Management Report on Employee Engagement at Marks & Spencer (M&S)

This report delves into the critical aspects of employee engagement within Marks & Spencer, a leading global retailer. It highlights the aims of employee engagement, focusing on aligning employees with organizational values, enhancing relationships, and maximizing productivity. The report examines Marks & Spencer's initiatives for employee well-being and engagement, such as wellness programs and health-focused activities. It further explores the cost benefits of employee engagement, including increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and reduced employee turnover, while also addressing relevant legal regulations like the Employee Rights Act and Equality Rights Act. The report also acknowledges potential demerits, such as difficulties in matching IQ levels and the risk of misinformation. Ultimately, the report underscores the importance of effective employee engagement as a key component of HRM, contributing to organizational growth and customer satisfaction. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

Introduction to HRM

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Aims of employee engagement :.................................................................................................3
Employee engagement in Marks and Spencer :..........................................................................4
Cost benefits of employee engagement :....................................................................................4
Legal regulations affecting employee engagement :...................................................................5
Demerits of employee engagement.............................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES:...............................................................................................................................8
Books and Journals:....................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management (HRM) is a strategic management approach designed with
the motive of maximizing employee's performance according to the goals and objectives of its
company. It works in making the people related management efficient and effective to gain a
competitive advantage in the market. It is a separate department in large scale companies to
principally focus on the employees related management. The chosen company for the following
report is Marks and Spencer which is a global leading retailing brand. It is headquartered in
London, England. The company has a vast product line which includes – clothing, food, baby
care and household related products. The report is based on the topic of employee engagement. It
is elaborated in detail with its meaning, aim, legal regulations, impact on cost and other benefits
and demerits to a company with this issue in a sequence format.
MAIN BODY
The main motive of human resource management is hiring, managing and retention
related activities (Rahman, Mordi, and Nwagbara, 2018). It is also responsible for all the
decisions and implementations related to relationship between a business entity and its
employees. One of the main function of human resource department is employee engagement. It
is the term that aims in increasing the level of enthusiasm and determination that an employee
feels toward their work. Engaged employee of a company care about their responsibility towards
the work and take the company's overall performance as whole and their area of concern not just
their own performance. These employees are dedicated towards their job and do not need any
supervision to keep on the track of work. This makes a great positive impact on the organisation
by hitting their best level of productivity and decreasing the required level of supervision. This
helps the supervisor or manger to use the time some where else that can prove as growth element
for the company such as finding new ways or methods and researching about the changing trends
of the market. These employees work in making a positive difference in the company's
performance through their efforts. There workers are more likely to be productive and valuable
asset for the firm other than a firm that do not consider this human relation.
Aims of employee engagement :
The certain aims that Marks and Spencer must consider of this topic are discussed in the
following points for more clarification :

 make employees concern with the organisation's values.
 Increase the employee relationship between each other and with the higher authorities
too.
 Hitting the best productivity capacity of the company.
 Motivate the workforce
 Understand employee's wants and beliefs
 Making the workforce responsible towards their work that do not need any type of
supervision to work
 Enhance the experience of all the related people in the surroundings of its firm's property
Employee engagement in Marks and Spencer :
M & S is a large company dealing in diversified areas of the world (Sobaih, Ibrahim and
Gabry, 2019). It employees more than 85000 employees in about 53 countries. It believes that
well-being and engagement of workers is a critical component for growth and considers it on a
important basis. It provide with some well-being programs that are aimed towards building a
loyal and commuted workforce. Some of the programs launched by it to maximise the
participation of employees are – annual weight loss challenge, BIKE 24 charity and a triage
physiotherapy beating NHS. The brand alos ensures that its workers are considering their health
by motivating them to drink more water and take steps towards improving their health. M&S has
provided its employees with some additional needs such as Greek EAP programme and Well
being website across India.
Cost benefits of employee engagement :
The engaging of employees with an organisation may not directly show the effects in in
the productivity and financial standings of a firm but provides a huge impact on its cost
indirectly which can be both, good and bad for the company (Chug, 2017). Some of these
financial impacting benefits are covered in the following points that the HR department of Marks
and Spencer must consider :
 Productivity increment - With the employee engagement process, the workforce get
help in involving in their job work completely through the betterment of working
environment (Küpper, Klein and Völckner, 2021). Marks and Spencer can hire more and
more employees to increase their productivity through researching and some marketing

tactics. But it does not make sure to make a increment in productivity. There are many
practical surveys which states that the engaged employee are far more productive than the
unengaged ones. The more the positive engagement level of employees, the more
increase in the production. It may not be directly show the impact on financial
performance but it is believed as one of the main reason.
 Improved customer satisfaction – Customers are directly depended to the sales which
directly impacts on the financial performance of a company. Due to the related topic, the
employees are responsible and love their work. This directly make improvement in their
behaviour and concern towards the work. The happy employees even unintentionally
attract the attention of the customers and gives them with increases satisfaction level.
This also makes the employees work in providing the customers with more value.
 Lower employer turnover – When the organisation provides its employees with good
working conditions and satisfaction, this makes them get loyal with the company
(Chowdhury and Lamacchia, 2019). This helps in sticking them with the company and
this directly decrease the employee turnover level. This turnover or retention brings
losses for a business entity as hiring new employees proves to be very costly due to two
areas – expenditure in providing training programs and the marketing charges incurred
for attracting new individuals. This directly impacts the financial performance of a firm.
Legal regulations affecting employee engagement :
 Employee rights act – This is the act that states about some essential facilities that must
be provided to an employee such as – providing a specify reason for dismissal and
providing a healthy working condition to avoid any health related issue. When a business
entity follows and implements these rights, it make the employees loyal towards it which
helps in improving their productivity.
 Equality rights act – This is a act related to providing the people relating to an enterprise
with the equal facilities. The following of this act and maintenance of equality in the
surrounding of an enterprise avoid the workforce in feeling different from other people
which can negatively affect the productivity if practised (Khoza, 2018).

Demerits of employee engagement
 Difficulty to match IQ level – It refers to in employee engagement it is not necessary
that all employees have same IQ or intelligence level at the time of doing job as a team.
Because every employees have their own learning or capturing power understanding
responsibility in organization (Easa and Bazzi, 2020). When IQ level of the employees
are not good then, task are not completed in time by employees. It means some
employees have fast and slow learning skills. In context to Mark and Spencer,
management must consider this difficulty for understanding their real problem in job.
 Creates difficulty to understand - It means that in new employees or the subordinates
faced difficulties for understanding the functions of organization properly. They also
faced problems in their job with team members because the new subordinates are not able
to adapt the work culture of the organization easily . It leads to decrease the productivity
of other employees in organization. In context to Mark and Spencer, management must
maintain flexibility in their work culture for new employees for understand the work
easily. Because if subordinates are not understand the work then, coordination are not
effectively maintained with whole organization.
 Expensive procedure for company - It means that managing the employees in
organization with lots of investment in the form of providing training. The motive of
providing training to employees is to improving their skills for doing job properly (Yadav
and Katiyar, 2017). But some employees did not take this investment or training seriously
which creates creates negative impact on organization. It includes reduction in profit,
increasing the workload on other employees and so on. In context to Mark and Spencer,
management must make minimum investment on such type of employees.
 Messages turns into rumour very fast - It means that wrong message creates
misunderstanding between the employee and employer (Mishra, Mishra and Walker,
2019). Due delivering wrong message by the top level management to employees
negative relationship are occurred between the employer and employee. Due to gaining
wrong orders by the employees departmental functions are not worked systematically.
When the employees working in wrong direction management are not able to achieve
their vision, mission and objectives in long run (Chordkunpan and Worasatepongsa,

2020). Due to these reasons it is necessary for Mark and Spencer that they initiate
effective communication system internally for increasing the organizational growth.
CONCLUSION
From the analysis of above information it is understood that employee engaging is a part
of HRM and played major role for manage employees properly. The main motive of effective
employee engagement is to achieve the best output for the increase of growth of the organization.
Effective human resource management also helped to increase the customer satisfaction level
towards organization for a long time. For promoting the employees in employee engagement
company followed some legal activities which includes monitoring the performance of
employees on monthly and daily basis. Then according to that company facilitates various
rewards to them in the for cash and promoting to different positions.

REFERENCES:
Books and Journals:
Rahman, M., Mordi, C. and Nwagbara, U., 2018. Factors influencing E-HRM implementation in
government organisations: Case studies from Bangladesh. Journal of Enterprise Information
Management.
Sobaih, A.E.E., Ibrahim, Y. and Gabry, G., 2019. Unlocking the black box: Psychological
contract fulfillment as a mediator between HRM practices and job performance. Tourism
Management Perspectives. 30. pp.171-181.
Küpper, D.M., Klein, K. and Völckner, F., 2021. Gamifying employer branding: An integrating
framework and research propositions for a new HRM approach in the digitized economy. Human
Resource Management Review. 31(1). p.100686.
Chowdhury, K. and Lamacchia, D., 2019, November. Collaborative Workspace for Employee
Engagement Leveraging Social Media Architecture. In Abu Dhabi International Petroleum
Exhibition & Conference. OnePetro.
Chug, P.K., 2017. Enhancing Employee Engagement Through a Novel Mathematical Model in
the Hospitality Sector of India. Prabandhan: Indian Journal of Management. 10(8). pp.7-24.
Easa, N.F. and Bazzi, A.M., 2020. The influence of employer branding on employer
attractiveness and employee engagement and retention: ten years of literature. International
Journal of Customer Relationship Marketing and Management (IJCRMM). 11(4). pp.48-69.
Yadav, A. and Katiyar, D., 2017. Workforce diversity and individual differences: Implications
for employee engagement. Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies. 8(3). p.7.
Mishra, K., Mishra, A.K. and Walker, K., 2019. Using innovative internal communication to
enhance employee engagement. In Handbook of Research on Strategic Communication,
Leadership, and Conflict Management in Modern Organizations (pp. 445-468). IGI Global.
Chordkunpan, A. and Worasatepongsa, P., 2020. The Influence of Knowledge Sharing on
Competency Development and Generation Y Employee Engagement in Bangkok
Thailand. PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology. 17(3). pp.2526-2541.
Khoza, K., 2018. Employee engagement is the responsibility of leaders. HR Future, 2018(12).
pp.32-35.