Human Resource Management Report: Tesco UK and China

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices, focusing on the case of Tesco in the United Kingdom and China. It examines the impact of labor market trends, including tight and loose market conditions, and the roles of government bodies and trade unions in shaping the workforce. The report delves into workforce planning principles, recruitment and selection processes, career development plans, and strategies for downsizing and employee retention. It also explores legal requirements, the strengths and weaknesses of different recruitment methods, and the costs associated with employee turnover. Furthermore, the report discusses the application of PESTLE and SWOT analyses in workforce planning, offering insights into Tesco's approach to HRM in a global context. The report concludes with an overview of the key findings and recommendations for effective HRM strategies within the organization.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Human resource management
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................................3
Question 1..................................................................................................................................................3
Question 2..................................................................................................................................................5
Question 3..................................................................................................................................................7
Main principles of effective workforce planning.........................................................................7
Question 4................................................................................................................................................10
A basic succession and career development plan......................................................................10
Providing evidence to show my contribution to plans for downsizing an organisation............11
Providing evidence to show my contribution to the development of job descriptions, person
specifications and competency frameworks..............................................................................12
Question 5................................................................................................................................................12
Legal requirements.....................................................................................................................13
Strengths and weaknesses of two recruitment methods.............................................................14
Question 6................................................................................................................................................15
Costs associated with the dysfunctional employee turnover.....................................................15
Strengths and weaknesses of retention approaches....................................................................16
Question 7................................................................................................................................................16
Conclusion...............................................................................................................................................17
References...............................................................................................................................................19

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Introduction
The report is prepared to focus on the different aspects of human resource management
considering the business organization Tesco in United Kingdom. The topic will discuss about the
major labor market trends and its importance in planning for an effective workforce. It will show
how the company can position itself in the different labor markets and even the importance of
tight and loose labor market conditions. The roles played by the Government bodies and impact
of trade unions on improving the skills required to create a sustainable workforce in the future
will be discussed here as well. There will also be discussions related to the planning of
recruitment and selection processes, which can further assist in the career development plans.
Tesco operates not only in United Kingdom but also in Poland, China, Hungary, Ireland, etc. The
plans for downsizing the organization will be illustrated here as well along with the most
effective legal requirements that will be considered while managing the processes of recruitment
and selection at Tesco, United Kingdom (Tesco.com 2018).
Question 1
Tesco operates in United Kingdom and China where the labor market trends change from
time to time. Thus, it is important for the organization to adapt to the labor market conditions and
ensure that those and dealt strategically to remain competitive within the business environment.
From the recent labor market trends, it could be understood that the number of employees had
increased, though the unemployment rate also seemed to get higher with time. The rate of
employment is higher while the numbers of unemployed people reached nearly up to 1.5 million.
The earnings made on a weekly basis considering the rate of inflation dropped as well in United
Kingdom (Alfes et al. 2013).

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The tight labor market conditions mean economic exchange where the workers of the
organization want jobs and the employers want skilled and knowledgeable employees to become
a part of the workforce. The tight labor market shows that there is availability of more jobs than
the actual numbers of workers that are needed. It is because most of the candidates are unable to
fulfill their roles and responsibilities properly, because of which, many of the jobs are left out in
spite of the availability. On the other hand, the loose labor market means the employer’s market
where there is abundant supply of skilled and potential employees who can be hired for fulfilling
their roles and responsibilities (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). Due to scarcity of job sometimes
because of the loose labor market conditions, multiple candidates compete against each other to
work for the same position.
On the other hand, the labor market in China has reached a level where the growth has
increased and it has resulted in labor outstripping supply, furthermore resulted in the increase of
wages. The country has lost the ability to access elastic supply of labor at a specific wage,
because of which, the workers are paid higher wages so that they remain committed to the
organizations. The employment rate has increased as well for the private and self-employment
sectors due to which, the wages sometimes may be reduced along with improper working
conditions. The bargaining power is lower for the migrant workers, because of which, the
average monthly wages are recorded as RMB 6045 at 2016 and RMB 3569. The wages have
risen though there is significant gap between the wages provided at the SOE sectors and private
enterprise sectors (Boston and O'Grady 2015).
Labor management and labor market conditions are involved in the ways Tesco has
positioned itself within the retail supermarket chains. The employers within the organization at
China have favored the foreign employees. To intervene with this kind of situation and manage

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properly, Tesco has made certain decisions regarding the employment and immigration to assure
the workers about a safe and healthy environment who believed that the terms and conditions of
their job roles are under threats. The new centre at China is quite large and has employed a huge
number of employees, though there have been allegations by staffs regarding their lack of
interest in working at the previous centre. The workers were told that they could move to the new
location if they could agree about cutting a particular portion of their wages (Buller and McEvoy
2012). Due to the change in labor market conditions, Tesco UK has implemented applicant
attraction strategies to gain competitive advantage within the labor market. By gaining
competitive advantage, Tesco would be able to gain relevant skills to attract candidates with
ease. Tesco, UK could conduct market analysis to understand the needs of clients and make sure
that those were linked with the attraction of skilled workers. Labor management in a proper way
would improve the performance of the company and allow the workers to perform to their
potential, furthermore achieve the desired levels of profit with ease and effectiveness (Carson et
al. 2012).
Question 2
To develop a highly productive workforce, it would be important to involve the trade
unions for facilitating the processes of learning and training and furthermore promote the skills,
knowledge and expertise of employees. The poor production level at United Kingdom had made
the supermarket chains suffer and due to this, innovation and skills should be promoted through
learning and development sessions. There is need of improving the employability skills and
make sure that the candidates who will be selected as part of the organization do possess relevant

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skills and can achieve the minimum standards in terms of their qualification and knowledge 9
Greiner 2015).
The Trade Unions’ involvement has played a major role in enhancing the efficiency of
the organization by making the employees gain the ability to access training sessions and
developmental scopes to survive in the competitive business environment. The trade unions have
created a positive impact on the training programs delivered to the employees, which has further
strengthened in the recent years. At Tesco, the unions are actively involved with the promotion
of learning skills and developmental opportunities, which has strengthened the relationships
between the workers and employers. It has also helped in negotiating with the employers to
enable better training provision and created convenience for the employees of Tesco to improve
their knowledge abilities, skills and expertise level (Hancock et al. 2013).
To apply new skills in the workplace, investments and funding should be made and here
the Government should play a vital role. It is seen that Government spending have helped the
supermarket chain in UK to provide better training opportunities and even made them skilled
enough to meet the criteria of success and ensure maintaining the organizational standards too.
By making significant investments, Tesco could allow lifelong learning programs for the
employees as well as ensure that the skills development system could deliver both quantity and
quality. The development of future skills should be possible for the employees and this holistic
approach would provide benefits like better accessibility to basic education, increase of cognitive
skills, better communication process, problem solving abilities and enhancement in learning
abilities too (Hausknecht and Holwerda 2013).

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Based on the labor market information, the employers of Tesco should generate and
disperse necessary data and information to the employees about the need for present and future
skills. The employers must fulfill their roles and responsibilities, according to the Public
Employment services, provide career guidance, vocational training and counseling sessions, and
create better scopes for them to access the job matching services with ease. The employers also
do hold the responsibilities to maintaining relevance and quality of the training sessions. This
would further improve the employability of the employees at Tesco and reduce the shortage of
labor through promoting of good working conditions for them as well (Hillman and Orians
2013). The employers could empower the future workforce by setting up skills and knowledge,
furthermore check the skills gaps to understand how to improve the performances of the workers
in the future. The employers also adapt the talent management strategies for developing a
sustainable workforce and meet the future skills required to make Tesco achieve competitive
edge over its competitors in business (Hom et al. 2012).
Question 3
Main principles of effective workforce planning
Workforce planning is necessary to take into account for keeping the employees at the
right track at right time with necessary skill towards fulfilling organisational business mission,
vision and objectives on daily basis. Effective workforce planning is required for fulfilling two
critical needs of an organisation. First is to ensure the alignment of employee performance of an
organisation with its recent and emerging mission and programmatic objective. The second need
is to develop feasible and long term strategies in terms of accomplishing programmatic

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objectives, development and staff retention. As opined by (Cascio, 2018), effective workforce
planning has five key principles which are noted and illustrated below.
● Human resource management of an organisation requires to ensure the engagement of top
organisational hierarchy, employees and other stakeholders in promoting, communicating
and implementing the strategic workforce planning (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). It is
important to ensure integrity of performance within an organisation. On the other hand,
for the constant growth and development of an organisation it is necessary to have a good
bonding between management and staffs. In addition, these principlesare reliable and
reasonable in terms of high engagement of the employees. In order to develop a
cooperative work environment this principles of strategic workforce planning are
necessary to take into account (Holmes and Stubbe, 2015). These principles are important
in terms of developing performance of the employees.
● For developing an effective workforce planning it is essential to determine the required
skills and competencies in terms of achieving recent and future goals. It is the basic to
grow concern among the employees towards fulfilment of organisational mission, vision
and objectives. On the other hand, in an organization it is necessary to ensure that work is
executed in a similar way by all the employees. Training and development programme is
necessary to take into consideration in this reference in better employee performance.
The main purpose of this principle is to set a strategic direction in representing work.
● Effective workforce planning requires addressing gaps in figure, continuation, and
alignment of human resource approaches in terms of enabling and sustaining the
contributions of all critical skills and competencies. The motive of this principle is to

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ensure quality in organisational performance. Hence, it is important to analyse workforce
gap positively.
● It is essential to fix a standard of eligibility criteria to address administrative, educational
and other requirements, which are reliable in terms of supporting strategic workforce
planning. These principles aim to review the human resource strategies in terms of
ensuring all the employees within organisation are able to perform work with required
skilled and proficiency (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang 2014).
● Strategic workforce planning needs to be able to detect if employee performance cannot
meet requirements. Therefore, it requires to monitor and evaluate organisational
development toward its human capital goals and the contribution that human capital puts
in terms of fulfilling programmatic objectives. It is important principles in the context of
fulfilling workforce gaps.

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Figure: Principles of Effective Workforce Planning
(Source: Cascio, 2018)
Two important tools for making effective workforce planning is PESTLE and SWOT
analysis. Scanning micro and macro environment helps to understand the critical areas of
organisational success as well as organisational risks. This understanding enables to develop a
focused workforce plan (Jiang et al. 2012).
Question 4
A basic succession and career development plan
Succession planning is such a process by which an organisation prepared their employees
in order to lead any roles within an organisation. Succession planning is critical human resource
strategy to stay prepared for an alternative option of a leading figure within an organisation. If
any vital employee figure gets sick, fired, retired, die or take resign, an organisation needs to fill
the vacancy urgently so that it cannot leave any impact on organisational production (Rothwell et
al. 2015). Often an organisation overlooks this process. However, succession planning is
necessary to take into account in the context of established organisational design. In this process,
human resource personnel ensure constant development of employee performance for their
career advancement within an organisation. In this process employees are led to execute versatile
roles within an organisation. In this process it is ensured that an organisation never keep a key
role open for such an employee who is not prepared in handling the role. Important aspects of
succession planning are followed below.

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● It requires to make a list of promising employees for leadership roles (Kim, Eisenberger
and Baik, 2016).
● It is necessary to stay always alert to look for the people who have potentialities in
executing commanding role.
● Every employees needs to have a clear vision about their career development plan within
an organisation (Gaudet and Tremblay, 2017).
● It is reliable to offer daily feedback to proteges.
● Providing training to the peak performers is also necessary in this reference (Church et al.
2016).
● In a lean season, an organisation needs to lead their employees to go between challenging
roles so that it can be perceived how much they are efficient to execute a bigger role.
● Internal hire of potential employees is reliable for filling higher positions within
organisation (Ward, 2016).
Providing evidence to show my contribution to plans for downsizing an organisation
Downsizing plan has deep significance for overall growth of an organisation. Every
individual manager has to pay equal contribution to execute downsizing plan effectively. One of
the premium motives of downsizing initiatives is to achieve cost reduction goals. If downsizing
plan cannot be executed properly, it may leave a negative impact on the engagement and morale
power of employees. It is because, in order to make downsizing plan successful, it often requires
to eliminate employees from organisation (Marasi and Bennett, 2016). It is needed when it is
found that employees are not efficient in representing organisational workforce in any way. As a
manager, I need to take always pay attention in energising employees for performance. In the
workplace of Tesco, there are a larger number of employees. In order to build their morale power

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as a manager I need to treat them in a way so that an employee feels emotionally and
economically secure with the job. On the other hand, as a manager always stay proactive for
personal and technical development of employees in a team (Kim, Eisenberger and Baik, 2016).
Downsizing plan can help an organisation in many ways. Cost efficient production is one of the
best result of downsizing plan. Work efficiency and confidence of the staffs are considered as the
good evidence of downsizing plan. Downsizing plan is reliable to ensure constant growth of
organisations like Tesco. Downsizing plan is well executed in Tesco. It is because their
employees are found confident, cooperated and technically efficient in representing versatile
roles within organisation (Kehoe and Wright 2013).
Providing evidence to show my contribution to the development of job descriptions, person
specifications and competency frameworks
Job description and person specification is highly significant in order to draw attention of
the right people regarding employment. A job description defines overall purpose of a role and
the main responsibilities to be executed. A person specification clearly spells about the eligibility
criteria for having employment within an organisation (Ward, 2016). However, competency
framework is an overall framework to define individual roles, responsibilities, terms and
conditions in representing workforce and maintaining organisational behaviour. In Tesco every
job description is executed by talented employees and organisational behaviour is well
maintained (Kroft, Lange and Notowidigdo 2013). These are the evidences that human resource
managers in Tesco giving right contribution to the development of job description, person
specifications and competency framework.
Question 5