Report on Contemporary Management Issues at Marks & Spencer, UK

This report examines the contemporary management issues faced by Marks & Spencer, a major UK retailer. It identifies external factors shaping human capital, including political-legal, economic, socio-cultural, and technological influences, and analyzes their impact on workforce management. The report further explores Marks & Spencer's policies regarding talent acquisition, learning and development, and change management, relating them to the company's strategic objectives. Recommendations for new initiatives are provided to help Marks & Spencer thrive in the post-COVID market, emphasizing employee motivation, cultural development, and enhanced training. The crucial role of leadership in implementing these initiatives, fostering transparency, and monitoring progress is also highlighted. The report concludes that understanding and addressing these contemporary challenges is essential for Marks & Spencer's continued success.

Contemporary
Management issues

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................3
External factors that shaping human capital and role and impact of the communication and
technology on workforce management.........................................................................................3
Policies of organisation in term of talents, acquisition and learning in relation to strategic
objectives.......................................................................................................................................4
Recommendation on the new initiatives........................................................................................5
Role of a leaders in terms of implementing the new initiatives....................................................5
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
The business environment is sum of the outsider factors that control the management of an
organisation. These forces directly impact the business structure and its activities. These are
constantly changes and carry both risk and opportunity which can mar or make the future of a
company.. Business environment is dynamic, ever changing and very uncertain in nature. So the
basic task for an organisation is to analyse business environment where it operate and formulate
its organisational policies accordingly (Mkrttchian, and Chernyshenko, 2021). The company
selected in this study is Mark and Spencer which is started during 1884 as a stall in open market in
Leeds, Yorkshire. It is a retailing company and offer good value clothing, food and home ware
products. This report will cover the external factor, policies of specific organisation,
recommendation for new initiatives and role of leader to take new initiatives in organisation.
External factors that shaping human capital and role and impact of the communication and
technology on workforce management
In U.K., its current situation is very hard as mostly peoples working for their home due to
the COVID 19. In context of Marks and Spencer, it is determined that they adopt many strategy to
shape the development of the human capital. There are some factor that play a role in humane
resources management and impact it.
Political- legal factors- It include role of the government in business, law formulation, political
system and many more. The government prescribed different policies time to time related to the
human resources management. These policies have to be adhered by Marks and Spencer there are
covered various policies such as discrimination among the employees based on caste, religion, sex
and place of origin (Mubarik, Devadason, and Govindaraju, 2020)
Economic factors- These elements give a shape and form in order to develop economic activities
including general economic condition, nature of the economic system etc. in context of Marks
and Spencer, the factors which influence management of human resources are workforce market
condition, inflationary pressure, national income and population.
Social culture factors- These components are comprehensive and impact different aspect of
business operations including management of human resources in term of beliefs, attitudes,

expectation and behaviour. Marks and Spencer can do more better by following the human
resources management according to need of these factors.
Technology factors- It include those techniques and invention which impact way of doing things.
In Marks and Spencer, technology changed practise of human resources management. For
instance, the recruitment and selection process minimized to such extent that the whole process
can be completed in a very short time. The company can hire candidate through online and social
media by using the internet (Suseno, and Gengatharen, 2018).
For the respective company it is very essential to use communication and information technology
to ensure better training and development session for the employees.
Policies of organisation in term of talents, acquisition and learning in relation to strategic
objectives
The Mark and Spencer is an international company, and operate its business efficiently
world wide. It follow the talent, learning and change management process to improve their
business effectiveness and bring new positive changes in their organisation.
 In term of talent acquisition, it developed an effective strategy for human resources
management, counting the talent recruitment and retention among key focal areas. They
facilitate attracting the new talent in its their organisation. To attain this goal, the
respective company uses mainly three recruitment strategies such as targeted recruitment,
partnership with universities and schools, and job advertisement both on M&S career
portal and in the stores. This company find a range of new ways in order to work with
their party brands, from the wholesale to strategic acquisition, exclusive collaboration and
investment. It bought the Jaeger out of an administration for around £6m and this brand
has gone to introduce as capsule collection on M&S website this autumn (Wang, and
Zatzick, 2019)
 In learning and development policy, the respective company provide training as it is series
of the planned learning experience for its employees and also build their business
competencies and technical skills. Training help in improving efficiency and motivation
the workers to do well. It help to bring positive changes in way of decision making
(Sakakibara, and Balasubramanian, 2020).

 The change management is a planned and structured approach to move the organisation
for its current state to the desired future state. The Mark and Spencer has various
branches in UK and ensure all act on different policies regarding change management at
functional level when it require to get a string leadership to bring new or desired changes
in their organisation (Matos, Vairinhos, Selig, and Edvinsson, 2019.)
Recommendation on the new initiatives
It is determined that after COVID 19 the Mark and Spencer is facing some complex
situations and their employees are not able to perform their takes from home. To survives and
thrive in the new normal market, it become very essential for the respective company that they
follow some recommendation or suggestion that are mentioned below:
 It is suggested that they should encourage their employees by using some motivational
factor sin order to improve their performance to survive and thrive in new market. They
should help the employees to understand that why the changes are necessary.
 They need to make understandable their employees that the new changes are very
beneficial and they should accept it with the purpose of cultural development. They need
to create strategies or changing the employee's mindset that will help them see beyond the
status quo and in a better suture state.
 They should increase the training session for their workers in order to achieve the
organisation goals by improving their efficiency and work productivity. They should
provide the necessary resources as the changes come wit a cost. For this the M&S need to
create that system which will support the efforts and ensure the availability of essential
resources
 It is suggest that the Mark and Spencer need to undertake some strategies on new
initiatives as it will help them to successfully launch new initiatives in organisation. They
should target the entire business organisation and work through all areas operation.
Role of a leaders in terms of implementing the new initiatives
The implementation of corporate strategy require the team effort by the organisational
leadership team. It is essential for the entire business organisation to understand role of the
leadership in strategic implementation in order to make the delegating responsibilities more

effective. A leader is an important person with in the organisation and play a very crucial role in
implementing new initiatives. Many times, a situation is emerged in the organisation when the it
become necessary to implement some change. At this time the leader give their best effort to
implement the new initiatives (Sensuse, and et.al., 2017)
Every business organisation understand it well that the change process is not so easy and
acceptable by the employees and they resist the changes. In this time period, the company's leader
help to implement initiatives. They motivate the employees and make aware them that they the
changes are necessary for them and beneficial for the appropriation as well as employees. The
leader makes a transparency in organisation so that the workers feel comfortable and confident
towards adopting the new initiatives. They clear the doubts and confusion of workers related to
new changes and reduce the misunderstanding between worker's communication (Lombardi,
Schimperna, and Marcello, 2021)
It is not easy to implement new initiatives, for this the leader always try to make this process easy.
The leaders responsible for to put monitoring system at place, analyse data that is being generated
at the time of implementation and also make essential changes in order to make the
implementation process more efficient.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that, an organisation need to understand
contemporary challenges in current business environment. For this, it is essential to identified
different external factors that help to shape and develop human capital as the technology play an
important role and affect the management of human capital or resources. A business formulate
different policies in order to talent acquisition, learning development and change management.
These policies help the company to bring talented employees and improve their performance by
training programs and also learn to accept new changes with a positive attitude in the organisation.
The leader in an organisation play an important role to implement new initiates and changes.
Therefore it is suggested to the business organisation that they should make some efforts and
strategies on new initiative so that it can survive or thrive in new market efficiently.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Lombardi, R., Schimperna, F. and Marcello, R., 2021. Human capital and smart tourism's
development: primary evidence. International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic
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Matos, F., Vairinhos, V., Selig, P.M. and Edvinsson, L., 2019. Intellectual capital management as
a driver of sustainability. Perspectives for Organizations and Society, Springer
International Publishing, Cham and Berlin.
Mkrttchian, V. and Chernyshenko, S., 2021. Digital intelligent design of avatar-based control with
application to human capital management. International Journal of Human Capital and
Information Technology Professionals (IJHCITP). 12(1). pp.19-32.
Mubarik, M.S., Devadason, E.S. and Govindaraju, C., 2020. Human capital and export
performance of small and medium enterprises in Pakistan. International Journal of Social
Economics..
Sakakibara, M. and Balasubramanian, N., 2020. Human capital, parent size, and the destination
industry of spinouts. Strategic Management Journal. 41(5). pp.815-840.
Sensuse, D.I., and et.al., 2017, October. Implementation of government human capital knowledge
management of republic Indonesia case study government ministries. In 2017
International Conference on Information Technology Systems and Innovation
(ICITSI) (pp. 139-144). IEEE.
Suseno, Y. and Gengatharen, D., 2018. The role of human capital, psychological capital, social
capital and leadership capital in building an athlete's global brand image. International
Journal of Sport Management and Marketing. 18(6). pp.515-534.
Wang, T. and Zatzick, C.D., 2019. Human capital acquisition and organizational innovation: A
temporal perspective. Academy of Management Journal. 62(1). pp.99-116.