Human Resource Management Practices at Kingfisher Plc.

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes Kingfisher's HRM.

HUMAN
RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................ 4
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................ 9
TASK 3.......................................................................................................................................... 12
TASK 4.......................................................................................................................................... 16
EVALUATION AREA...................................................................................................................... 21
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................... 22
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................23
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INTRODUCTION
This assignment is focused on human resource management in an organisation where the
functions and purpose of human resource management, strengths and weakness of different
approaches of selection and recruitment, benefits of HRM practices are to be explained.
Introduction to employee relations and employment laws at the workplace is also to be
discussed in this assignment.
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TASK 1
LO1
P1 PURPOSE AND FUNCTIONS OF HRM
Kingfisher Plc. is a multinational home improvement company based in London it is in three
core sectors – DIY, electrical and general medicines. It is present in 10 countries and has 1331
stores around Europe, Turkey and Russia. The yearly sale of Kingfisher is £11.7 billion with six
million customers worldwide. The brands of kingfisher include comet, Superdrug, castorama,
darty, B&Q, screw fix and Brico Depot.
Functions and purpose of HRM
Functions of HRM
1. Planning- Planning involves identifying the workforce required to achieve the future
goals of the organisation. Kingfisher is planning to open its new drug store so what will
be the requirement there, like the minimum 10 working staff, manager of the store etc.
so for that, the new employees are to be appointed and in what quantity is to be
planned in advance (Obeidat, 2012).
2. Organising- The employees need to be managed, each employee needs to be provided
with the responsibilities and tasks that need to fulfil, these employees need to be
provided with all the resource they need to achieve the goal , all the employees are to
be arranged and grouped in different teams according to their jobs is by the human
resource manager (Obeidat, 2012).
3. Recruiting and staffing- the requirement of new employees can be filled through
inviting the applicants to apply for the job this is called recruitment function and to
select the best and right candidate according to skills and qualification for the profile is
called selection, like in Kingfisher communication skills are the basic and most important
criteria for selection of employees (Obeidat, 2012).
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4. Controlling – the next function is to evaluate the performance of these employees and
match them with the set standard goal of each employee’s performance. Controlling
their work, targets and their behaviour at the workplace is the responsibility of HRM
(Obeidat, 2012).
5. Rewarding – rewarding means to appreciate the employees on their great work done
throughout the month or year to achieve the organisational goal. Either through cash
payment or through bonus or through incrementing or promotion or just by
appreciating through award in front of all employees (Obeidat, 2012).
Purpose of HRM
The purpose of human resource management is to organise the workforce or human resource
so that they together can achieve the organisational goal. The aim is to manage the workforce,
recruit and retain them so as to maintain the low employee turnover ratio of the organisation
to minimise the cost. The HRM has the aim to motivate the employees, engage their trust and
commitment to Kingfisher in order to achieve high productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in
their work. To prevail ethical working environment in the organisation, the HRM includes
formulation of the rules and policies of the organisation like code of conduct of employees and
employer, working hours, leave policies, overtime allowances, nightshift allowances, basic
salaries of each profile, promotion criteria, increment time schedules, safety rules etc. and after
formulation ensure the proper applicability and follow up on these policies, government rules
and laws by each employee is mandatory(Armstrong and Taylor, 2014). Kingfisher has 75000
employees or colleagues working around the world so manage these many people are the
purpose of kingfishers HRM team.
P2 WEAKNESS AND STRENGTHS OF APPROACHES OF RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
Recruitment means getting the applications of qualified and skilled candidates who can
become an employee of the company at a particular job profile. This can be done through
various sources that include internal and external sources (Lievens and Chapman, 2010).
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Selection involves choosing the right candidate for the right job for the organisation from all the
other candidates. The selection is dependent on the skills and qualification requirement of the
profile, based on these the selection criterion is decided (Lievens and Chapman, 2010).
Approaches to recruitment
Online /website- Here at Kingfisher the recruitment is done by through online portals or
websites of the company, this is very effective and approachable way to attract the applicants.
There is also a medium of social media applications like indeed, LinkedIn etc.
Strengths
 Online way is very much economical way of recruitment, as compared to recruitment
through agencies. This is also a one-time investment where once the website is made
then no need to make big investment regularly.
 Quick response is made by the applicants as the trend is many people are online these
days searching for jobs and time-saving method
 High recruitment applications are received; people from worldwide can apply for the job
vacancy at kingfisher no need to be in kingfisher’s office.
 Like the profile, CV can be seen online, if the qualifications, skills are matched and
shortlisted then only the candidate needs to be called for the interview. It saves the
time of both kingfisher’s HR and candidate.
Weakness
 The profiles and the qualification may be fake as specified online.
 Many good candidates may not be available online; they may be in need of the job but
are ignored.
 It can stress out the HR team to shortlist the good resumes from a large pile of resumes.
AGENCIES – Here kingfisher does recruitment through outsourcing to the agencies that provide
the company with applicants that are qualified, fit for the assigned role and ready to get a job at
Kingfisher.
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Strengths
 This process of recruitment saves the time of the HR department as they don’t have to
browse all the resumes to select the qualified fit for the job.
 These agencies are a mediator to both the job seeker and the job provider; they take
feedback from both the parties so to ensure credibility for both candidates and
kingfisher.
 These agencies are experts in getting candidates for recruitment; they use their contacts
they recruit people for the company and recruit for different roles and profile vacancies.
Weakness
 These agencies may to not be able to handle the qualification or specific skill concerns
specified by the company.
 These companies may hide some of the details of the candidate to keep the candidate
and the company both in the same loop. Like for example the candidate
 The cost of recruitment agencies is way more costly than online recruitment or other
approaches to recruitment.
SELECTION APPROACHES
Interview- Here in kingfisher the criteria or the method of selection is through face to face
communications of the candidate and the interviewer. There may be a panel of interviewers or
one by one interview process. Like in kingfisher a panel of 2 or 3 company’s experienced
superiors HR and technical supervisor conducts the interview.
Strengths
 Very much effective and most used method that helps in analysing the communication
skills, knowledge and character of the candidate in a very short period of time.
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 Unlike a test, there is no possibility of cheating and lying about the knowledge of the
candidate.
 Every candidate's background and decision-making capacity is easily identified in the
interview.
Weakness
 Time-consuming as there are many candidates and each candidate takes a minimum of
1 hour for the interview.
 The interview can be biased sometimes at the time of asking questions, as the question
in every interview is different
 As this is a very lengthy process the interview many times may not listen to the last few
candidates
TESTS- These tests include an aptitude test, quantitative skill-based test through written or
objective questions.
Strengths
 Kingfisher uses these types of tests to assess the knowledge of the candidate specially
required for e-commerce profile vacancies at Kingfisher.
 This approach is less costly and less time consuming then interview
 This approach is not tiring and lengthy as an interview because the HR need not to
specially take a test of each candidate, all the candidates can be provided for the test at
the same time or may apply online.
Weakness
 This approach may involve cheating in the candidates.
 There is no way to analyse the communication skills, or decision-making skills and
character judgement of the candidate.
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 The candidate may be good at practical know-how and may have more practical
knowledge than others but less theoretical knowledge so this talent can be loosed by
the kingfisher through this selection approach.
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TASK 2
LO2
P3 BENEFITS OF HRM PRACTICES FOR BOTH EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE AT KINGFISHER
Benefits for employer
Job and workplace design -Smooth functioning within the employees at the workplace; they
learn to follow the rules, policies of the organisation. The employees are bound to follow the
rules of the organisation hence there are fewer chances of conflicts, disputes defaults at
Kingfisher.
Training and development-Through proper training and orientation the employees perform
better and training develops their skills that result in higher efficiency in the work and reduces
the chances of errors and mistakes at the workplace. An employee can have two types of
training one is on the job training and other is off the job training, on the job training is being
provided in most of the kingfisher’s brands this includes training the employee during his work
and off the job training includes. This ultimately contributes to the reduction of wastage and
reduction of cost increasing the profit margin of the kingfisher. Training not only initiates
creativity and innovative ideas within the employees, hence the ideas are the first step that will
help company gaining a competitive advantage of its innovation by creating differentiation and
adding up to the brand image of kingfisher (Salas et al., 2012).
BENEFIT FOR THE EMPLOYEE
Rewarding - HRM practices like reward on performance is the best motivator for the employee,
the employee gets the satisfaction of being rewarded, recognised and appreciated by Kingfisher
and the employer. Rewarding is the direct motivator for employees, it can be through intrinsic
rewarding and through extrinsic rewarding. Intrinsic rewarding means individual own
motivation which includes personal achievement, pleasure, personal growth and the extrinsic
rewards includes monetary perks, bonus, incentive to achieve targets etc. these both rewards
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are equally important for the employee which are achieved through these HRM practices
(Zwikael and Unger-Aviram, 2010).
Training and development- Through training and development, the employee not only
develops for the kingfisher’s productivity but also there is the also personal development of the
employee. Through training his skills are developed, his experience is enhanced that will help
the employee in future job opportunities. Training provides employee knowledge about the job
profile and field he is about to work but also the employee explores the other areas of work in
the organisation that he can pursue and if he likes he can shift his area to the different job role.
Through training, he can evolve his key interest in the workplace (Salas et al., 2012).
P4 BENEFIT OF DIFFERENT HRM PRACTICES IN INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY OF KINGFISHER
The measurement and evaluation of employee’s monthly performance are the reason to
enhance the efficiency of employees. This pushes the employees to achieve better
performance. Also with the monetary or nonmonetary motivational practices of HRM, the
employees get enthusiastic and perform with more efficiency and effectiveness to increase
their productivity. These HRM practices improve employer-employee relations and if the
employees are satisfied with their superiors, with good working culture then they make their
commitment to the organisation and develop a sense of loyalty and trust to the organisation
reducing the employee turnover, eliminating the cost of recruitment, selection and training.
Workplace environment should be secure, safe, healthy working culture is all the employee
wants, that makes him satisfied with his job and workplace.
The main aim of increasing productivity can be achieved through Human resource management
practices of rewarding the employees with public appreciation, recognition from boss, receiving
medals and trophies, cash incentives on achieving targets, all these things boost up the
confidence of employee and motivate him to achieve high productivity every time to get
continuous recognition , this also promotes healthy competition within the employees , in order
to achieve awards and incentives every employee will join the race of performing better and
that will increase overall productivity of kingfisher.
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Through HRM practice of Flexible working option (flexible working hours) the employee gets
time with his family and friends and the employee know that when he needs support in office
timings he is allowed for the same and then he will be supportive when there is emergency of
the employer to achieve the targets as soon as possible, this helps in increasing productivity.
HRM practice includes Meetings of employer and employee that may be weekly or 1- 2 times a
month or as per requirement, these meetings aim at discussing the problems of employees and
solutions to these problems are to be provided by the HR. Performance evaluation is another
technique to improve the productivity of the employee as the HR communicate the employee
about his performance chart, whether he is performing with a schedule or he is lacking or he is
doing great this helps the employee in self-actualization and in meeting his targets on time.
The participative approach of HR manager involves the employee to give ideas on the problem
or any other idea that enhances innovation, promoting innovation and creativity by manager
makes the employee creative in most of the tasks he performs, all this contributes to the
productivity and profitability of kingfisher.
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