Human Resource Management Practices in Costa Coffee: 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: Delia Cicortas
ID No: …………
Session: April 2019
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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 4
LO1:................................................................................................................................. 5
LO2:............................................................................................................................... 10
LO3:............................................................................................................................... 13
LO4:............................................................................................................................... 17
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 20
Reference list................................................................................................................. 21
Appendix........................................................................................................................ 24
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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 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 Costa Coffee have been provided in the report. Moreover, the report also
discusses about the various Employee legislations. In addition, the benefits received by
the employer and employee from the HRM policies have also been discussed.
Applications of the HRM policies in Costa Coffee have also have been mentioned in this
report. For better understanding of the recruitment and selection processes, the
curriculum vitae and job advertisements for specific job vacancies has also been
provided.
Costa Coffee is a supplier of roasted coffee in various shops in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1971, the company is the key supplier to the Italian based coffee shops.
Headquartered in Dunstable, UK, the company has branches all over the world
(Costa.co.uk, 2019).
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LO1:
P1: Explain the purpose and the functions of HRM, applicable to workforce
planning and resourcing an organisation.
Introduction:
From the report below, we will learn about the purposes, objectives and functions of the
Human Resource Management. The different approaches of the recruitment and
selection process in reference to Costa Coffee will also be discussed. The strengths
and weakness of all the approaches will also be discussed.
According to Noe et al. (2017), Human Resource Management is responsible for
systematic management of all the employees in the business organisation and ensures
a positive and successful functioning of the organisation. In the ever-changing
environment, this function helps a company to cope up with the challenges and be
successful.
Purposes of HRM are:
Internal management of the employees: The management focuses on socializing
different policies in the organisation to improve the quality of the workers.
Matrics: The HRM uses matrices to increase efficiency in work and improve the
communication.
Staffing: The HRM is responsible for the recruiting and selection of new candidates in
the company.
Employee Relationships: The relations between all the candidates in an organisation
are maintained by the HRM (Casio, 2015).
Laws: The HRM ensures that the company is updated with the proper legal laws and
legislations (Armstrong, 2015).
Objectives of HRM:
Societal: The HRM aims at reducing the difficulties faced by the employees due to
different social and ethical needs.
Personal: The HRM conducts the training sessions for the employees to prepare them
to face the new challenges.
Functional: The HRM implies different benefits and compensations on the candidates
of the company, which further motivates the employees.
Organisational: The HRM recruits the new employees and ensures that there is
healthy relationship between the employees (DeCenzo, 2016).
Functions of HRM:
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Recruitment: It is the responsibility of the HRM to recruit and employ new individuals in
the organisation.
Compensation: The HRM is responsible for the payment of proper wages to all the
employees in the organisation (Brewster, 2016).
Benefits: The HRM is responsible for delivering essentials benefits like health
insurance and retirement plans to the employees of the company.
Performance Rewards: The HRM rewards promotions or implies penalties on an
employee based on the quality of his work.
Legal Reforms: Formulation of laws for employee protection and rights are done by the
HRM (Storey, 2014).
Four common Business Objectives:
Survival: A company always targets towards successfully finding the solutions for every
hurdle they face and stay afloat in the industry.
Increase in sales: The primary aim of an organisation is to use the inventory and
human resources effectively and increase its production in the market, which will further
bring more profits.
Gain in profits: For a business to continue its production and growth in the market, it
needs to ensure that the total revenue is more than the production cost (Jeston, 2014).
Growth: In its specific industry, every organisation aims at successful functioning and
achieving superiority.
Role of HRM:
In this dynamic business environment, the employees of a company are trained by the
HRM to help them adapt the changes by using different methods like role-playing,
coaching etc. In addition, the HRM identifies the gaps in skills in the organisation, and
recruits or selects new employees with required abilities.
Hard HRM Soft HRM
Follows the Y theory Follows the X theory
Employees are considered as the inventories
of the company
Employees are considered as a separate
individual
The strategies are short term The strategies are long term
Follows Autocratic style of leadership Follows democratic style of leadership
The structure of the organisation is short The structure of the organisation is tall.
Table 1: Differences between Hard and Soft HRM
(Sources: Created by the learner)
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P2: Explain the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to recruitment
and selection.
Best-Fit approach to recruitment: This approach ensures that the recruitment
processes of the HRM follow the different policies of the company. The recruitments
done are vertically linked to the principles and strategies of the organisation (Ekwoabo,
2015).
Strengths: Helps the organisation to recruit candidates that will exactly benefit it in the
current environment.
Weakness: This is a temporary approach and needs to be implemented on every
change. Therefore, this repetitive processes is hectic for any organisation.
Best Fit approach: These are some pre-defined policies that are used by HRM for
recruitment processes.
Strengths: These policies help the HRM to recruit employees, who would be effective
in every environment up to some extent.
Weakness: The appropriate best practice is a myth. In addition, the approach has a
negative effect on the cooperation of the employees.
Internal Recruitment: These recruitment procedures take place in an organisation
internally. These recruitments include promotions, and abroad transfers.
Strengths: The total focus of these is to motivate the employees and increase their
involvements in working. The requirements of money and time are less in this case.
Weakness: There is no introduction of new skills in the organisation. This does not help
to meet the manual labour requirements in the company.
External Recruitment: These recruitments are done to employ new individuals in the
organisation. These recruitments are needed to employ the labours for the company.
Strengths: The production rate is increased and new skills are introduced.
Weakness: These processes consume huge amount of money and time.
Different selection procedures:
Job Interviews: This process tests the knowledge and skills of the candidate and
delivers the policies and principles of the company to the candidate.
Interviews on telephone and Skype: The companies to recruit candidates from
foreign nations use these procedures.
Psychometric Test: These tests measure the qualities of the candidate. This also
helps the company to understand the adaptability rate of the candidate to the desired
roles.
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Induction: This process helps the new candidates to be familiarized with the principles
and culture of the organisation.
On-boarding: These targets at improving the skills of the new employees with help of
trainings and lectures.
Advantages obtained by Costa Coffee by the help of these approaches:
The Best-fit approach allows the company to employ individuals, who will have the skills
that would beneficial to the ongoing environment. The external procedures will help the
company to employ workers for their production purposes and different outlets.
Moreover, the motivation and development of the employees are increased by the
internal procedure of recruitment.
Disadvantages:
The best-fit approaches will needed regular changes and recruitments, which will not be
an ideal approach for the company. The external processes require huge amount of
money and time. This might have a negative impact on the profits of the company.
Moreover, the internal procedures will not help the company to gain new talent and
ideas.
Recruitment approach of the international companies:
Advantages:
 The philosophy of the corporation is increased.
 The approaches reduce the communication issues by using local talent pools.
 Helps the company to expand the business in different cultures
Disadvantages:
 These approaches need high amount of money.
 It is difficult to achieve a common culture in the organisational environment.
 The candidates do not properly understand the cultures and principles of the
native places.
Conclusion:
From the above report we learn about the different purposes, functions, and objectives
of the Human Resource Management. Also the different types of approach towards
efficient recruitment and selection have also been discussed. For better understanding,
the implementation of all these approaches has been done in Costa Cola.
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LO2
Introduction:
From the further report, the benefits of the Human Resources Management practices on
the employer and employees can be learned. In addition, all the effects of HRM on the
productions and profit of the company will be discussed. For better understanding, the
facts will be produced through the workings of Costa Coffee.
P3: Explain the benefits of different HRM practices within an organisation for both
the employer and employee.
The different benefits are:
Helps in Hiring and Training the Workforce:
The planning of the number of employees required is the key responsibility of HRM.
They formulate strategies for recruiting the required type of candidates (Worth, 2018).
The job role is set according to the requirements of the company. They also train the
individuals by methods of induction to prepare them and give them a knowledge about
their works.
Ensures efficiency in Performance Management System
Increase in motivation of an employee is the key function of HRM. The role of the
individual is defined at first, and then The HRM conducts an efficient feedback method
to ensure the improvement of the individual. An efficient management of the
performance will benefit the organisation directly.
Develops the culture and values in an organisation:
The HRM ensures that the working environment in the company is healthy. A clean
working environment helps an individual to stay focused in his work and improve in his
skills. The job satisfaction is ensured by the HRM, and this increase the quality of
production in the company.
Management of Conflict: In presence several employees in the organisation, there is a
high chance of conflicts and disagreements between the different employees (Harrison,
2017). The disagreements cannot be avoided, but obviously can be resolved. HRM is
responsible for bringing the two parties on mutual grounds and it acts as a mediator and
settles the problems. The HR takes proper actions so that the environment stays
peaceful.
Responsibility of good relations:
The HRM helps in establishing healthy relations between all the employers and
employees in the organisation. They manage meetings, seminars, and gatherings to
ensure this matter.
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P4: Evaluate the effectiveness of different HRM practices in terms of raising
organisational profit and productivity
Performance development:
Organizational Alignment: The key target of the HRM is to align all the employees,
workers, and teams in a same alignment with prime objectives of the organisation
(Gallagher, 2015). By perfect enrolment of the jobs to the employees, the company can
ensure the increase in productivity of the organisation.
Transparency: HRM have a responsibility to provide transparency of the work culture
and roles that are assigned to the employees. The employees get an idea of the
rewards, allocations, recognitions, development strategies, and self-evaluation from the
policies of HRM.
Flexible Working:
Employment security: This gives the idea of threats of the uncertainty of loss of
employment to every employee (Idris, 2014). These concepts act as a barrier between
an employee and the unfair means and methods of disengagements, sudden
engagements, and disapprovals
Increase in payment and promotions: Money acts as a very effective factor for the
motivation of the employees working in the organisation. Factors like equal treatment,
recognition, and security also play important roles (Loretto, 2015). Therefore, to
motivate their employees, many organisations use the technique of rewarding and
promotions to ensure a high quality production.
Effects of performance management on Costa Coffee:
The management of Costa Coffee are divided into different sectors like production,
operation management, marketing, sales, and revenue management. Therefore, the
HRM management should ensure that the required numbers of slots are covered in all
these departments to ensure efficient working of the company. For example, the sales
department needs large number of individuals, but the requirement in creativity is low in
this sector. On the other hand, the marketing department requires less number of
individuals but with high innovative skills. In addition, every department should be
subjected to proper training about their roles in their organisation for better functioning
and production.
Effects of flexible working on Costa Coffee:
The HRM should provide policies of employment security to all the level of employees
(Cooper, 2015). In addition, the company must reward the employees with efficient work
rate with promotions or benefits that would motivate them.
Strength and weakness of performance management in Costa Coffee:
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The job descriptions that are provided to the employees serve them with the knowledge
about their job role. However, this is an outline of the actual duties. Furthermore, they
might not help the employee with job mobility (Lacerda, 2014). In addition, the
leadership training by HRM leads to improvement of individuals. However, weak
presentation of the leadership policies may create tensions in employee relations.
Strength and weakness of flexible working in Costa Coffee:
These allow the employees to have a healthy environment in the company but some
individuals need the traditional work culture to function properly. Lower attendance of
their colleagues may bother some employees who are regular to work.
Conclusion: From the above report, we will learn about the different affects of the
policies of HRM on the working principles of the company. The different aspects of the
personal development and flexible working have been discussed. To establish better
learning, the factors have been implemented on Costa Coffee.
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LO3:
Introduction
Decisions for an organization like Costa Coffee are associated with multiple internal and
external factors including multiple legislations. In this segment, the importance of the
employment relationship and HRM decision making would be analyzed coupled with
multiple elements of legislation like dismissal law, discrimination law and others.
P5: Analyse the importance of employee relations with respect to influencing
HRM decision-making.
Employee relationship is defined as the effort undertaken by the management of an
organization to develop a positive relationship between them and the employees. The
importance of positive employee relationship includes an active impact on the success
of an organization. This would be because, positive employee relationship would lead to
effective communication and information sharing among the staff (Gooderham et al.,
2015). This would enable the human resource management department to undertake
informed decisions regarding the reorganization of employee distribution. In the long
end, employee relationship influences the decision of handing over pink slips to the
employees due to multiple reasons.
The main roles associated with trade unions include the following:
 Negotiation of wages coupled with the negotiation of working conditions
 Taking of collective action by regulating relationship among workers coupled
with the conduction of collective bargaining (nibusinessinfo.co.uk, 2015)
 Development and raising of ethical and legal demands behalf of the members
associated with the trade unions
In the segment of negotiation of wages, trade unions influence the HRM decision
making in the segment of remuneration, dismissals coupled with the inclusion of an
individual for a particular task (Dastmalchian, 2014). For an organization like Costa
Coffee trade unions essentially influence the HRM decision including the quantum of
labor for the conduction of the business process coupled with the minimum support
price provided to individuals growing coffee.
In the segment of collective action, this external factor influences employee relationship
among themselves by smooth mitigation of any issues so raised by a group or an
individual. It additionally acts as a buffer between the management and the employees
and thereby reducing any iron handling of the management against a particular
employee.
For an organization like Costa Coffee, three major areas of decision making by the
HRM includes the following:
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 Recruitment decisions: Employee relations influence the HRM department in
favouring a particular candidate for recruitment.
 Training and development decisions: Positive relationship with the management
enables an employee to request particular training sessions for self-
improvement. Additionally, for the mentioned organization, employee relations
influence the HRM department in the segment of paid internship or executive
degrees, the cost of which is borne by the organization.
 Compensation decisions: The dynamicity of an employee coupled with the
performance of the same determines the compensatory package as provided by
the organization. For an organization that deals in coffee as well as small scale
beverages, relationship with the management coupled with the customer would
influence the HRM department to increase or hold the compensatory benefits in
the long end.
Employee relationship influences the HRM decision making in the segment of working
condition on job design. This influence is associated with taking into account the
employee performance as well as the positive relationship shared with the management
(Tansel, 2014). For an organization, the working conditions could be tweaked while
keeping the same job design. Variations would include changes in the working time and
couple with options of flexible working tenures for meeting the business requirements
and motivating the employees.
For the mentioned organization, three key aspects of employee relations include career
development, employment security, and working conditions. In the segment of career
development, working as a Barista in the organization improved employee skills.
Information regarding the background of the employee enables the management to hire
and train the same (Costa.co.uk, 2019). However, negative information like a poor
response from the employee influences the decision to sack the same. In the segment
of employee security, lower level jobs are essentially highly unsecured and are
dependent on regular performance and sales evaluations (Belloc, 2019). Negative
information like tight labour budgets influences HRM decision making in conduction of
training and development of working conditions as per multiple regulations and
recommendations.
P6: Identify the key elements of employment legislation and the impact it has
upon HRM decision-making.
Equal Pay Act: This Act enables the same level wages and payments for the
individuals performing the same amount of work without discriminating them based on
their genders. The notable act in these grounds is Equal Pay Act of 1963 (Griffith, 2014)
Health and safety law: This law states that the employers are responsible for the
safety of the workers in their company. In addition, it also states that the workplace
environment should be healthy and safe (Cingano, 2015).
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