Human Resource Management Report: Burberry Case Study Analysis

This report provides a detailed analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices at Burberry, a prominent fashion company. It begins with an introduction to HRM, emphasizing its significance and the roles and responsibilities of HR managers. The report then delves into the core HR functions, including recruitment and selection, training and development, and maintaining a healthy working culture. It assesses various approaches to workforce planning, recruitment, selection, development, training, performance management, and reward systems. The report includes examples of different methods used in HR practices, such as those employed by Amazon, Nokia, and Vodafone. It also explores the effectiveness of employee relations and engagement, discussing models like the AON Hewitt Model and the Atkinson Flexibility Model. The report covers key aspects of employee legislation and how they inform decision-making to meet business objectives. The report also examines HR practices in a work-related context, with an evaluation of technology and online resources in improving the recruitment and selection process. Overall, the report provides a comprehensive overview of HRM strategies and their application within the context of Burberry.

HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1. Purpose, roles and responsibilities and significance of hr functions..................................1
2. Assessment of approaches to workforce planning, recruitment and selection, development
and training, performance management and reward systems.................................................3
3. Examples of different methods used in hr practices..........................................................4
4. The approach to an effectiveness of employee’s relation and employee’s engagement with
mention of the flexible working practices..............................................................................5
5. Key aspects of employee legislation on which organization must work............................6
6. Employee relations and employment legislation inform decision-making and meets
business objectives of Burberry..............................................................................................7
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................8
7. HR practices in work related context.................................................................................8
8.Evaluating the use of technology, online resources, digital platforms and social networking
on Improving the recruitment and selection process of Burberry..........................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Human Resource Management is an important term used for the management of people
working in organization. Moreover, human resources are considered to be crucial asset for
organization. Thus, if organization are not working proper, so it is assumed that there is some
shortage in human resource department of that organization. Burberry is the public limited
company, founded by Thomas Burberry in 1856 at London, England. Burberry is known name in
Fashion industry, where its product lines are Trench Coats, Ready-to-wear outerwear,
accessories, fragrances, sunglasses and cosmetic products. Burberry has its stores in 51 countries
in all over the world. Report highlights the purpose, significance of HR functions, roles and
responsibilities of HR manager and approaches of HR functions. It also tells employment
legislation, it's role in decision-making and achievement of objectives of Burberry (Noe, 2017).
TASK 1
1. Purpose, roles and responsibilities and significance of hr functions
RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
Recruitment is the process of identifying the skills, knowledge of potential and candidates which
are qualified for a particular job in Burberry. The main objective of this process is to attract the
candidates who are qualified for a particular job. Selection is process of selecting or hiring the
candidate for a job in Burberry.
Purpose
The major purpose of recruitment and selection is creating a talent pool to select and
recruit the best candidate for the particular job role.
Roles and responsibility
HR of Burberry should attract talents by conducting group discussions and interviews.
Also, he should prepare job description and job specification. HR of Burberry should recruit the
prospect employees without any inequality.
Significance
HR of Burberry mange the complete employment process by selecting the resumes and
scheduling interviews, and selecting the most appropriate candidate for their organisation so
qualified employees can be recruited which will helps in achieving Burberry's objective for
managing innovation and talent management within organisation.
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TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT
It is indispensable function of HR management. HR of Burberry's purpose is to give education
and knowledge to improve their skills and ability to work on given job. Basically, it is given to
improve and enhance the current performance.
Purpose
The purpose of this HR function is to ensure knowledge skills and employee relation. In
this the manager aim at developing working ability of workers according to changing business
environment.
Roles and responsibility
The HR manager role is to focus on training also after the selection of the candidates for
required job. Training brings the employees to be more competitive and helps in employees’
retention on the job and the off the job trainings are given to the employees according to the
requirement on their job position. Responsibility of HR manager is to analyse needs of
organising training.
Significance
Training and development help in employee coordination. This area of HR also supports
Burberry fair employment policy and employee development which helps in overall
development of Burberry. Because of training and development, employees of Burberry learn
how to work without making any mistakes which lead the employees to work better.
MAINTAINING HEALTHY WORKING CULTURE FOR EMPLOYEES
Burberry's employees are the most important resource of the organisation. Management
is trying to know the employees about personal a professional level to promote a healthy
relationship with them with a healthy environment. A healthy and balanced relation and
environment will help Burberry to provide effective and efficient production and services.
Purpose
The purpose behind maintaining healthy working culture is to provide happy
environment to employees of Burberry. Because, happy environment create positive vibes and
happy employees which lead to successful employees.
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Roles and responsibility
It is the responsibility of HR of bur beery top Create a safe and healthy work environment
in which employees are working and should try to hinder the negative or stressful atmosphere
from their work area. As employee’s performance is solely depended on the atmosphere they
work in positive, healthy and energetic environment will help them to work efficiently. Role of
HR manager is to imply regulation like Occupational health and safety. Equality Act in order to
ensure positive working environment.
Significance
It is important to maintain a healthy working environment for employees as healthy
environment help Burbeery to achieve its organisation goals as well as it satisfies the
requirements and needs of employees by providing happy environment where communication is
understandable and strong between every members of Burberry. This lead to clear understanding
of goals and objectives of Burberry's employees. (Cascio, 2015).
2. Assessment of approaches to workforce planning, recruitment and selection, development and
training, performance management and reward systems
Work-Force planning Approaches -
A. Workforce Approach – Through this approach, HR find out about the current workforce in the
Burberry and jobs then assess the required workforce in the Burberry.
B. Competency Approach – This approach creates link between organization goals and
employees' working skill. Burberry not only focus on the number of employees and jobs but also
focus on the skill of employees so that Burberry can achieve their organizational goals.
Strength – This approaches helps company to fulfil their human resources needs.
Weakness – This approaches required a lot of planning which is time consuming.
Recruitment and Selection Approaches -
A. Social Recruiting Approach – In this approach, Burberry uses Social Networking Sites for
recruitment of employees. In this approach, Burberry posts about the job profile and requirement
employees on their post and needed people get to know about this.
B. Interview Selection Approach – In this approach, Burberry conducts interviews of those
people who want job. In this approach, HR ask questions from the interviewee to know about his
background, his interests, his personality and his knowledge about particular job.
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Strength – This approaches help company to select best candidates out of pool which is good for
the company.
Weakness – This approaches can be harmful for those candidates who are good for the company
but not selected due to some criteria for the company.
Development and Training Approaches -
Job Rotation Approach – In this approach, Employees are rotated through one position to another
by providing him the opportunity to learn about various jobs in Burberry. Through job rotation,
employees of Burberry learn about the job responsibilities and job difficulties which help in
his/her development.
Strength – This approaches helps employees to gain experiences and knowledge which help
them to understand their work and tasks.
Weakness – This approaches are expensive for the company.
Performance Management Approaches -
A. Ranking Approach – In this approach, the supervisors of Burberry give rank to their
employees on the basis of performance and behaviour in order to best-worst.
B. 360 Degree Feedback Approach – In this approach, the feedbacks are collected from the
employers, supervisors, leaders and peers of the particular employee of Burberry and give him so
that he/she can improve himself/herself on the basis of feedbacks.
Strength – Performance management approaches help employees to understand their
performance which helps in improvement.
Weakness – It can be harmful for employees as it will lead tough competition between
employees.
Reward Systems Approaches -
A. Extrinsic Reward Approach – It involves monetary reward given to Burberry's employees for
better performance. Monetary reward includes bonus, perks, commissions and increasing
salaries.
B. Intrinsic Reward Approach – It comes in the form of joy, satisfaction or pride of employee of
Burberry when they achieve their target. It is an important factor of Burberry's employee
engagement (Wright, 2018).
Strength – It helps company to retain their employees for long time.
Weakness – It is expensive approach for the company.
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3. Examples of different methods used in hr practices
Recruitment and Selection Practices of Amazon -
Amazon's selection process has six rounds after that amazon select the prospective employee for
the job in Amazon. The rounds are as follows -
1. Written Round
2. Online Coding Round
3. Multiple Technical Round
4. Telephonic Round
5. Hiring Manager Round
6. Interview Round
Training and Development Practice of Nokia -
Nokia uses various formal and informal training and development programs to employ its
employees. These programs are as follows -
1. Classroom training
2. Coaching
3. Formal Development Centre
4. Career Development Workshop
Employee Relations Practice of Vodafone -
Vodafone uses Flexible Practices as Employee Relations by provide its employees Work-Time
Flexibility, Work-Place Flexibility and Organization flexibility. Work-Time Flexibility means
Employees of Vodafone can choose their working hours by themselves. Work-Place Flexibility
means Employees of Vodafone can choose their location of working by themselves.
Organization Flexibility means Vodafone adopt new changes quickly according to its external
environment. These all practices help employees to balance between his/her life and work, which
give him/her satisfaction with work.
Performance Appraisal Practice of Tata Motors -
Tata Motors uses many approaches for performance appraisal -
1. Interview based approach
2. Behavioural based approach
3. Target based approach
4. Key Area Responsibility based approach
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Using these approaches, Tata Motors reviews and appraises employees' performance and then
according to their performance, Tata Motors give them Rewards (DeCenzo, 2016).
These all practices that is recruitment, section, training and development, employee
relations and performance appraisal will helps to motivate the employees which will further help
the organisation in directing the activities of employee towards the direction of organisational
goal effectively and efficiently, activities of highly motivated and trained employees will also
result in increasing printability as employees will make efforts to improve the product quality
which helps in attracting larger number of customers and hence achievement of organisational
goal.
4. The approach to an effectiveness of employee’s relation and employee’s engagement with
mention of the flexible working practices
AON HEWITT MODEL OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
The AON HEWITT MODEL basically includes business outcome. In this theory two
major aspects are to be consider first one psychological outcome and on the other hand
behavioural outcome
Burberry looks on both the aspect carefully so that Burberry performance and growth are
developed and increases. AON HEWITT MODEL has three attributes which Burberry has to
consider the first one is say by the help of these attributes there is free flow of communication
and the workers are free to communicate and free to share the idea and also by all these workers
also say good things about the organisation and by help of these Burberry image improve in front
of the customers that these is the best place to work here.
The second attribute is stay the employees are so motivated because of their work is
being appreciated also there is friendly environment that's why they show a strong sense of
belongingness and show their interest that they want to be in part of the organisation and by
these Burberry will have fewer employees turnover just because everyone wants to stay in the
organisation and the third last attribute is strived in these employees are motivated because
incentives are being provided different rewards are there and bonus, there ideas are also valued
in the organisation and also put extra efforts to work in effective and efficient manner and also
by these attributes Burberry will have the best team who are motivated and do their best.
ATKINSON FLEXIBILITY MODEL
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This model tell us the managerial and organisational technique used by the organisation
to allocate human resources in according to market workforce. This model tells about the
flexibility in the organisation. Burberry has adopted many flexibility for the employees. By the
help of this model, there is flexible working hours in Burberry. Employees do not have any kind
of problems in their works. There is flexibility in policies, which is being design in favour of
workers so that workers can engage in Burberry and also the relationship between employers and
employees can improve.(Brewster and Hegewisch, 2017).
Maintaining efficiency and better relations with employees will leads the HR in guiding
and leading them according to the organisational strategies. As good relation encourage and
motivate employees to follow the policies of organisation and to work according to direction of
leaders. Otherwise bad relations will leads to losing of the integrity and coordination in
organisation and resulting the failure of achievement of goals.
5. Key aspects of employee legislation on which organization must work
Health & Safety Law 1974: -Health & safety law in UK places duties on employers to
ensure the health, safety welfare of employees and others who are of employees, such as
contractor, visitors and members of the public. For example, by implementing this law Burberry
needs to provide safe and better working condition to employees so that they can retain them.
It's a duty of Burberry because this regulation deal with physical conditions of workplace.
Organisation have to work on giving the health facility to the employees such as giving them
medical facility when they are suffering from any illness or any of accidents in working hour. It
makes better inter personnel relationship between employees and employers.
Equality Act 2010: - Equality act is a bill in the United Kingdom that prohibit
discrimination on the basis of following characteristics – age, gender, disability, marriage and
civil partnership, race, regions or beliefs, sex and sex orientation. For example, by implementing
this law Burberry can not do discriminate between male and female employees in payment and
promotions.
According to equality act, its responsibility of organisation that they select candidates
with their ability and skills of knowledge, not based on the culture and caste of the person.
Data Protection Act 1998: - The data protection act is a UK parliament designed to protect
personnel data stored on computers or in an organised paper filling system. For example, by
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implementing the law Burberry needs to provide protection and security of employee’s personal
information.
Its responsibility of the Burberry organisation to protect the data of the employees such as
personnel information, personnel documents, address proofs, contact details etc. They have to
must work on the protection of the data of the employees because if it licks then it’s so much
harmful for that person. Burberry organisation have to make a type of application where all the
data have been secured and also the passwords is only given to a particular trust worthy person
which generate trust between employees for the organisation (Bailey, 2018).
6. Employee relations and employment legislation inform decision-making and meets business
objectives of Burberry
Employee Relation is a business program whose focus is on “how to strengthen the
relationships of employee-employer in the organization”. Burberry conduct various employee
programs to retain them. Chances of employee retention and employee engagement are high,
which is good for Burberry as higher the retention and engagement of employee in the Burberry,
more the chance for employee to get to know about the organization. Employee get to know
about the vision, mission, goals, objectives, strategic plans and process and nature of the
Burberry. Now employees can make quick and correct decisions regarding organization and its
goals.
Employment legislation helps HR of Burberry in making organization policy in favour of
employees, employee’s relations and organizational goals. Employment Legislation -
1. Prohibits inequality on the basis of different characteristics like – Sex, Age, Disability,
Gender, Religion or Values, Pregnancy, Marriage or Civil Partnership.
2. Prohibits inequality Payment system.
3. Gives instructions on Health and Safety of employees.
4. Gives instructions on minimum pay to employees.
5. Gives instructions on working hours and working place etc.
Like these aspects of Employment legislation, employees are able to work in suitable
organization and helps organization to work in regulatory framework of the country. This will
lead to organization to operate business peacefully. (Brewster, Chung and Sparrow, 2016).
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TASK 2
7. HR practices in work related context
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Job Description
Job Title Human resource assistant
Reports to Human Resources Head
Roles & Responsibilities Help the HR executive to review the HR policy.
Identify the suitable candidates.
Maintain attendance of employees.
Handling grievances and conflicts.
Maintain payroll and salary.
Maintain offer letter of employees.
Help in the decision-making of HR middle and top-level
manager.
Qualification MBA in HRM/PGDM/MHRM
Bachelor in Management
Person Specification
Title of the job Human resource assistant
Date: 28/02/2019
Qualification required Essential Desirable Met
MBA in HRM
/PGDM/MHRM
CIPD Qualified
Yes
Yes
1

Need of Experience
2 YEARS AND MORE
in Same Field
Yes
Personal
characteristics &
conduct
Communication skills
Microsoft skills
Decision-Making skills
Problem Solving skills
Yes
Yes
Roles and
Responsibilities
 Help the HR
executive to
review the HR
policy.
 Identify the Yes
2

suitable
candidates.
 Maintain
attendance of
employees.
 Handling
grievances and
conflicts.
 Maintain payroll
and salary.
 Maintain offer
letter of
employees.
 Help in the
decision-making
of HR middle
and top-level
manager.
Yes
Interview Questions
Question 1 – How to stay up-to-date on employment legislation?
Question 2 – How would you deal with particular conflict employee situation?
Question 3 – What is your view on HR functions?
Question 4 – How HR is important for any organization ?
Job offer letter
Mr. John James
1221, Dickinson
London 72046
Dear Mr. John,
Burberry company is glad to offer you the position of Human Resource Assistant. Your
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qualification, experiences of 2 years in HR field and skills are an ideal fit for our human
resources department.
As we discussed, your joining date will be from 1st March 2019. The starting salary will be
£30000 per year and will be paid on the monthly basis.
Your medical and accident insurance coverage will be provided through our employee's benefits
fund. Burberry provides you vacation, personal and sick leaves.
We are looking forward to welcome you in Burberry Company Team. Please reach back in case
of any queries.
Edward Allen
HR Head
Burberry Company
Date - 23rd February 2019
(Amarakoon, Weerawardena and Verreynne, 2018)
8.Evaluating the use of technology, online resources, digital platforms and social networking on
Improving the recruitment and selection process of Burberry
There are many new ways of recruiting the candidates through using new technology or
online platforms.
Social Media & Online resources
Through social media that is using off television ads, internet, etc. for giving the ads of job
vacancy are also able to attract more competitive candidates for the job in Burberry. The online
platform is very wide and have effective uses. Since many years social tactics are most beneficial
source of recruitment for Burberry and it has capability of recruiting and attracting efficient
candidates. Using of social media for recruiting is to be used in referral source.
Through online platform it is easy for HR of Burberry to interacts with job seekers and
communicating from them by using online platform.
Video interviewing online testing etc. are the part of recruitment through online process. Online
and social media recruiting is bit faster technology than interviewing personally usage of internet
Burberry is able to put website and career pages on them these recruiting tools are effective as
Burberry is able to find more recruiters for their job specified in their official website. Through
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these sites and pages, people are able to upload their resumes and after giving interviews can
able to find or selected for the particular job. This social media has opened new path for
Burberry to recruit as more and more people are engaging in social media.
Digital platforms
Technology creates relationship between job seekers and employers through digital platform
employers are able to know about the job seekers background also or any experience they have if
mentioned on their profiles. Burberry also posting their job ads. Hence, Burberry is also using
technological tools to attract the best talent to their organisation and this complete process is also
called as social recruitment or online recruitment which is more effective and efficient
(Chelladurai and Kerwin, 2018).
CONCLUSION
From the above study, it has been summarized that Without HR, Burberry would not be
popular name. For Burberry's success, every HR function like recruitment and selection, training
and development, employee relations, performance and reward system management planned and
implemented properly. Burberry also followed employment legislation which helped them to
improve the employee relations and decision-making power. Digital technology has assisted
organisation in enhancing there growth. It has helped them in expanding market share.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Amarakoon, U., Weerawardena, J. and Verreynne, M.L., 2018. Learning capabilities, human
Bailey, C and et.al., 2018. Strategic human resource management. Oxford University Press.
Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A. eds., 2017. Policy and practice in european human resource
Brewster, C., Chung, C. and Sparrow, P., 2016. Globalizing human resource management.
Cascio, W.F ,2015. Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill.
Chelladurai, P. and Kerwin, S., 2018. Human resource management in sport and recreation.
DeCenzo, D.A,2016. Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, Binder Ready Version.
Human Kinetics. Human Resource Management.29(10). pp.1736-1766.
Noe, R.A and et.al., 2017. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
resource management innovation and competitive advantage. The International Journal of
Routledge.
Wright, P. 2018. Fundamentals of human resource management. Management.5.p.27.
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