Human Resource Management Analysis: Harrods Department Store

This report delves into the intricacies of Human Resource Management (HRM) within Harrods, a renowned department store. It begins by outlining the fundamental functions and purposes of HRM, followed by an analysis of recruitment and selection processes, including their strengths and weaknesses. The report further explores various HRM practices, emphasizing their significance from both employer and employee perspectives, with a focus on employee relations and relevant legislation. Additionally, it provides a job specification and examples of curriculum vitae applicable to Harrods, offering a comprehensive overview of HRM strategies and their practical application within the organization. The report covers internal and external recruitment, selection methods, importance of HRM practices like providing security, selective hiring, self-managed teams, and fair compensation. It also examines employee relations, key elements of employee legislation, and illustrates the application of HRM practices. The report's conclusion summarizes the key findings and insights.

HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Activity 1.........................................................................................................................................3
1 functions and purpose of HRM................................................................................................3
2 Strength and weakness of selection and recruitment...............................................................5
Activity 2 ........................................................................................................................................7
3 Importance of different HRM practices...................................................................................7
4 Effectiveness of the HRM practices ........................................................................................8
Activity 3.......................................................................................................................................10
5 Importance of employee relation ..........................................................................................10
6 Key element of Employee Legislation and its impact on HRM decision-making.................12
7 Illustrating application of HRM Practices..............................................................................13
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................17
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................19

INTRODUCTION
Human Resource Management is the separate department which is created in every
organization formulated with the sole purpose of managing the personnel employed in company.
The HR department assist the management of the company by regulating the employees hired
and their work performance (Sparrow, Brewster and Chung, 2016). This helps them n awarding
and rewarding the employees as per their performance. This brings efficiency in the company
thus helping them in gaining an upper hand over their competitors. Harrods is a departmental
store which is situated on Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, London. The owner of Harrods is the
state of Qatar. The Harrods brand, at present includes Harrods Aviation, Harrods Buenos Aires,
Harrods estates and Air Harrods. The Harrods store has 330 departments becoming the largest
store in Europe. In this report, the different purposes and functions of HRM have been discussed
and the strengths and weaknesses of various recruitment and selection approaches have been
discussed. Further, the different HRM practices and their benefits have been discussed with
employers and employee's point of view. The importance of maintaining employee relations and
the various legislations covering them have been discussed. Lastly, this report provides a job
specification along with various examples of curriculum vitae that can be developed in Harrods
as well (Brewster, 2017).
Activity 1
1 functions and purpose of HRM
Purpose of HRM
Human resource management can be referred as the strategic approach that help the
harrods organisation to manage their employees or workforce in order to achieve the target of the
company. This approach is being done through hiring the right work force, recruiting and trained
them in order to make align them with the overall objective of the Harrods departmental store
(Pindek, Kessler and Spector, 2017). There are different purpose of human resource management
of Harrods store which are as follows:
 Internal and external recruitment for the company in order to hire the best workforce for
the Harrods.
 One of the main objective of the HRm is to

 Provide on boarding training and development program to their workforce so that they
can understand their role in the Harrods store to provide the best quality services to their
customers.
 Another one of the main function of the HRM of Harrods is to compliance the labour law
in the company, in order to protect the employee's rights in their organisation and treat
fairly with each employee.
 Create different policies for their employees to maintain the healthy relationship in the
Harrods store so that they can also make relation with their customers as well.
 They plan the career development plan for their employees to hike their career by giving
them different opportunities (Moutinho and Vargas-Sanchez, 2018).
Functions of HRM
There are different kinds of HRM function that they have to perform in the Harrods
department store, to increase the productivity with the help of their workforce (Tarique, Briscoe
and Schuler, 2015). These functions are categorized into three sections which are:
1. managerial functions
Basic management functions of the HRM of Harrods are:
Planning – In order to maintain the workforce in the Harrods HR manager prepare the plan to
hire the right work force in the organisation for this prepare the job description, identify the
source of recruitment and many more (Gatewood, Feild and Barrick, 2015).
Organizing — They organize and develop the different plans as according to the set objective
and target. Also develop the organization structure to drive the different operations of Harrods.
Directing — Another function is to direct their workforce in order to align their strategies as
according to the objective of the Harrods department store.
2. Operative Functions
Training and development — As Harrods is departmental store which have to perform number
of activities and operations like, manufacturing bran cloths, specialized gifts and inventory
management in their store etc, for this, Hr manager of Harrods conduct the training to their
workforce to enhance their skills to meet the job requirements (Brewster, Mayrhofer and
Farndale, 2018).

Compensation — Another function of the Hrm of Harrods is to give equitable and adequate
remuneration to all the employees in their organization. In this all the personal are compensated
both term monetary as well as non monetary.
Industrial relation — HRM of the Harrods establish the good relationship with the industry in
order to create the labour law, welfare, safety, grievance etc.
3. Advisory functions
Advise to top management – HR manager of Harrods store have the another function to advice
the top management about formulation and evaluation of the personnel in the organisation and
also in making the new policies and procedures.
Advise to departmental head — HR manager also advice the head of the department in
manpower planning, job analysis and design (Nankervis and et.al., 2016).
2 Strength and weakness of selection and recruitment
Recruitment:- Recruitment is the process of finding the new candidate and hire them in their
organization for their vacant job in the cost effective manner that can contribute in their all the
operations of the harrods in achieving the target.
There are two major sources in recruitment, Internal sources and external sources.
Internal recruitment is the process of hiring and fill the vacant post from within the
organisation from then existing workforce of the company. It involves promotion of the existing
employees of a company or transfer of them from one department to another.
Strengths Weaknesses
 This internal recruitment method is
easy and cheap to apply in the Harrods
departmental store by the HR managers
of the company.
 As employees of the harrods are
familiar with the company and its
policies, then it will be easy for the
management and employees to promote
them to work effectively.
 The recruitment sometimes brings in
incompetent personnel and this reduces
the efficiency of an organization. When
an employee does not meet the
requirement of competency framework
he is removed and this increases the
cost of recruitment process.
 One of the biggest disadvantage of this
internal recruitment is, it limits and
eliminate the number of skilled

applicants in the harrods company.
External recruitment are the process to hire and find the best candidate for the Harrods
company from the external resources, that involves hiring in new or fresh talent to bring
innovation in the company.
Strengths Weaknesses
 One of the main strength of the external
recruitment process is that it brings new
ideas and talent in the company that
will help to create innovative products.
 Another advantage of this external
recruitment is that, HR managers of the
company can get the large pool to
select and recruit the skilled workforce
for the harrods company (Hecklau and
et.al., 2016).
 Disadvantages of this external
recruitment is that, this is time
consuming process, it require more
time to recruit large number of pool
from the outside.
 Another disadvantage of this external
recruitment is that, it is expensive
process, as it require more capital to
promote its job, advertisement of the
job (Stone and Deadrick, 2015).
Selection :- After careful evaluation of the probable candidates, those which are found most
suitable to the job are selected at Harrods.
Strengths Weaknesses
 Selection process helps a company in
employing the best candidates out of
everyone and reviewing their
background information.
 Different selection method like
interview, helps the HR manager of the
harrods departmental store to get know
their candidates and employee
personally and create the relation with
 It is a very expensive and time-
consuming process and might mislead
the HR leading to hiring of wrong
candidate.
 Some times HR managers can also be
wrong to judge the employee and their
behaviour, who can harm the
environment of the Harrods company.

them.
Assessment test :-
Strengths Weaknesses
 These tests will help the HR managers
of the harrods store in order to find the
best candidate and their skills, like for
hire the finance manger then test will
help to find their numerical skill
(Wehrmeyer, 2017).
 These assessment tests will help to
assess and test the skills for number of
candidates at one time.
 One of the weakness is that, it is
difficult for the mangers of the Harrods
to manage number of candidates at a
time.
 This also be one of the weakness is
that, its can be expensive for the
Harrods departmental store.
Activity 2
3 Importance of different HRM practices
There are different practices of the human resource management of the harrods, they have
to perform in order to maintain the good relation with their employees and staff. This relation of
the employees and employers play a great role in achieving the target of the company to meet the
customers need. These practices are: Providing security to employees- One of the best practice that the human resource
managers of the harrods have to perform is to provide the job security to them. In this HR
managers maintain the relation with their staff and employees in order to give them
formal and informal support, by giving them money support, and by providing them
different benefits to their employees. This relation helps the Harrods management to
create the policies for their employees and giving them security. Selective hiring- This selective hiring consist the hiring for the right candidates for the
right vacant post in the Harrods departmental store. This selective and right hiring helps
the management to bring the skilled employees, they help to maintain and create the

healthy environment in the harrods store (Stewart and Brown, 2019). This relationship of
the employee and employer help the management to make change in their structure of the
job role and management style to direct and evaluate the performance of employees. Self manages and effective teams- Another function of the human resource of the
harrods company is to self managed and effective team. They consist with the people
who think differently and working toward the same and common goal of the company.
This same goals in a team create the healthy relation of the employees. And this
relationship of the employees and employer help the team to achieve the goal easily and
within a time. This relationship of employer and employers help the management to give
any task and goal, because they know that having good relation will help to accomplish
the goals easily (Brewster and et.al., 2016). Fair performance based compensation- Another Practice of the human resource
management is that to give the fair performance based compensation. This rewards and
compensation is being given on the basis of the performance of their employees of
harrods departmental store. If there is good relation between the employees and
employers of harropds company then is become easy for the management to judge and
evaluate the performance of each employee in the team. This relation also help to give
reward and compensation to their employees.
 Training and development - Training is used to identify the gap that arises between the
training that is imparted to the employees and the training that the employee actually
needed. When an employee is not trained according to the requirements of his job; the
performance is bound to get affected (Reiche and et.al., 2016). Training Need Analysis
helps harrods in identifying such gap and rectifying it through correct training procedure.
There are various types of training which can be imparted to the employees :- Induction,
Upgrading of Skills and Multi Skilling. Induction is given to new employees to
familiarize them with the organization's culture. Upgrading of skills is done when the
nature of work changes and it is necessary to upgrade the working environment with
changing trends. Multi skilling is provided to trainees so that they can operate in dynamic
environment and perform a variety of tasks at the same time.

4 Effectiveness of the HRM practices
Enrichment, job enlargement and job simplification. Here, Job simplification is related to
breakdown of the task into smaller and easier sub parts and Job rotation on the other hand is
related to shifting of an employee from one job to another one. Job enlargement involves
expansion of responsibility at horizontal level i.e. assigning more tasks at the same level and Job
enrichment involves increase in the challenges of an employees' responsibilities.
Flexibility in an Organization :- There are three types of flexibility in an organization:
Numerical, Structural and Functional Flexibility. Numerical Flexibility involves adjustment of
quantity of labour employed in the organization. Structural flexibility is related to the changes in
structural design so that other changes can be accommodated and Functional Flexibility signifies
how quickly an organization can change themselves according to the changing market conditions
and trends.
This flexible working affects the profit and productivity of their employees when
employees get the flexible working hours as according to them, where they can give time to their
family as well, this will also give the time and potential in the organization as well this will
increase the productivity of the company and this will increase the profit margin ion the market.
There a re two models for flexible organizations namely Handy and Atkinson. Handy
classified an organizational culture into four categories namely power culture, task culture, role
culture and support culture. Atkinson's model of flexibility involves division of employee's in
two groups called core group and peripheral group. Core group is full time workers and difficult
to replace whereas peripheral group involves secondary workers who are employed seasonally
and can be easily replaced. Nowadays, all the organizations including harrods provide their
employees with the option of flexible work timings where they can work according to their
convenience so that the productivity of work is not compromised with. It is beneficial for both
employees and employers as the increases in productivity increases the profit of employers and
this helps employees in increasing the pay scale.
Performance and Reward :- Performance evaluation of an employee is critical in
determining the capability of an employee and at harrods, the HRM regularly monitors
performance. They task the employees as per the expertise and this helps in improving
productivity thus increasing profits. The various methods to evaluate performance are watching
their work, using monitoring tools etc. and employees are given rewards accordingly. There are

various types of rewards including extrinsic reward and intrinsic rewards. harrods uses both the
methods of rewarding. Methods of determination include 360 degree appraisals, forced
distribution method etc.
This affect the profit and productivity of the harrods company, when employees get the
benefits, rewards on the basis of their performance, this will help the employees to get motivated
and encouragement, and they will give their best in the Harrods store in order to achieving the
target for the company. This will increase the productivity of the employees and this increased
productivity will help to fulfil the demand of the customers and profit will increase.
Learning, Training and Development Practices :- Training and development are two
different things. Training is a learning process developing skills of employees and development
is educational one where growth of employees is focused upon. Training is a process carried out
in present but is short term in duration and development is generally long term and future
oriented. This also affect the profit and productivity of the employees and company. As
employees get skilled and have clear understanding of their job role, this will help the employees
to increase their productivity in the harrods store. When employees create healthy relation with
their customers, they will attract toward the store and this will help the company to increase its
profit in the market.
Job and Workplace Design :- An effective workplace design involves proper reward
system so that employee can be motivated to work harder and increase the productivity. At
harrods the rewards given are of two types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic rewards involves
intangible rewards like praising an employee, recognition etc (Morgeson, Brannick and Levine,
2019). Extrinsic job on the other hand involves increasing pay scale, bonuses etc. Giving such
rewards to the employees increase their motivational level as the rewards encourage an
employee to work harder to achieve those target. This leads to enhancement in the productivity
level of an employee thus increasing the profits of harrods Firm. Job designing at harrods
involves Job simplification. This also affect the decision making of the HRM of the harrods
company as they have to make new job description for the different vacant post in the Harrods
organisation to attract and call the large pool of candidates in the organisation.

Activity 3
5 Importance of employee relation
Relationship between the employees and employer play the important role in the Harrods
company and affect the profit and productivity of the company and employees. Different
importance of the employee and employer relations are:
This relationship between the employers and employees play the important role as it will
help to improve the culture and environment of the harrods company. This affect the human
resource management and their decision-making process of creating the work culture and change
the strategies as according to the employees. Management get ease in their strategies as they
have the strong relation with their employees, they can easily understand their employees and
can make culture and environment according to their employees.
This employee and employer relation helps the human resource management of the
Harrods departmental store to increase the loyalty of their employees towards the organisation.
This help the human resource management of the harrods as they have trust on their employees
and staff, that they will support the management in its every decision regarding to them. This
become easy and affect the decision-making of human resource management of the company to
bring new employment law and regulations in the company.
Good and strong relationship between the employers and employees remove the conflict
situation in the Harrods departmental store. As this is the largest departmental store of Europe,
which deliver all kinds of products in their store. Which have different kind of employees for the
different activities and different background to handle foreign customers are their. This may
create the conflict situation in the organization, but if there is strong relation between employers
and employees then this conflict situation will not arise in the organisation. This help and human
resource management of harrods and affect their decision to manage their team and their task
effectively (Wilton, 2016).
If there is bad relation of the employees and employer then it also affect the decision
making of human resource management of the harrods. Because this bad relation in the
organization create the negative environment in the organization and also create the negativity in
other employees of the organization as well, they will not work effectively, and then the
productivity and profit of the company would affect. In order to make improvement in their
organizational environment and culture, human resource management of the harrods have to

make changes in their decision-making process to make create the healthy environment in the
organization, and try to make strong relation between employers and employees.
Negative relationship in the organisation between the employers and employees, affect
the productivity of the harrods departmental store. When employees do not behave respectfully
with each other then they will also affect their behaviour with the customers as well. This will
affect and decrease the profit share when productivity of their employees. This will affect the
decision making of the human resource management as to make changes in their policies as
according to improve their relationship and remove negativity from the organisation (John and
Taylor, 2016).
6 Key element of Employee Legislation and its impact on HRM decision-making.
Purpose of Employee Legislation :- To protect the employees working in an organization from
any wrong doings or misconduct at the work place, it is necessary that the laws and legislations
formulated for protecting the interest of the employees are applied throughout the organization.
The various laws formulated include discrimination law, health and safety laws, minimum wage
law etc. At Harrods, for better performance of employees and keeping them satisfied; all the
necessary laws have been made applicable and proper communication channels in case of any
grievances have been formed (Cascio, 2015). This helps the employees in obtaining justice in
case of any biasness at the work place.
Health and Safety Act — The purpose of this act is protecting employees from any contingency
in the future. This act also ensure that employees are financially secure in case any medical
emergency arises. The HR management at Harrods maintains the safety equipments to avoid any
accident at the work place. HRM also carries out proper training sessions so that employees can
be properly educated. This ensures the welfare of employees at Harrods (Chelladurai and
Kerwin, 2018).
Equality Act — This Act ensures that there is fair and just implementation of al the practices at
the workplace. This involves giving equal pay, promotional opportunities etc. This ensures that
no unequal wage distribution takes place at Harrods. The HRM ensures a fair distribution of
wages and equality is maintained at the workplace. This helps in creating a motivated workforce
personnel.
Disability Discrimination Act — This Act is applied to ensure that all the necessary facilities
and comforts are provided to the disabled workers so that the work can be managed properly