Human Resource Management Report: Marks & Spencer Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Human Resource Management (HRM) strategies employed by Marks and Spencer, a leading retail fashion company. The report examines how HRM creates value for the firm through employee motivation, rewards, talent acquisition, and performance management. It explores the impact of regional and national cultures on HRM practices, including recruitment, training, and communication. The analysis further delves into the organization's employment model, specifically the Standard Casual Model, and its use of organizational levers to create value. A key component of the report is a comparison of HRM and personnel management using Storey's 27 points of difference as a benchmark, highlighting the distinctions between the two approaches. The report offers insights into employment laws and regulations, and offers recommendations for optimizing HRM activities to enhance organizational performance.

Human Resource
Management

INTRODUCTION
Human Resource Management is the process which is followed to control and manage
various activities and workings of human resource department and its various responsibilities to
ensure that higher outcomes are achieved successfully. Every business has different strategies
and policies to achieve expanded goals and objectives. Human Resource Manager is
responsible to frame policies and strategies to maximize the effectiveness and working standard
of everyone. It’s an integral part of various business activities like Planning, directing,
controlling, organising etc. The following report and detailed study are based on Marks and
Spencer that is a retail fashion company headquartered in London, England. Company is
specialized in Fashion including clothing, shoes, accessories etc. It was established by Michael
Marks and Thomas Spencer in year 1884 and operating all over the world with around 959
stores. It also offers food delivery services. The report includes different values created by
human resource strategies and also explains the impact of regional and national culture on
various HRM strategies, various organization models used, difference between HRM and
personnel management, difference between different international employment laws and laws
and regulations of local area and also provides suitable recommendation about HRM activities
to make sure they are most effective and optimized to achieve high organization performance.
MAIN BODY
A) Examine how value can be created to the firm by using HR strategies
Employees effectiveness is the major reason for success of every business and that
effectiveness can be brought by maintaining strong and better culture which will boost morale
and confidence of employees. Human resource manager of every organization works towards
motivating the worker so that positive attitude can be attained for worker. The primary function
of HR is to enhance better values and provide efficient training and development. Different
ways of creating values for managers of Marks and Spencer and given below:
 Providing Rewards: HR Management of Marks & Spencer works towards motivation
of its employees and first step towards this is to provide appreciation and rewards to all
the employees who worked with full efficiency based upon their performance. It can
work as a competition which will influence every employee to work hard and achieve
the desired goal and rewards by performing to full efficiency on regular basis.
 People and Performance: Every management manages and controls the activities to
control organization success rate and qualitative working by which performance level
exceeding expectation can be achieved. HR Management of Marks and Spencer
promotes through financial performance and long-term success through which
individual talent can be enhanced and developed. HR must make suitable decision to
maintain balance between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. They

provide and conduct training of their employees in such a manner that productive
working is achieved and increases rewards and compensation benefits.
 Talent retention and acquisition: It is one of the most important and key strategy for
every organization. Human resources and non-monetary valuable resources of an
organization, for success of every business it is necessary for them to retain and acquire
skilful and knowledgeable employees so that they can contribute towards success of
organization. Human Resource Management of Marks and Spencer also has to conduct
effective Interviewing, process screening, orientation, training etc. to make sure that
they attract the valuable resources from the market to work for them and also make sure
that their employees having key role in success of their business are not lost to their
competitors.
B) Analyse the impact of regional and national culture on the practice of HRM.
HRM process of Marks and Spencer is dependent on several factors such as assurance of
security to employees and workers, prominent hiring process, effective teamwork, training and
career visioned development, enhanced technology, and many others too. It is very vital to have
sufficient knowledge of relevant cultures to which individual is exposed to make sure that
ability to work satisfactorily continuously progresses. The culture is a tool to and being
promoted excellence withing working whereas on the other hand it also led to ineffective
communication process and increases level of redundancy and confusion. Under this, both
regional and national culture has direct impact on various HRM processes and the same is
explained below:
 Human Resource department of Marks & Spencer follows ethno-centrism policy of
recruitment as per which employees are hired based upon there superiority of culture
awareness as compared to others. Polycentrism under which manager is hired having
foreign culture awareness and Geo-centrism where the applicant can be from any part
globally.
 Candidate selection policy may vary from region to region, for example, Asian country
hiring process is extensive whereas hiring process in US is short. HR is mostly
interested to know the cultural aspect such as, food, family region, religion, living style,
habits etc. Along with this HR is also responsible to ensure better skills and
technicalities of individual which will be best suited to the position. Therefore, it is
critical for HR to be aware of cultural aspects of applicant.
 It is difficult for HR to prepare an appropriate training plan for all their existing
employees and new recruitments. Marks and Spencer have prepared a well-defined plan
to enable new recruitment to easily understand the working environment and norm of
organization. It’s tough to train people from different cultures and environment together.
The difference can be asserted from the fact that people in US talk from a distance of 6
inch or more whereas in most of the Asian countries people try to connect very closely.
In addition to that word chosen too are different.

C) Organisation's model of employment and organisational levers used to create values.
Employment model of organization defines the roles and function of HR manager those are to
be performed in systematic manner. The model used by Marks and Spencer is Standard Casual
Model of HRM which is defined as below:
 The Standard Casual Model of HRM: It’s a chain based effective model of HRM
which is initiated from business strategy and ends with analysing financial and
Operational performance of the organization.
This model is used by management of Marks and Spencer to manager is Human
Resources activities. Under this all the strategies and policies are evaluated and aligned together
so that standard performance can be achieved by making balanced amendments. HR is
responsible to formulate its strategy accordingly as well as alternatives in a manner that
productive changes are inducted effectively. There are different activities which are part of it
such as Training, Hiring, Compensation and Appraisal etc. to ensure enhanced quality and
strong commitment and engagement. It is a tool used to enhance both internal and external
performances affecting organizations operational performances such as productiveness,
profitability by considering financial advancement, rate of return on investment and financial
turnover of business. It generates high value to business in form of effective employee’s
performance that enhances and advances on continuous basis. There are different related
policies and strategies which are framed by HR management of Marks and Spencer for
beneficiary outcomes. These policies are published by HR management in most appropriate
manner so that it is smooth to control its practices to get better outcomes. Along with
organization individual performance too enhances which gradually led to his development in
terms of skills and knowledge. At the end of this chain of model profit performance is measured
based on financial performance and to make sure that the current model is appropriate and
suitable to organization and do appropriate changes and enhancements that are required to
improve the Human Resource management of Marks and Spencer and also profitability of the
business in the optimized manner.

D) Using Storey's 27 points of difference between HRM and personnel management as a
benchmark
HRM and personnel management are two separate terms. HRM is the major reason for
success of Marks and Spencer whose purpose is to identify and fulfil the needs of various
departments of the organization whereas personnel management is the process of managing
administrative parts like wages, salaries and other benefits. HRM policies are formulated with
need of creating effective market position and defining different activities those are used by
business to make perfect balance towards working standard of the employee. From the detailed
study it was noticed that there is kind of proper balance between HRM and personnel
management used by Marks and Spencer and it can be used as a benchmark as well. The same
is explained through below mentioned points in detail:
BASIS Personnel management HRM
Contract With context of Marks and Spencer a
detailed written contract is prepared for
the purpose of personnel management.
It gives clarity of working standards
and is followed for specific time.
HRM is responsible for continuing
activities and its responsibilities are
beyond contract and the same is
addressed within business.
Rules Personnel management is used to
define and control vitality of rules. It is
important under this that every point
and rule should be clear to all the
employees to avoid any disputes or
confusions going ahead.
Human resource management of Marks
and Spencer must evaluate all the
difference consequences of actions that
are followed in operations and moreover
it also needs an appropriate patience
level and ensure that all the required
communications are carried in effective
manner and timely.
Managemen
t task
Management of Marks and Spencer
supervises and tracks all the activities
regularly and ensure improved
implications or consequences of same
within working environment so that
sustainability is ensured.
HRM has critically analysed all it’s
policies and is quite reliable over the
skills and knowledge of its employees. It
is focused to assign its tasks to the
individual as per his capabilities and
who is more likely to provide the work
done for business in the timely and

required manner.