Human Resource Management Practices in Morrisons Supermarket

Desklib provides solved assignments and past papers to help students succeed.

Human Resources Management
1

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................. 3
LO1 (P1, P2)...............................................................................................................4
LO2 (P3, P4)...............................................................................................................9
LO3 (P5, P6)............................................................................................................. 11
LO4 (P7)....................................................................................................................13
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 17
Reference list............................................................................................................ 18
2

Introduction
Human resource management is the strategic process of hiring as well as
developing the entire workforce unit of an organization so that they become more
valuable to the organization. Modern business scenario is extremely competitive,
where organizations are competing with each other to achieve greater market
sustainability. Effective HRM performance is the key to achieve competitive
advantage in market pace as HR department of an organization is directly linked with
improving the organizational performance level and profitability simultaneously. In
simple words, HRM is regarded as the core management function, concerned with
recruitment, managing and motivating the entire workforce for accomplishment of
business targets in an effective manner.
“Morissons” is one of the most successful chain of supermarkets throughout the
UK premises. Mr. William Morrisons founded it in 1899. The company has already
expanded its business operations in more than 500 different business destinations.
More than 110,000-trained employees work in multiple stores of the company to
provide the customers most accurate and satisfying services. In 2018, generated
revenue of the company was almost GB£17,368 million.
In this particular study, different roles and responsibilities along with their
effectiveness in accomplishing business goals of the specified business organization
will be disclosed. Various types of recruitment and selection method will be displayed
for overall consideration of the recruitment system. Effectiveness of different HRM
practices in the business ventures and role of HR department in this process will be
evaluated. Apart from this, multiple external factors, which impact upon business
decision-making will be exposed in this paper.
3

LO1 (P1, P2)
Explain the purpose and scope of Human Resource Management in terms of
resourcing an organisation with talent and skills appropriate to fulfil business
objectives
P1 Explain the purpose and the functions of HRM, applicable to workforce
planning and resourcing an organisation.
Human resource management starts with the aim to increase the performance
level of the workforce unit to their maximum level. It is undeniable that human
resource department is concerned with management of workforce unit from
recruitment process to retirement or termination. In order to reach the set business
destination, effective HR performance is mandatory. Effective HR performance
allows accelerating business performance, profitability, growth and market
sustainability altogether (Noe et al., 2017). Thus, most of the successful ventures like
“Morissons” always focus on developing their HR performance for betterment of
the entire business foundation. The key purpose of HR department of “Morissons”
is recruiting the most suitable employees for the company and extending the existing
and new employees’ performance to their highest level (Bratton and Gold, 2017). It
aims at accelerating production, sales and growth of the company altogether.
Apart from this, HR department is also associated with multiple vital business
functions that are as follows:
Orientation
Providing orientation to new employees is important and HR officer undertakes this
responsibility. However, it is also fact that most of the companies are not likely to
offer a careful orientation to their fresh staffs. Providing orientation to employees is
the first step to assist the new staffs to adjust with their job roles and the employer as
well. In employee orientation program, companies like “Morissons” must include
the targets of the company as well as how the staffs can help in accomplishment of
both short-term as well as long-term goals of the firm. Additionally, HR’s major
responsibility is offering intensive orientation to their employees (Cascio, 2015). The
HR and program assists new employees in understanding their responsibilities in the
company so that they can better contribute towards accomplishment of business
milestones.
4

Employee motivation and reward management
Employees are the vital elements that influence business performance of an
organization. In order to gain sustainable competitive advantage, having satisfied
workforce unit is necessity. HR department also focuses upon keeping their
employees motivated all the while so that they can better focus on their performance
improvement. Apart from this, it is undeniable that motivated employees are more
productive. In modern days, most of the successful business ventures such as
“Morissons” focus on keeping their employees encouraged and motivated all the
while so that the organization can accelerate its productivity, sales and profitability
altogether. Additionally, HR department is responsible for arranging reward program
for the employees according to the performance level and contribution towards
accomplishment of business goals (Mello, 2014). Reward programs increases the
confidence and connection with the organization, which influences to improve
employee performance and bring positive changes in the firm.
Maintaining good working conditions
Human resource management of the “Morissons” has responsibility of offering
healthy and suitable working conditions to their employees that accelerates the
production and profits of the company simultaneously. Staffs like to work in
prefabricated work culture, where they can work freely and communicate with each
other without caring of taking permission from anyone. Hence, the HR personnel of
“Morissons” also adopt effective work environment for the employees that can
provide safety and wellbeing. This allows making better employee relations that are
crucial for achieving sustainable competitive advantage.
Additionally, the HR officer of the specified origination provides financial as well as
non-financial benefits to the workers in order to keep the employee satisfied with
their current job (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014).
Managing employee relations
The workforce unit is considered as the pillars of an organization that supports and
assists business organization to face any kind of business challenge in an effective
manner. Employee relations refer to the relations and co-ordination among
employees. Successful business organizations like “Morissons” always focus on
building strong employee relations to gain competitive advantage. The HR personnel
of the specified organization has the responsibility of influencing the employees to
communicate and co-ordinate with each other and make strong relationship so that
5

they can fully complete tasks in precise manner. However, the HR officer of
“Morissons” must organise activities that will assist to now a staff at the
professional and personal level. Healthy and balanced relationship between the
employer and employee will be promoted through well-planned relations.
Apart from this, HR personnel of the specified organization is directly linked with
multiple functions such as arranging training and development program for new and
existing employees, employee safety, welfare and healthy measures aligning with
country’s labour norms and regulations, influencing employee engagement and most
important accelerating the business productivity and profitability together (Tyson,
2014).
P2 Explain the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to
recruitment and selection.
Among the all-vital organisational functions, the key responsibility of HR department
is resourcing a company with appropriate and required organizational skills as well
as organizational knowledge to keep the organization productive and competitive in
market. It is a public relations exercise. HR personnel recruit top candidates for the
organization via different mediums and techniques. HR department of most of the
successful companies such as “Morissons” always concentrates on recruitment of
candidates according to the organizational requirements so that ventures can keep
their organizational excellence and profitability in long-term (Wilton, 2016). However,
“Morissons” follows both internal recruitment and external recruitment. Both of
these methods are effective and useful to recruit efficient and effective employees for
the business firm. The key aim of HR manager of ventures is creating a flied of
suitably qualified employees those will be capable enough to do the right job in the
right place. However, both of these recruitment processes are associated with
multiple advantages and disadvantages that are as follows:
Advantages of Internal recruitment system
 It is cheaper as well as quicker to recruit effective employees through using
internal recruitment method
 In internal recruitment, people are already familiar with business venture so
that they managed to understand the business activities and job
responsibilities within a short time (Bidwell and Keller, 2014).
6

 Employer previously knows the candidates’ key strengths and weaknesses
Disadvantages of External recruitment system
 Major disadvantage of internal recruitment is it limits the number of quality
candidates.
 The concept of internal recruitment is stagnant.
Advantages of External recruitment system
 In external recruitment, more talented and better candidates are selected for
the vacant job designation in the firm.
 Candidates are outsourced from the outside of the organization so that
people bring new ideas to firm
Disadvantages of external recruitment system
 The external recruitment process is time consuming and it takes huge
investment.
 External recruitment sometimes become complex and needs supervision of
experienced higher authority personnel like HR officer (DeVaro, 2016)
Selection is interlinked with recruitment process, but the concepts are different.
Selection is the method of employing the right people in the right place with the right
job designations in the firm for improving the organizational performance in long-
term. In recent days, there are several effective selection techniques such as
interview, psychological test, aptitude test and others for better candidate selection
according to the needs and requirements of the business firm. Successful
companies like “Morissons” use psychological test, aptitude test and interview
for selection of the most effective candidates.
Aptitude test
It is used for determining the capability of an individual to succeed in certain task,
without having prior training and knowledge.
Advantages
 This test or selection method is
Disadvantages
 Cultural bias is one of the major
7

cost effective.
 It takes a smaller amount time to
recruit effective and potential
employees.
disadvantage of aptitude test
 It does not necessarily provide
good performance as outcome
Psychological test
Another important selection process that is used by “Morissons” is psychological
test.
Advantages
 Psychological test is reliable and
accurate (Loewenthal and Lewis,
2018)
 It is cheap and time saving as well
 Unbiased selection approach
Disadvantages
 This test can make a candidate
nervous.
 This method can become false as
well.
Interview
Interview is the most common and effective process of selection of potential
candidates from group of candidates.
Advantages
 Interview is the most commonly
used that is reliable and useful.
 It is helpful in selection of the most
effective candidate from several
eligible applicants.
Disadvantages
 Interview process can be lengthy
 During interview, candidates can
feel nervous and might not able to
show their actual effectiveness
and skills (Dipboye, 2017)
However, all these selection methods are effective, justified to use in “Morissons” for
recruitment and selection of effective and most suitable applicants along with
required skill set, and required knowledge.
8

LO2 (P3, P4)
P3 Explain the benefits of different HRM practices within an organisation for
both the employer and employee.
HRM practices are referred to selected good practices within the firm set by HR
personnel of the organization in order to accelerate the organizational performance.
Within the organizational premises of “Morissons”, HRM practices are set in a way
that they can help staffs in extending their performance level. On the other hand,
HRM practices improve organizational performance and provide an excellent
opportunity to employer to generate high amount of revenues in business (Zibarras
and Coan, 2015). In short, through following these effective HRM practices, both
parties; employees and employer are benefitted.
Employee benefits: There are several HRM practices like selective hiring, extensive
training and others are followed in the “Morissons”. Due to selective hiring only
qualified and eligible employees, get selected in the firm. After selection, candidates
feel confident regarding their skill set and knowledge, which influence them to
perform well in the firm. It allows making better position in the company. On the other
hand, extended training and development is another HRM practice of “Morissons”,
where employees are provided proper training to make them as required by the
organization. During training, employees learnt a lot of new things and extends the
organizational knowledge boundaries. Additionally, training strengthens the skills of
the employees that is important good for employees in long-term (Milliman and Clair,
2017). Additionally, training helps to make bright career of employees in future.
Employer’s benefit: Employers are also benefitted by the set HRM practices in the
firm. Due to HRM practices, increased and improved employee performance benefits
the employer. Trained employees are more capable to speed up the organizational
productivity without errors, which results in higher sales revenue and profitability of
the company. Therefore, the employer enjoys the high growth rate of business.
Additionally, it manages strong employee-employer relations that influence business
performance.
9

P4 Evaluate the effectiveness of different HRM practices in terms of raising
organisational profit and productivity.
It is undeniable that HRM practices are simply effective to raise organizational profit
and productivity. Business organizations are aimed at generating higher profits in
business for greater market sustainability and growth. Human resource manager of
the specified organization has the responsibility of implementing HRM practices
as per the demands of the organizational needs. HR department of “Morissons”
has adopted the extensive training practices for extending employees’ performance
to their maximum level. Trained employees perform better towards accomplishment
of business objectives and they accelerate their prediction rate of the organization as
well (Milliman and Clair, 2017). Additionally, it reduces conflicts among the
employees to build strong employee relations within the firm for greater market
sustainability. Alternatively, it influences co-ordination skill and team performance
among employees so that they can finish their tasks more effectively working as a
team. Team performance will lead the organization towards generating higher
revenue and growth in business.
Another effective HRM practice within “Morissons” is adequate work environment.
Employees like to work in suitable work environment, where they have the
opportunity to work freely. HR department of the specified organization has adopted
the appropriate work environment along with all safety materials to safeguard the
employees and to provide them better work environment. It has resulted in
accelerated production and profits of the company. The HR department always focus
upon maintaining and improving the health and well-being of the employees so that
they better perform (Theriou and Chatzoglou, 2014). Apart from this, the HR
personnel of the organization provide compensation and rewards to the employees
according to their contribution in achieving business targets. It influences other
employees to improve their performance standard so that they can be rewarded as
well. Alternatively, it creates competition among employees that results in improved
organizational performance, better market shares and accelerated business growth
altogether.
10

LO3 (P5, P6)
Analyse internal and external factors that affect Human Resource Management
decision-making, including employment legislation
P5 Analyse the importance of employee relations in respect to influencing
HRM decision- making.
In modern HRM concept, various best practices are also known as HRM practices
such as strong employee relations that manipulate decision-making process of HRM.
In simple words, employee relations are considered as the efforts in order to manage
and cement the relations between employees and employer (Björkman et al., 2014).
A company such as “Morissons” with good employee relations program offers fair
as well as consistent treatment to all workforce units so that they shall be committed
to their designated job roles. As opined by modern market researchers, unhealthy
employee-employer relationships always bring difficulty and barriers for the
organization. Being one of the most reputed retail chain supermarkets across the UK
premises, “Morissons” must build strong employee employer relations that can
influence the business decision-making process. For an instance, the company must
have co-ordination skill and high quality team performance so that they can make
faster and accurate business decisions. Additionally, strong bonding among
employees is required for completion of any kind of projects within the deadline,
which provides the employer an excellent opportunity to generate higher sales
revenue in business (Tansel and Gazîoğlu, 2014).
Strong employee relations not only improve organizational performance, but also
influence the profitability and growth rate of the business. Strong employee bonding
avoids conflicts that allow the employer to make positive business decisions in an
effective manner (Anitha, 2014). When employees work as a team and perform as a
family, it becomes such easier for the employer to make the appropriate decisions in
business for higher growth and success.
P6 Identify the key elements of employment legislation and the impact it has
upon HRM decision- making.
11

Across the UK premises, there are numerous laws and regulations implemented by
The Great Britain along with aim to safeguard the employees from any kind of
unethical business practices. The UK government has implemented different
employment laws that UK based ventures follow these rules for sustaining their
business in the country premises. However, all these legalisations and laws impact
over business and HR decision-making process.
Health and Safety act 1974
Employees are extremely useful and important to an organization. Therefore,
maintaining the health, safety and well-being of the employees has become a
responsibility of the employer. The UK parliament introduced this Health and Safety
Act in 1974 for the first time to safeguard the employees from organizational
accidents and ensure well-being of the employees (Holt and Allen, 2015). Through
maintaining this act in appropriate manner, it is possible for the ventures like
Morrisons to improve relationship level between employer and employees that
alternatively influences growth and better decision-making in business. Employees
feel better to work in safe work environment so that ensuring health and safety of
employees can directly increase their performance.
Equality Act 2010
In 2010, the UK parliament first time introduced the Equality Act for stopping multiple
types of discrimination activities, avoiding favouritism or partiality within the
organizations. As per this law, within the UK based ventures, discrimination over
colour, sex, gender, culture, nationality, religion and others are strictly restricted. If
people are found discrimination activities will be punished by UK parliament
(Manthorpe and Moriarty, 2014). However, this Equality Act influences better
employee-employer relation within the firm. Organizations like Morissons must
follow this act and provide equal facilities to all employees so that employees feel
more connectivity with the company and perform towards business objectives that
allow better business decision-making.
Apart from these laws, there are Data Protection Act 2018, Redundancy Act and
others that are implemented across the UK premises to safeguard employees from
12