Case Study: HR's Role and Motivational Strategies at Marks & Spencers

This essay delves into the crucial roles of Human Resources (HR) and employee motivation within organizations, using Marks and Spencers (M&S) as a case study. It defines HR's responsibilities in shaping organizational culture, managing performance, and enhancing productivity, while also highlighting motivation's importance in driving employee engagement and performance. The essay explores Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Herzberg's two-factor theory as frameworks for understanding motivation. Furthermore, it examines the specific strategies employed by M&S to motivate its employees, including cost-cutting measures, growth opportunities, employee recognition, and addressing employee concerns, ultimately concluding that effective HR practices and employee motivation are essential for maintaining a positive and productive work environment.

Reflective essay

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK...............................................................................................................................................1
b).What is Human Resource?......................................................................................................1
C).What is Motivation?..............................................................................................................1
d). Theories of motivation ..........................................................................................................2
E. Choose a company for the research provide some background about the company. ........2
f. How a company of your case study motivate their employees? What steps have they taken
to make sure that employees remain motivated?........................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
In an organisation an HR plays a very important role in developing , enforcing and changing
the culture and environment in the organisation. An HR conducts all the activities in the
organisation from performance management to enforcing vales in the organisation. They also
plays role in enhancing the productivity in business. Whereas motivation is also an essential part
of the organisation as it drives the need to work within the individual as well as organisation.
This report is being made in the context of Marks and Spencers(Bauman, 2018) . The aim of this
report is to cover importance of HR and the motivation . It also highlights 2 motivational theories
and how the company motivate their employees and steps that company taken to ensure that
employees are motivated.
TASK
b).What is Human Resource?
Human resource is a separate division of a business organisation which performs comprehensive
tasks and responsible for arranging and managing interviews, vetting, hiring, deploying and
onboarding fresh candidates in an organisation. Human Resource department ensures safety and
healthy workplace,organise trainings and development programmes and adopts strategies in
order to maintain smooth and efficient momentum in a company or an organisation(Schunk and
DiBenedetto, 2020) . It also administers employee benefits schemes. Thus , The HR
department is an essential part of an organisation which takes various approach to maintain
coordination between employees and create healthy and creative workplace in an organisation.
C).What is Motivation?
Motivation in general means a behaviour which keeps a person determined and focused towards
his/her goals. It is an inner process which cultivates an inspiration in a person to perform best at
towards a given task. In context of business , the term motivation is the process to encourage
employees to work with confidence and to maintain stability, motivation thrives inspiration and
stimulate employees to perform good in their work. A motivated worker always gives positive
outputs in a business (White, 2020). Every organisation is under an obligation to keep its
employee confident by providing them all the fundamental and basic needs such as food, cloths
and shelter. A worker should be encouraged by recognising and awarding them for their extra
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efforts, appreciate them and maintain their dignity by treating them fairly at workplace. These
gestures from an organisation towards its employees will cultivate sense of loyalty towards an
organisation and infuse motivation to work with more intensity towards achieving goals of a
company.
d). Theories of motivation
1) Maslow's Motivation Theory : According to this theory, every human have a fix
standards of needs which is commonly known as hierarchy of needs and to attain such
needs they work and as they attain such needs they proceed on to the next. Broadly, there
are five needs which are defined in Maslow's theory of motivation such as, Physical
needs, these denotes to the lowest need, the fundamentals necessities for a life such as,
food, cloths and shelter. The second, is security which pertains to make employee feel
safe and secure at workplace. The third need is Social need, which denotes that every
person is belonged to a group or a community which grantees a social security being a
member of such group or community. The fourth need is ego or self esteem which
motivates a worker to live with dignity. The last one is the Self actualization, in this a
worker is self aware and groomed and has obtained all the other needs. They are more
focused on learning and attaining skills and expertise with the view to become more
creative in their work.
2) Herzberg's two-Factor theory: As per this theory, employees satisfaction level is
measured in two dimensions, hygiene and motivation. Hygiene signifies the issues
related to job dissatisfaction on grounds of salary or work environment. Whereas,
motivation signifies, to ensure recognition and awards to employees to cultivates
confidence and productivity in workers.
E. Choose a company for the research provide some background about the company.
Marks and Spencers is the company in UK stated in 1884 which deals in households goods,
toys, clothes and many more things. The company is known for its great quality products and
their effective customers services. They have multiple stores in all over the world which provides
company great amount of profit.
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f. How a company of your case study motivate their employees? What steps have they
taken to make sure that employees remain motivated?
Marks and spencers approximately have 75000 employees in more than 800 stores. They
have applied different approaches in order to motivate their employees which are discussed
below:
 Cost cutting methods- marks and spencers cut the cost of the products and in the
manufacturing and packaging and uses that money for the benefit of the employees.
 Providing growth opportunity- The company have provided different opportunities for
the growth of the employees such as providing them training, promoting them and many
other.
There are multiple steps taken by Marks and Spences to retrain and motivate employees such as:
 Rewarding employees- Providing enough appreciation for the good performance helps in
motivating and retaining employees . M&S timely provides appreciation to their
employees for their performance.
 Offer opportunities- Providing development and growth is major aspect for the
motivation. M&S provides motivation to their employees through providing them
training and development opportunities.
 Listen to their queries- Marks and Spencers have listen to their employees and their
problems in order to make them work effectively and without any problems (Grant and
Shandell, 2022). They have created a department which solve employee related queries.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that an HR is very important in maintaining good
working environment in the company. With that there is also need of proper motivation for the
employees as it helps in maintaining employees efficiency. This report covers the definition of
HR and motivation with the motivation theories. It also covers the steps that M&S have taken to
enhance motivation in organisation.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bauman, A.A., 2018. Online consumer trust research and Maslow's hierarchy of
needs. International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 11(4),
pp.315-331.
Grant, A.M. and Shandell, M.S., 2022. Social motivation at work: the organizational psychology
of effort for, against, and with others. Annual review of psychology, 73, pp.301-326.
Schunk, D.H. and DiBenedetto, M.K., 2020. Motivation and social cognitive
theory. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 60, p.101832.
White, P.A., 2020. Maslow's hierarchy of needs and water management. Journal of Hydrology
(New Zealand), 59(1), pp.1-16.
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