Comprehensive Analysis of Human Resource Management at Woolworths

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Human Resource Management (HRM) practices at Woolworths, a major Australian supermarket chain. It examines key aspects of Woolworths' HRM, including recruitment processes, induction programs, performance management systems, and talent management strategies. The report highlights Woolworths' commitment to employee safety, diversity, and inclusion, as well as its efforts to address employee grievances and foster a positive work environment. Furthermore, the report identifies areas for improvement, such as enhancing employee retention through competitive compensation, expanding job advertising avenues, and implementing transformational leadership. The report also emphasizes the importance of career development, employee training, and the strategic use of coaching and mentoring to enhance employee performance and organizational success. Finally, the report discusses the significance of employee feedback and its role in improving productivity and performance.

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Part 1
The human resource management is the vital aspect of the business operations of the
organization. The retail sector is the part of service industry, wherein human resources play a
critical role in the success or failure of an organization. In the service industry, the customer
satisfaction plays a critical role, which highlights the importance of the human resources of the
organization. Woolworths, one of the largest business organizations in Australia has significant
employee strength. Woolworths is a supermarket chain, which has formed duopoly in the
Australian supermarket along with Coles. It specializes in selling grocery products, magazines,
health and beauty products and stationery items. Woolworths has established a special place for
itself by creating a customer loyalty. The company has established four private labels,
Woolworths Homebrand, Woolworths Select, Woolworths Gold and Woolworths Fresh. It has
also created several loyalty schemes at different retail stores of the organization. It will enhance
the customer loyalty at the organization. Along with Australia, the company has several retail
stores in New Zealand, South East Asia and Europe.
In the current section, different practices of the human resource department of Woolworths have
been analyzed.
The recruitment and induction of the staff members: Woolworths is one of the largest retail
organizations in Australia; therefore, it relies on recruiting the best candidates so that the
organization will have the best candidates for its future endeavors. Woolworths uses online
mediums to select the participants and process their applications. Online platforms assure that the
advertisements have a wide outreach and there is transparency in the recruitment process.

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Woolworths assure that is abides by the employment guidelines of anti-discrimination and equal
employment in the organization.
The company also assures the selection of the right candidate for the job as it selects the job
candidates on the basis of merit. The HR managers also assures that they protect the personal
information of the candidates during the recruitment process.
When the selection process is complete, the new employees are provided with an induction
program in which they are given information and training so that they can operate easily within
the organization.
The company has also established a performance management system in which it will inform its
employees on the basis of the current skills, their dedication towards work and future aspirations.
The management also provides guidance so that they can address the gap in the skill. The
company assists the organization in increasing the employee participation and job satisfaction in
the organization.
The performance management team of the organization also organizes regular training so that the
employee performance can be upgraded. The talent management system of the organization
should focus on improving the employee performance through training and development. The
performance management team of the organization rewards the high performance of the
organization (Woolworths Group, 2016).
The organization also has concern regarding the safety of the employees and developed policies
to provide high degree of safety to the organization. There is concern for safety for drivers and
electricians in the organization. It has also created policies to reduce the employee turn-over in

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the organization. The architecture of the workplace is also constructed in such a manner so that
the organization abides by the laws of the workplace.
It emphasizes that the best and the most talented employees of the organization are retained
within the organization. In the similar essence, the company provides career development
opportunity to the people. The company also provides attractive offers such as discount,
retirement, healthcare plans and educational assistance through training and scholarships. The
company also offers paternity and maternity leaves to the employees so that they can equally
focus on the retention of the employees.
The company has also realized the importance of diversity and inclusion at the workplace. The
diversity dimension is associated with the planning, management and implementation of the
workforce. The company does not discriminate at the workplace due to caste, color or race. The
company acknowledges that a large number of products and services have stemmed in the
company due to the skills, perspectives and ideas of the diversified employees at the workplace.
It assures that no discrimination takes place on the basis of race or color during recruitment,
employee performance management and employee retention.
It has established several workplace health and wellbeing programs to engage the employees at
the organization. The HR department of the organization is dedicated to address the employee
grievances and create a positive environment at the workplace. The employees can immediately
access the HR managers, if they are facing any issues at the workplace. The company also
organizes different workplace activities so that the employees remain engaged with the
organization. Various facilities such as flexibility and attractive remuneration are provided so
that the employees remain dedicated to the organization (Bruce, 2016).

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The company is dedicated in creating a positive environment and handles all the issues related to
employee grievances at the priority basis. The performance management team assures that the
employees’ feels that their salary hikes and increment is justified. During the performance
review, the employees are asked to review their individual performance and give rating to them.
In this way, the employees will be more satisfied with the ratings and the performance benefits
given to them.
Part B
Although the company has established a robust and effective HR system, it can improve the HR
system by following different recommendations. The management of Woolworths can improve
its HRM practices to address the high degree of employee turnover at different stores. The
management should design competitive salary structure for the employees so that they engaged
within the organization. The compensation structure should include financial as well as non-
financial incentives for employee motivation (Paillé, Chen, Boiral & Jin, 2014). Along with the
salary, the company should also focus on the annual and performance related bonuses. Non-
financial incentives include employee recognition and promotions. The organization should plan
and design the career growth plan for each of the employee.
In order to offer competitive salaries to the employees, the company should conduct a market
analysis in which, it analyzes the salaries offered by the competitors (Albrecht, Bakker, Gruman,
Macey, & Saks, 2015). The company can design its compensation structure so that it remains
competitive and attract the best talent in the industry.
Other than that, the organization should also expand the number of avenues for advertising the
jobs of the organization. The company will increase advertising avenues so that the best

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candidates can be selected from the pool of candidates. The job description in the advertisement
should also clearly provide the job description of each position. The company can also focus on
talent management for the distribution of the talent within the organization (Deery & Jago,
2015). There has been research, which shows that the employees perform in an efficient manner,
when their skills are utilized in an appropriate manner and they are given a change to work
according to their choice.
The human resource management should also try to suggest leaders to adopt transformational
leadership so that they constantly motivate the employees of the organization. The leaders should
manage the staff members and harness the talent of the organization.
The organization should encourage team spirit so that all the employees and stakeholders of the
organization reach their goals in a collaborative manner.
The human resource department of the organization should realize that motivation can be used to
improve the performance of the employees. The human resource department should focus on
enhancing the performance of the employees (Jackson, Schuler & Jiang, 2014). It is important
for the organization to realize that the employees are not only motivated by the monetary
rewards but also non-financial rewards.
The company should coach the middle-level managers to adopt a transformational leadership
style to motivate the employees in the organization. It should adopt incentives such as lunch
coupons, parking and discounts in the retail stores. It will encourage the employees to work
harder for the organization.
The performance management system of the organization is not developed in a proper manner.
The performance management system of the organization should evaluate the performance of the

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employees annually or half-yearly so that the gaps in the existing skills of the employees can be
examined and addressed.
The talent management and the appraisal system should be well-aligned to create a better plan
for the training and development needs of the organization. The performance management team
of the organization should create specific scorecards for each department to analyze the
performance of the employees against set benchmarks (Aryee, Walumbwa, Seidu & Otaye,
2016). The human resource department of the organization should analyze the gaps in the key
skills and design the training programs to address them.
The strategic human resource management is a novel approach, which comprises managerial
activities related to the developing and maintaining qualified workforce.
Woolworths has a high attrition rate. Therefore, in order to assure long-term commitment and
loyalty of the employees, the company should emphasize planning and career development of the
individual employees. The best way to keep the employees motivated in the organization is to
transform their jobs into a career. It will assure that they remain engaged with the organization
for long-term and devote personal time to prepare opportunities for the long term. The career
planning is key human resource strategy; however, most of the managers do not devote time in
the career development of the employees as they consider that it is a waste of time and resources.
The employee career planning and development will improve the performance of the employees
at the work. Further, without career planning, the organization faces the fear that the workforce
of the organization will be underused and migrate towards other organizations. Career planning
will reduce the labor movement cost and invoke high degree of loyalty from the employees.

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The employee training is related to professional development of the employees in which the
organization invest in enhancing the performance of the employees. Here, it can be stated that
there is miniscule difference between employee training and development. The employee
training and development is developing new skills, whereas employee development is improving
existing skills. The participation in training and development means to improve the performance
of the employees and the perception of the employees towards the organization. The training and
development session improve the performance of the employees and increases their orientation
towards improving their performance to increase the added value to the company. Although
training requires financial and resource investment; however, it also increases the profit of the
company. It also assures the survival and the stability of the employees within the organization.
Woolworths can also use the Human resource strategy of coaching and mentoring within the
organization. The coaching is an interactive process through which the managers and the
supervisors enhance the capacity of the staff members through collaboration. The coaching can
be provided in three stages, technical support, personal support and individual challenge.
Coaching can improve individual performance and improve inappropriate behavior (Boon,
Eckardt, Lepak & Boselie, 2018). It can unlock the professional performance to maximize
individual behavior. The coaching is the process in which an employee can independently pursue
new goals and objectives through exploration and discovery, setting goals and implementing a
proper action plan. On the other hand, mentoring is the process of developing and employee and
makes him reliant to take future responsibilities. These activities require that there should be
efforts, involvement and interaction with the employees.

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There have been several studies examining the impact of feedback on the employee performance.
It can be concluded that if the managers give regular and genuine feedback to the employees then
they achieve better performance at the workplace.
The employee feedback provides the necessary actions, which can be used to improve the current
performance and suggest corrective actions. The employee feedback is important in enhancing
the employee productivity. The employee feedback is important for improving the employee
performance. They purpose of feedback is employee development. Further, it can be linked with
the promotions ab reward of the organization. It can be critiqued that same feedback evokes
different reactions in different employees. When the employees get negative feedback, they
might take efforts to improve their performance. However, it is only possible when they are
aware of their skills (Kehoe & Wright, 2013). When the employees do not possess appropriate
confidence level, it will demotivate them. Their reaction will be defensive and will create
conflicts with other employees.
Therefore, it is important to evaluate the personality of the employees before giving them
feedback. Furthermore, different managers also find it difficult to give negative feedback to the
employees; as a result, they try to avoid negative feedback to the employees (Chen & Huang,
2009). However, this action is not advisable as the employees might not be aware of their
personal weaknesses and their consequences, which can negatively impact the performance of
the employees.
The manager should have the skills to communicate negative news to the employees. Further, the
employees with different education level are motivated by different factors. The employees with

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low level of education give priority to financial benefits, whereas the employees with high level
of education emphasize career development and progression.

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References
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approach. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 2(1), 7-35.
Aryee, S., Walumbwa, F. O., Seidu, E. Y. and Otaye, L. E. 2016. Developing and leveraging
human capital resource to promote service quality: Testing a theory of performance. Journal of
management, 42(2), 480-499.
Boon, C., Eckardt, R., Lepak, D. P., and Boselie, P. 2018. Integrating strategic human capital and
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Bruce, V. 2016. Restructuring challenge on the cards for Woolworths HR. HRD Australia.
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Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S. and Jiang, K. 2014. An aspirational framework for strategic human
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