Employee Engagement and HR Practices at Marks and Spencer Report

This management report provides a comprehensive analysis of employee engagement at Marks & Spencer. It begins with an introduction to the topic, defining employee engagement and its significance, followed by a background on Marks & Spencer, including its history and current status. The report then delves into a literature review, exploring the concept of employee engagement, its impact on organizational success, and various perspectives on the subject. It discusses the HR practices employed by Marks & Spencer to address engagement issues, such as regular communication, investment in employee well-being, feedback mechanisms, and empowerment strategies. The report offers recommendations for improving employee engagement, including encouraging flexibility, delegating authority, fostering strong employee-employer relationships, and implementing incentive programs. Finally, the report concludes by emphasizing the crucial role of employee engagement in organizational success and the importance of effective HR practices in fostering a positive and productive work environment.

MANAGEMENT
REPORT

ABSTRACT
This report is based on Employee engagement and provides the great understanding of the topic
in detail. It discusses the literature review and HR practices related to employee engagement.
Further, this report provides the recommendations to M&S for improving its employee
engagement in the company.

Table of Contents
ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
Background of Marks & Spencer................................................................................................4
Literature Review.........................................................................................................................5
HR practices.................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations........................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Management Report focuses at notifying managers about the distinct aspects of the organization,
helping them in taking better and informed decisions. These management report collect the data
and information from several departments in the organization and track their KPI and represent
them in better and understandable way. Employee engagement denotes to level of commitment
in the employee and their connections with the company. It is the elemental concept of
describing and understanding the qualitative and quantitative relationship of company and its
employees. Marks & Spencer is multinational company which was established in UK and also
have its headquarters in UK. Company sells the product under its own label and developed itself
so well after the hard-work of so many years, it has also started offering its products and services
online taking the advantage of the need of an hour. This management report illuminate about the
topic employee engagement and provides the deep understanding about it by discussing its
context with the Marks & Concept, the authors point of view authors, HR practices in this area
and later provides recommendations. The clothing business has faced the downfall due to
recession in the economy and the pandemic the company reveals that its profits have dived by
21% to £403.1 million because of its clothing sector.
MAIN BODY
Background of Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer is one of the largest leading British retailer offering quality products at great
value to millions of consumers across the world. The company was founded by the Michael
Marks and Thomas Spencer in 1884 in Leeds, United Kingdom. The business was started by the
founder from the single store offering products at just single penny and saw growth of more than
100 years and it is the global brand offering the diverse products and services being one of the
richest retail chain of business in UK (M&S about us, 2020). Marks & Spencer offers fresh food
products, latest or contemporary wearable fashion clothing at affordable price, home ware,
banking services and energy. Company has more than 1400 stores around 57 countries and
approx 50 international websites to run its online business. M&S employs no. of people but its
no. of employee rate fluctuates due to different reasons and sudden hit of global pandemic,
Marks & Spencer currently employs 75,505 people (No. of Employees of Marks & Spencer,
2020). Its annual turnover as of March 2020 was 10,181.9 GBP (Marks & Spencer profits Slide,

2020). Marks & Spencer aims to build and scalable business worldwide, by continuing to
localize the product and service ranges in the market. Company regularly restructure its websites
and provide more and more ease facilities to attract more customers. It not only focus on
profitability but also concentrates for the sustainable future for its business in order to have a
positive impact on its customers, communities by contributing for the environment (M&S,
2020). The following are key issues that the company is facing – there is lack of work-life
balance in employees, lack of commitments from the higher authority, Lack of clarity related to
work in the employees etc.
Literature Review
According to Nazir and Islam (2017),employee engagement can be defined as the feeling of
employees or their connections towards the company, that tends to impact their behaviour and
level of endeavour in task related activities. In other words, it is thee concept of employee
engagement that defines the amount of enthusiasm and dedication an employee feels towards his
job. The employees who are engaged are conscious and work for the performance of the
company and put efforts in order to make difference. As per the Popli and Rizvi (2016),
employee engagement in used by the organization to attract and retain the to talents. The basic
purpose of every company is to maximize its productivity and generate good quality of work
from its employees, with the help of employee engagement employee gets more invested in their
work which leads to better quality and efficient work. It has been observed that in organization
where the employee engaged have double rate of success in comparison to organization with less
engagement in employees. Employees also feel motivated have good faith for the company,
wants to dedicatedly work and stay in the company and their passion towards the work can be
seen in the while measuring their performance or outcomes.
Every coin has to two faces likewise the employee engagement also has some positive &
negative influence -
From the perspective of Sun and Bunchapattanasakda (2019), Employee engagement leads to
loyalty and higher commitment among the employees, there are fewer chances of theft,
employees are more honest and careful and pay close attention on whatever they are doing this
also reduces their chances of error and improves their performance at work. When they feel good

while working and efforts are been valued by the seniors this also results in less absenteeism and
lower the turnover.
On the contrary Stoyanova and Iliev (2017), Poor employee engagement most of the time leads
to dysfunction at the workplace, it also reduces the employee morale due to which the employees
are not able to focus on their work. This can be observed in their low performance and
efficiency, this not only affects the productivity of the organization but also harms the harmony
or environment of workplace and stagnates the growth of the organization, and when the growth
is stagnant it results into the increased costs and decreases the outcomes.
From the point of view of Rao (2017), this employee engagement can be raised or increased by
maximizing the commitments from the higher authority to lower management, by defining the
purpose and the mission of engagement, by understanding the basic engagement principles
which includes engagement leadership, transparency, action and commitments and ability to
monitor and measure the score of engagement on the regular basis.
As illustrated by Jha and Kumar (2016), improving and working on maximizing the employee
engagement at workplace is tricky situation. Employer of the organization has to make sure that
his employees are feeling passionate about their jobs and enthusiastic while working. Some
methods of increasing is by encouraging flexibility, being authentic, asking and collecting
feedback, clarity in goals and using tools such as software related to employee engagement.
HR practices
The following discussed are the HR practices that are considered by the Human Resource
Department of Marks & Spencer to resolve the engagement issues -
1. Regular Communication – In Marks & Spencer, HR's are responsible for ensuring that
the communication are proper and on time so that are no chances of miscommunications
or barriers occurs in the process of communications. Company has defined channel of
communication and there is availability of different portals or platforms(Slack,
Workplace by Facebook, Microsoft Teams etc) digitally & physically through which
informations are communicated and can be communicated to the senior management
(Singh and et.al., 2016). HR system act as the middlemen and exchange the informations
between the departments. HRM makes sure that clear and precise messages should be
exchanged in order to improve the employee engagement in the company.

2. Invest in well-being – HRM of M&S has observed that the employee engagement and
wellbeing of the employees are interlinked. But there are two controversial situations on
which the HR works, HR professionals of the company maintain the balance between
well-being and employee engagement and developing such healthy workplace
environment. One situation that happens in the organization is that when there is low
engagement and high wellbeing which makes the employees unconnected to the M&S
purpose and in the vice versa situation leads to burnout. So the HR of the company works
on both by promoting healthy eating, stress relieve programs and offering employee
assistance program.
3. Inviting Feedback – HRM of the company invites the regular feedback that are the view
of the employees which are sought, listen and acted on by the managers and seniors
managers. Technology has provided the easy in this part as well , as the employers delve
and gather the feedback and work on the chances of feedback through the online surveys
and different tools by taking the help of HR(Uddin, Mahmood and Fan, 2019). This also
helps in changing the culture and the employees become ready to receive and work on it.
4. Determining the purpose and sharing it – Marks & Spencer defines its vision, mission
and objective very clearly so that every employees efforts are dedicated in achieving
them. By stating the goals of the company clearly, employees efforts are aligned towards
the overall goals. Human resource of the company frames the policies in such manner
that are dedicated towards achieving the goal and behaviour of workforce is such that no
barriers are there in achieving the goals.
5. Empowering employees – M&S human resources department have the practices which
empower the workforce. It ensures that the employees have some freedom of decision-
making. With the help of this practice, there is enthusiasm between the workforce, and
they work dedicatedly and by being focused which ensures the creativity. Also this solves
the roadblocks and retention. This practice of M&S employee engagement, develops the
feeling that company supports and trust them and whenever they need guidance seniors
and HR are there for them (Osborne and Hammoud, 2017).

Recommendations
Here are few recommendations listed below that can be implemented by the M&S to solve the
issues related to the employee engagement efficiently -
 Company should encourage flexibility as it will result in enhancing the learning
capabilities of the individuals, thereby they will be able to suggest the innovative
strategies and take active participations in discussion. This is essential because of this
there will increase in employee engagement and result in more productivity from them. It
will take approximately 1 year for the company to implement and become comfortable
with this practice and will not cost any money.
 Delegation of authority can also be practised as it is good for the workforce and gives the
growth opportunity to them, this practice demonstrates the employers trust in them and
which increases the engagement by ownership of the project or task (Jha and Kumar,
2016). This practice if goes wrong may cost heavy for the organization.
 HRM and the managers of the departments should focus on developing the strong
relationships among the employee and employers as the employee relations also helps in
developing the engagement because this of this practice employees and managers get
together and understand each other well as they interact and participate in team work.
This practice also would not anything to Marks & Spencer and just good time should be
invested in building the relations, minimum 6 months should be invested in building such
environment (Rao, 2017).
 Incentives is the another alternative options that can be used by the managers of Marks &
Spencer, but the incentives must be matched with the results and accountability and
different criteria must be set for giving this and it makes the employees motivated. This
would cost £200 and 12 months should be invested.
CONCLUSION
From the following report above, it can conclude that the employee engagement plays a crucial
part in the success of the organization as all the activities are interlinked to each other. Improving
the employee engagement helps the Marks & Spencer in several ways and ultimately results into
improved productivity which contributes in the growth. Human resource management of the

Marks & Spencer also plays an essential role, with the help of their practices company is able to
resolve the issues that arise with the employee engagement. HRM formulates such policies and
define the norms of the behaviour of the employees so that there is healthy working environment
and goals of the company can be achieved easily. The report addresses in detail about the
concept and also provides some recommendations in which can be implemented in order to
improve the employee engagement.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Jha, B. and Kumar, A., 2016. Employee engagement: A strategic tool to enhance performance.
DAWN: Journal for Contemporary Research in Management.3(2). pp.21-29.
Nazir, O. and Islam, J.U., 2017. Enhancing organizational commitment and employee
performance through employee engagement. South Asian Journal of Business Studies.
Osborne, S. and Hammoud, M.S., 2017. Effective employee engagement in the workplace.
International Journal of Applied Management and Technology. 16(1). p.4.
Popli, S. and Rizvi, I.A., 2016. Drivers of employee engagement: The role of leadership style.
Global Business Review. 17(4). pp.965-979.
Rao, M.S., 2017. Innovative tools and techniques to ensure effective employee engagement.
Industrial and Commercial Training.
Singh, S.K., and et.al., 2016. Competing through employee engagement: a proposed framework.
International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management.
Stoyanova, T. and Iliev, I., 2017. Employee engagement factor for organizational excellence.
International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR).
10(1). pp.23-29.
Sun, L. and Bunchapattanasakda, C., 2019. Employee engagement: A literature review.
International Journal of Human Resource Studies. 9(1). pp.63-80.
Uddin, M.A., Mahmood, M. and Fan, L., 2019. Why individual employee engagement matters
for team performance?. Team Performance Management: An International Journal.
Online
M&S about us, 2020[Online]. Available through:
<https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/aboutus>
M&S, 2020[Online]. Available through:
<https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/aboutus/history>
Marks & Spencer profits Slide, 2020[Online]. Available through:
<https://www.itv.com/news/2020-05-20/marks-spencer-profits-slide-on-struggling-
clothing-business/>
No. of Employees of Marks & Spencer, 2020 [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.statista.com/statistics/872828/marks-and-spencer-number-of-employees-
worldwide-uk/>
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