Comprehensive Report: HRM Issues and Recommendations for Woolworths

This report examines the human resource management (HRM) issues at Woolworths, a case study based on the company Transurban, focusing on staff turnover, discrimination, equality in opportunities, performance reviews, and staff health issues. The report investigates communication gaps between management and employees, diversity and inclusion problems, and the need to harness the potential of the indigenous workforce. It provides recommendations such as improving communication through technological aids and addressing diversity issues by identifying core competencies without discrimination. The report also includes a detailed questionnaire used for research and analysis, offering insights into the challenges and proposing solutions to improve HRM practices within the company. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the issues and offers practical recommendations for improvement.

Running head: HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note

1HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
Executive Summary
The respective paper is a report which deals with the issues and problems faced by the human
resource management department of the country, such as staff turnover, discrimination, equality
in opportunities, performance review and staff health issues which have been brought out by me
with the help of the questionnaire I have formed in order to carry out the research or
investigation in the company Transurban. The respective report provides the detailed
questionnaire as well as the issues are introspected, analyzed and interpreted with the usage of
various approaches and respective desirable solutions and recommendations are provided at the
end of the report respectively.

2HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Discussion....................................................................................................................................................3
Background of the company....................................................................................................................3
Human Resource Management Issues....................................................................................................4
Recommendations.......................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
Questionnaire for the research.................................................................................................................10
Appendix...................................................................................................................................................19

3HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
Introduction
The respective paper is a report on human resource management issues faced by the Australian
small and medium sized company Transurban. The small and medium sized enterprises of
Australia now contribute to almost about 57% of the GDP of Australia (Hillary, 2017). In terms
of the strategy of growth and development, the small and the medium sized enterprises have
planned to launch new products and services in order to grow their operations and functions. In
general, organizations such as Transurban is colossal, therefore, the management practices of the
company is also wider, multidimensional as well as multifaceted. The human resource
management practices, which are considered to be one of the most important parts of the
respective company, have also faced certain issues and problems. The respective paper is a report
which deals with the issues and problems faced by the human resource management department
of the country, such as staff turnover, discrimination, equality in opportunities, performance
review and staff health issues which have been brought out by me with the help of the
questionnaire I have formed in order to carry out the research or investigation in the company.
The respective report provides the detailed questionnaire as well as the issues are introspected,
analyzed and interpreted with the usage of various approaches and respective desirable solutions
and recommendations are provided at the end of the report respectively.
Discussion
Background of the company
Transurban is a road operator company which performs the duty of managing and developing
urban toll road networks in Australia and North America. The respective company is an

4HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
Australia based company which was founded in the year 1996 and was listed on the Australian
Securities Exchange (ASX). The company has its headquarters in Melbourne and also operates
with its branches in the United States. In Melbourne, Transurban is the owner of CityLink, which
provides a connection of three cities of Australia into one channel or toll road and has six toll
ways in Brisbane. The number of employees the company employs are 1500 in number and it is
also considered to be one of the prolific small and medium enterprises of Australia
(Transurban.com., 2019).
Human Resource Management Issues
The most pressing problem the human resource management is facing in the respective company
Transurban are provided hereafter.
The most important and significant issue which Transurban faces is that work culture in
Trnasurban company has been problematic and there has been a huge communication as well as
position gap between senior management and delivery staff. There have been complaints of
unnecessary long hours of work, unrealistic expectations and no support from management. Such
issue has resulted in a slowing growth of Transurban company. There are numerous causes of
faulty human resource management in a company which escalates to slow growth of the
company (Transurban.com., 2019).
The company seemed to be having an efficient and a strong management, however, certain areas
of the human resource management has been faulty and with follies which has led to the
problems and dissatisfaction among the workers and employees of the organization. One of the
main reasons that are considered to be basic reasons for the dissatisfaction among the employees

5HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
is the communication gap between the upper level management and the employees. No matter
how trivial or significant the job or the employee is, a company or an organization should always
keep in mind to provide the employees of the organization with a smooth flow of work. Internal
communication and the real time feedback are one of the most important parts of the human
resource management practice which is needed for the growth and development of the company.
In today’s world, the business is growing faster and the competition in the business arena is also
turning savage and hostile. In such situation, the employees are in a dire need to communicate
with each other intelligently and efficiently in order to survive and thrive. A failure in real time
feedback and a proper collaborative communication within the company might prove to be fatal
for the company. Such actions may result in a drop-down of productivity among the employees
with decrease in the rate of engagement involved in a team-based projects or tasks which are
allocated to the respective employees by the managers (Varma & Budhwar 2013).
The second most important drawback that the company Transurban might be facing is that of the
diversity and inclusion issues (Ivars & Martínez, 2015). The Transurban company has been
known to be one of the most famous as well as well operating and well functioning small and
medium sized enterprises of Australia. However, the peculiarity which is found among the
management of the respective company is that the company has been struggling in placing the
venue of its functional offices, where the company has only focused on the metropolitan areas
for situating their offices and functional divisions. The trend of such action is nothing new. The
small and medium sized enterprises of Australia have the trend of setting their offices and
organizations at the metropolis or the centered cities of the country because of certain obvious,
primary, secondary as well as tertiary reasons. The primary reasons that are responsible for the
company to set its offices in metropolitan area are the synergizing capabilities of local firms, the

6HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
labor extensive markets which are absolutely hard to receive in the suburban as well as the
village areas of Australia, the unprecedented growth and development of the cities of Australia in
terms of financial, economical, political and social paradigm, the economies of scale that the
company can arrange for with the possibilities of facilities such as railways, airports, proper and
the most advanced transport and conveyance systems, the facilities of advanced and the most
optimized banking system, information technology systems and other opportunities. However,
the human resource development team of the company has been forgetting the fact that the
villages of Australia have a number of opportunities in terms of human resource as well (Ivars &
Martínez, 2015). For instance, the villages of Australia have a big working force which are
unskilled but can be provided with proper training and education to build them up into proper
and professional employees. The villages of Australia, including the Torres Strait Island are
specifically inhabited by the islanders who are the aboriginal population of Australia. The
aboriginal population of Australia is a pool of talent which is in a dire need to be harnessed (Teo,
Reed & Ly, 2014). The aboriginal Australian population is diverse and differentially talented
with varieties of capabilities and capacities among them. However, the only factor which is
lacking is that they do not have a proper platform or panel to showcase their talent. Therefore,
their talents remain unnoticed. The indigenous communities of Australia are open for business,
however, the human resource management department of the company has not properly located
or optimized their talents up to the brim. The company needs to respect the culture and history of
the aboriginals of Australia and also engage them into the workforce in not just tertiary or
secondary sectors of the company, but also to the primary sectors of the company as well. The
company has not built proper career strategies as well as job development schemes or programs
for the indigenous population of the country which shows the lack of in depth thought process of

7HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
the human resource managers of the company. The indigenous population of Australia who have
different vision towards the world with different values and diversified philosophy might prove
to be beneficial to the company. Such talents and caliber of the aboriginals have not been
acknowledged by the company throughout its hr operations (Jackson, Schuler & Jiang, 2014).
Recommendations
The human resource management should make effort to improve communication between the
management and the employees which would provide the company with the consequences
enumerated hereafter.
1. Improved trust and employee engagement: In a global workplace full of
efficient employees, being open to any kind of communal or project related
communication among team members or collaborators is an effective way to build trust
and special bond between each other. This is also an essential attribute to establish and
maintain employee engagement. An increasing magnitude of small as well as large
companies are taking up the respective style of communication to remove any kind of
awkwardness/ distress/ discomfort between the management as well as the employees.
Such communication sees to it that the employees as well as the staff from different
department get a more relaxed, pressure free as well as stress free environment. Such
stress free work environment might help the company grow and develop itself and at the
same time, meet its business goals globally and locally (Noe et al., 2017).
2. Technological aid: The human resource development team of the company can introduce
new kinds and varieties of technological equipments in order to make the communication
gap between the upper level management and the employees diminish and finally

8HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
disappear. The company can equip a well connected information technology panel which
would be utilized by the human resource managers and professionals in order to grab the
attention of the employees in a more unique as well as dynamic way. The most important
factors which the human resource professionals should take into consideration is to create
opportunities for positive shared experiences, to keep people informed, to recognize
accomplishments and to engage employees. The equipments such as video conferencing
tools, employee self help tools, employee performance grievances tools should be
implemented by the human resource management team of the company in order to tackle
the communication gap between the employees and the department (Cascio 2015).
The company can harness the indigenous talents with the help of the following steps which are
provided hereafter.
1. Identification of core competency without discrimination: The discrimination of the
indigenous population in the corporate environment of Australia is not new. It has been
happening since the industrial revolution in the country. However, the company has to
come out of the obnoxious practice of racial prejudice prevalent in Australian corporate
sector. The company would be able to harness the best talent among the indigenous
talents with the help of eminent recruiters and career counselors who would be able to
identify the right individual for the right job or designation among the diversified
indigenous groups (Sparrow, Brewster & Chung, 2016). With the help of the most
efficient and effective tools of candidate analysis and capability management, the
company would be able to identify, realize and recruit the talented individuals among the
indigenous population. The tools and components of talent management, such as strategic
employee planning, outsourcing, talent acquisition and retention with the help of eminent

9HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
industrial psychologists would help the human resource development officers to
understand the psycho-social statics and dynamics of the indigenous population and they
would be able to penetrate in their capabilities in a better way than that of the other
corporate sectors (Susomrith & Brown, 2013).
Conclusion
The respective paper concludes to be a report which deals with the issues and problems faced by
the human resource management department of the country, such as staff turnover,
discrimination, equality in opportunities, performance review and staff health issues which have
been brought out by me with the help of the questionnaire I have formed in order to carry out the
research or investigation in the company named Transurban, which is an Australia based SME
company. The respective report provides the detailed questionnaire as well as the issues are
introspected, analyzed and interpreted with the usage of various approaches and respective
desirable solutions and recommendations are provided at the end of the report respectively.

10HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
References:
Cascio, W. F. (2015). Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill.
Hillary, R. (2017). Small and medium-sized enterprises and the environment: business
imperatives. Routledge.
Ivars, J. V. P., & Martínez, J. M. C. (2015). The effect of high performance work systems on
small and medium size enterprises. Journal of Business Research, 68(7), 1463-1465.
Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S., & Jiang, K. (2014). An aspirational framework for strategic human
resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 1-56.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource
management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Education.
Sparrow, P., Brewster, C., & Chung, C. (2016). Globalizing human resource management.
Routledge.
Susomrith, P., & Brown, A. (2013). Motivations for HR outsourcing in Australia. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(4), 704-720.
Teo, S. T., Reed, K. K., & Ly, K. (2014). Human resource involvement in developing intellectual
capital. The Service industries journal, 34(15), 1219-1233.
Transurban.com.,(2019). Available at: https://www.transurban.com/
Varma, A., & Budhwar, P. S. (2013). Managing human resources in Asia-Pacific. Routledge.

11HRM ISSUES: WOOLWORTHS
Appendices
Appendix 1