HR Report: Developing Individuals, Teams, and Organisations - M&S

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of developing individuals, teams, and organizations, focusing on the practices of Marks and Spencer. It begins with an introduction highlighting the importance of skill development in a globalized world and the role of HR in facilitating employee training. Task 1 explores the professional knowledge, skills, and behaviors required by HR professionals, including the benefits of continuous professional development (CPD) and the importance of team building. Task 2 delves into personal skill audits and professional development plans (PDPs), exemplified by a case study of HR professional Jane Cambridge, and discusses the differences between firm and individual learning. The report further examines the need for continuous learning and professional growth, exploring various methods like seminars, coaching, and online learning. Task 3 focuses on understanding high-performance working (HPW) and its contribution to worker engagement and competitive advantage. Finally, Task 4 covers various approaches to performance management. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of HR practices in achieving organizational success.

DEVELOPING
INDIVIDUALS, TEAMS
AND
ORGANISATIONS

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1. Professional knowledge, skills and behaviour required by HR.......................................1
P2. Personal skill audit of the workers and PDP....................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................6
P3. Difference between firm and individual learning, training and development..................6
P4. Requirement of continuous learning and professional growth.........................................7
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................8
P5 Understanding HPW to contribute workers engagement and examining competitive
advantage................................................................................................................................8
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................9
P6 Various approaches of performance management............................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
In modern times it is important for the organisations, teams and individuals to develop
themselves in comparison to the global standards. In the era of globalisation improvement of
skills related to staffs members is necessary. It is the role of the Human resource managers
to understand the training needs of the employees and train them accordingly. It will assist
in enhancing the quality of the product that is made by the firms (Marquardt and et.al.,
2011). Company invest a lot in the training sessions. Vital function of the HR function is
arranging activities that will implant new set of required skills into them. Marks and Spenser
is one of the biggest firm that deals in the business of retail products. It is a UK based
company and covers 25% of the market share in the industry. This report highlights the
audits related with skills of the employees as well as professional enhancement plan. It also
showcase learning of various people in effective manner. Need of continual improvement is
discussed in this report.
TASK 1
P1. Professional knowledge, skills and behaviour required by HR.
For any task to be completed by HR, there are several professional knowledge, skills and
behaviour must be present. This helps in making work process effective. Continual professional
development can be utilised by managers for developing employee related skills. It is a process
that assists in evaluating and documenting operations, knowledge and experience as it also helps
in performing particular task. There are several benefits of developing individuals, teams and
organisation:
 CPD helps in managing and enhancing the skill set and knowledge.
 It also assists managers of Marks and Spenser in making a positive environment at the
workplace. It also helps in ensuring that worker satisfaction level is achieved (Herrmann
and Herrmann-Nehdi, 2015).
 It also helps individuals in reaching to higher positions inside the firm where they can
manage, influence, monitor, supervise and train themselves for achieving the desired
objectives.
 It helps in enhancing the confidence level of workers which is essential for setting targets
and achieving them in effective manner that too on time.
1

It is the role of the HR managers to make teams that will help in adding more accuracy in the
work process. The team is made according to the skills, behaviour and knowledge of the
persons having common goals. There are certain requirements of HR managers are as
follows:
 HR managers have the role of working with all other departments in order to
understand their function, various needs as well as implementing various plans and
policies.
 HR managers must set up culture in the organisation that helps in involving both
workers and staffs in making decisions (Bolman and Deal, 2017).
 The motive, policies must be effectively communicated to other workers.
 HR must have an excellent problem solving ability as it will help them in tackling
with various arisen situations from time to time.
 HR managers must communicate wages, holidays and well as other benefits to the
employees.
 HR has a severe role of recruitment, selection and training of competent staff that are
required by the firm.
 They also have the responsibility of monitoring the employee performance which can
be utilised at the time of appraisals.
 Training of new staffs and old staffs as per the recruitment as well as inducting new
staffs in the group.
2

Figure 1Organisation and its parts, 2017
P2. Personal skill audit of the workers and PDP.
There is a HR professional whose name is Jane Cambridge. She has extensive potential and
has capability that is required in every HR employer. It is also the fact that every individual
needs development of skills. There are several kind of qualities which she need to develop in
her so that she can easily perform her role in better way (Brown and Harvey, 2011). Along
with it if there is personal growth of the organisation then whole organisation can achieve
success. Strengths and weakness of Jane Cambridge is given below:
Strength: She is having large amount of knowledge in the policy making as well as policies
that created by regulatory bodies. Using this firm perform their work without any unfair
means. Jane Cambridge is very effective human resource professional. Unlike others she has
greater understanding of the culture that is followed inside the firm. She has an excellent
communicative skill which helps in making very healthy relationships with others. Apart
3

from this she has an effective communicative skills and hence she never miss a chance to
understand the needs of employee. It helps her in resolving issues inside the firm with
maximum effectiveness. Jane Cambridge is having healthy relationship with managers and
other staff members other functional units. It helps in making policies for the firm in a much
better way. Over the years she has developed effective thinking skill that assists her in
making plans as well as resolving the conflicts inside the firm (Ford, 2014). Other than this
she has interview skills which helps her in selecting competent employees for firm as per the
requirement.
Weakness: Communication skill of Jane Cambridge is excellent but still she is weaker in
bargaining with staffs which affects at the time when she is managing conflict between
management and the workers. She lacks knowledge regarding new methodologies of
training and hiring staffs. She is weak in implementing new plans and policies and hence she
has to develop impressive persuading power to influence staffs members so as to convince
them to adapt the made changes.
S.
No.
Learning
Objectives
Current
Proficiency
Target
Proficiency
Development
Opportunities
Judgement
Criteria
Time
scale
1. To enhance
negotiation
skills of
Jane
She has less
knowledge
regarding
salary that has
to be given to
the workers.
Adding to this
she has lesser
bargaining
power with
their staff
members.
It is
essential for
her to
enhance
negotiations
abilities so
that she can
hire
employees
at minimum
wages and
hence
reducing
the fixed
cost of the
Jane needs to
convert her
weaknesses
into strengths
and for this
purpose she
can give
training to
staffs as well
as she can take
help of senior
managers.
These
trainings can
be either on
To check
out her
success
managers
can
examine
those
conflicts
that is
solved by
her. Apart
from them
they can
also ensure
that what
40
weeks
4

firm. job and off
job.
pay scale
has been
given to
her before
and after
training.
2. To make
her aware
about the
latest
techniques
and tools of
enlistment
Jane is not
aware about
new methods
which is
accessible at
workplace for
their
organisation.
By taking use
of new
technologies
and tools for
hiring best
staff for the
company that
too at less
expenses.
It is
important
to provide
knowledge
about new
techniques
to their
employees
which will
help in
effectively
utilising the
resources
present
with the
firm.
With interest
in her she can
easily grab the
usage of new
techniques.
Other than this
she can take
use of training
programmes
in this regard.
To evaluate
result viva
by senior
members
can be
taken and
many she
can resolve
many case
studies.
35
weeks
3. To enhance
discretion
capability
She is not
very effective
in this type of
skills and is
unable to
store requisite
data privately.
It is
important
to teach her
about
keeping
data private
otherwise
there can be
These abilities
are generally
inbuilt and
harder to be
learned. Help
of staff
members can
be beneficial.
Feedbacks
and 360
degree
monitoring
can be
used.
75
weeks
5

various
negative
effects.
TASK 2
P3. Difference between firm and individual learning, training and development.
There are three distinct learning mechanism is as follows:
 Organisational learning: This kind of learning is in the situations where individual
performance is according to the expectations and hence they cannot achieve targeted
outcomes. This is direct relationship between individual performance and
organisational learning which affects various kinds of process of innovation,
financial outcomes and competitiveness (Hitt and et. al., 2011). Organisational
learning helps in satisfying demands and needs related with consumers by producing
highest quality of goods and services. Managers of Marks and Spenser also learns
this technique so as to use them in meeting their objectives.
 Individual learning: It is essential for the firm to promote individual learning at the
workplace. This kind of learning helps in imparting knowledge and skill which will
assist it in touching higher growth and success. Individual skill is necessary for
developing commodities according to the demand of market and culture of research
will be motivated.
Criteria Organisational learning Individual learning
Analysis In this kind of learning firms
identifies the barriers related with
the process and eliminates it.
This learning is known as knowledge,
behaviour and skill that helps in
progressing in life.
Self-improvement They should adopt various
learning styles which will help in
making regular improvements in
the firm.
Using this person can increase their
learning by taking use of several
methods like attending seminars,
conferences, meetings as well as their
internal learning.
Team learning In any firm it is important to
promote team culture as it helps in
They can work in bigger teams that
will assist in improving their personal
6

making the work process effective
as well as it helps in increasing the
motivation of the workers.
mistakes.
Share vision Using this organisations
communicate their mission and
vision with the employees.
Individual can share their personal
vision which will help in gaining
higher position inside the firm.
Equality Firm aims to maintain equality
among all its workers and may
also learn work culture present
there.
A person can maintain equality among
all the co-workers inside the
organisation.
Training and development is one of the most crucial aspect of the firm as every staff
needs development from time to time so as to increase the productivity of the firm.
Along with it Kolbs learning cycle theory which is expressed in four stages helps in explaining
the importance of continues learning. Concrete experimenting explains that is regular need of
representation of existing and new experiences of situation is crucial. It also states reflective
observation is important and hence assists in experiencing and understanding (Berry, 2011). At
the same time abstract conceptualisation provides new ideas and learning of new abstract
concepts is necessary. At last active experimentation helps in finding and understanding the
alterations which is needed in the learning process and hence applying new ideas to business. It
also provides individual progress cycle that needs to be upgraded continuously.
P4. Requirement of continuous learning and professional growth.
One of the best supermarket chains in Europe is Marks and Spenser. Hence it requires
continuous up gradation in the skills the poses so as to deliver best quality products and
services. In continuous learning staffs are being trained regularly so that there is progressive
growth in their knowledge from time (Chaskalson, 2011). This is done on regular basis. In
the same way professional development encourages staffs towards improving their job role
by the methods such as trainings. This improves the entire personality of the individual and
hence helps in achieving their personal and organisational objectives. Since employees are
considered to most important asset of the company so adding skills to them is more
7

important. There are various sources which is used by managers of Marks and Spenser to
apply continuous learning. Some of them are as follows:
 Seminars and Conferences: It is one of the widely used methods in which individuals
learn from lectures given by the experts in the required skills. They share their
personal knowledge and experience to learn from each other.
 Coaching: Counselling and coaching classes are taken by the HR managers for their
workers so as to add the required skill in their personality. It helps in maximising the
learning for achieving targets (O'leary and et. al., 2011).
 Online learning: There are large amount of online articles and posts that can be used
by the individuals for their learning. In the modern times with the internet being so
fast it has become easier to learn skill from this method.
 Workshops: There are various workshops that is being arranges by the managers of
Marks and Spenser so as to give hands on practice of the skills that is required to be
implanted in the workers.
 Training and development sessions: There are various training and development
sessions that is given to the employees where there skills are being developed.
HR managers use such kind of strategies and techniques so as to achieve their business
growth with the help of their employees. Along with this they also need ideas for removing
obstacles that is faced by company while operating their operations.
TASK 3
P5 Understanding HPW to contribute workers engagement and examining competitive
advantage.
High Performance Working is the process, practices and policies and plans that applies
various efforts for achieving appropriate results and also improving the workers performance in a
better way. It is one of the basic theory that deals with managing every function within an
organisation (Shin and et. al., 2012). They also focus on achieving objectives and goals in a
proper manner. It is one of those concept that is utilised by the managers for understanding their
company’s position in the market. High performance working is important for both employee
and employer’s growth and attaining success by achieving the pre-set targets. It assists in
managing the relationship between workers and consumers while doing any particular task for
8

the organisation. HPW enhances the knowledge, skill and experience which is important for
exponential growth of the company. It is a particular type of practice or organised strategy that is
helping firms in enhancing employee’s power, quality, and abilities in a better way. It helps in
increasing the market share of the company as whole staff members are involved in the process
of adding value to their products and services. HPW enhances the staff’s chances to be a part of
the decision making in particular situation (Somech and Drach-Zahavy, 2013). There are several
obstacles that hinder continuous improvement off skill transformation, lack of managerial
experience, cheap techniques etc. It is the system that is linked with the nature of Marks and
Spenser and indirectly links with the managers of the company where they recruit hire as well as
monitor the performance of the candidates in effective way. Performance appraisal is another
part of examining factor that is directly linked with the activities and functions within an
organisation. Every worker attains skill, knowledge and performs better for reaching to set goals.
HPW is one such process that directly affects the performance of each department and also
motivates people for higher attitude level as well as behaviour of the employee. It assists in
making the environment at the workplace positive. HR managers invest in choosing best set of
talents that will foster the growth of work performance (The Role of Individual Development in
Team and Organizational Success. 2017). It encourages workers for performing in a better way
which will ultimately lead to achieve optimum customer satisfaction. HPW ensures that manager
works in the direction so that workers are happy with their job profile, environment and also are
able to face their difficulties in a proper manner.
TASK 4
P6 Various approaches of performance management
Performance management is one of the most important task that needs to be done inside the
firm on regular basis. It is the process where workers develops plans and policies as well as
monitor every function and activities in a better way. The role of the manager within an
organisation is to manage the performance of the employees by the process or system that is
governed by certain rules and regulations (Hawkins, 2017). They set the guidelines for
performance management. There are several approaches to performance management. Some
of them are as follows:
9