource Studies. 8(3). pp.19-37.
Li, S., Peng, A. G. and Martins, J., 2017. A framework of critical knowledge sharing skills
(CKSS) for project managers. iConference 2017 Proceedings.
White, C., 2015. The impact of motivation on customer satisfaction formation: a self-
determination perspective. European Journal of Marketing. 49(11/12). pp.1923-1940.
Online
Community Engagement. 2019. [Online]. Available through: <http://www.tmjhk.com/thousand-
million-jewelry/community-engagement/>.
Morrisons corporate history. 2019. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.morrisons-
corporate.com/about-us/company-history/>.
Silver, J., 2015. Building an Employee Training and Development. [Online]. Available through:
<https://trainingstation.walkme.com/employee-training-and-development-series/>.
Morrison’s Corporate. 2019. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.morrisons-
corporate.com/about-us/ >.

APPENDIX
Training and development plan
Skills need to develop Activities Timescale
Leadership skills Role play sessions will be
conducted for developing
leadership skills.
3 weeks
Communication skills Conducting seminar and
conferences which in turn
offers opportunity to
personnel in relation to
communicating among large
group of people and thereby
improves communication
skills.
4 weeks
Team working skills By conducting different
activities team working ability
can be enhanced.
3 weeks