People Management Report: Skills, Issues, and HR Processes

This report provides an overview of people management, focusing on contemporary issues, required skills, and HR processes. It begins with an executive summary and introduction, followed by an examination of the challenges faced by front-line management, such as employee relations, leadership development, employee wellbeing, and training and development. The report then details the knowledge, skills, and behaviors essential for effective people managers, including planning, communication, decision-making, team building, and leadership. Furthermore, it explores the HR processes that underpin and support effective performance management, such as performance management reviews and 360-degree appraisals. The report concludes with recommendations for optimizing human resources and ensuring fair assessment practices. The report uses Marks and Spencer as a case study to illustrate concepts, and references several academic sources to support its findings.

Introduction to People
Management

Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................4
Contemporary issues front line management faces when it comes to people management..5
Knowledge skills and behaviours needed to be an effective people manager.......................6
What HR process underpin and support management when it comes to effective
performance management......................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................10
Books and Journals:.............................................................................................................10

Executive Summary
Human resource is one of the important function which plays various roles and
responsibilities of managing people. It has been playing a dominant role in managing and
developing people of a company. Human resource department of a company is consists of
various performing task such as recruiting, training and developing, compensating, promoting
and firing of employees. People management is one of the important task performed by
managers and leaders of a company. It involves various skills and techniques which leads to
better management of performance and overall achievement of goals and objectives.

INTRODUCTION

People management is an important function in an organisation for achieving success
in handling human resource. It is the process of training, developing and motivating people to
strengthen performance and achieve their full potential. It helps in optimising employee’s
productivity and professional growth in workplace. Effective people management is a
necessary skill for managers and leaders for directing and influencing people. This results in
better flow of communication between leaders and employees leading to achievement of
goals. Human resource department plays a dominant role in managing people for the growth
and sustainability of company. It reinforces, develops team and implements change in work
culture for maintaining harmony and organisational behaviour. Thus, people management is
one of the important tasks for human resource department. Human resource department is
responsible for recruiting, selecting and training, remunerating, promoting and firing of
employees. It performs various roles and responsibilities for the welfare of people with
involvement of right skills in a company. Furthermore, management of people is the process
with integrating efforts of all departmental heads, leaders and human resource managers. It
helps in finding right people to be filled at right positions with right skillsets (Denning,
2018). It also helps in managing front line people who are facing challenges affecting their
performance during the time of COVID 19. Marks and Spencer is one of the leading
company in fashion industry operating in various countries. It is headquartered in London
which is specialised in clothing , ho,e products with a vast product portfolio. This report
demonstrates issues in managing people and HR process for effective performance
management.
Contemporary issues front line management faces when it comes to people management
There are various issues which a company faces in managing people. These are as
following:
 Employee Relation- This is one of the major challenges a company faces in
managing people. Employee relations are the building of trust between management
and people of an organisation. These are the development of association and
belongingness among employees with others. It helps in strengthening performance
and develops healthy work culture. Also, it leads to bring new ideas with employee
engagement in decision making. It helps leaders and managers to better conduct
programs and implement change aligned with strategies for achieving overall goals
and objectives of company. For example, Marks and Spencer leads employee with
good relationship management. This help them in achieving high performance and
needs for innovation (Hoffman and Tadelis, 2018). They have strong strategic human
resource team which develops plan for maintaining healthy relationship with
employees.
 Leadership Development- Managing people are an important task for developing
synergy and coordinated efforts in a company. This helps in effective achievement of
team goals and increased productivity of employees. It is achieved with effective
leadership development for directing and influencing people for attaining team goals.
Leadership style a leader performs depends on the situational requirements is
necessary for achieving desired results. It is the manner in which leader controls and

performs authority over members in a company. For example, Company undertakes
various leadership roles for influencing and leading people in right direction. It has
been following participative leadership style for managing and leading people.
 Employee wellbeing- It is difficult to manage people with diversified needs and
nature of behaviour in a company. It leads to understanding human resource for their
wellbeing which helps in building employee satisfaction. This helps in effective
employee performance and motivation with providing extra benefits for better
achievement of goals. It is duty of human resource department to understand needs of
their people and fulfill them with time. Marks and Spencer has various policies for
people which helps in satisfying employees and managing performance of people.
Also it helps in maintaining healthy environment and flexible work culture in
company (Knies Leisink and Van De Schoot, 2020 ).
 Training and development- It is important in an organisation to have highly trained
and skilled employees. This leads to better management of job allocation filled with
competent people which is essential for achieving high performance and growth. It is
one of the important challange a company faces in managing people of an
organisation. Training and development is necessary for improving and developing
employees performance in a company. It helps employees in enhancing their
knowledge and builds career opportunities for further promotion. It is the duty of HR
to conduct training and development sessions with analysing needs and areas need
improvement. Company has been conducting effective training for serving customers
in fashion industry. This help them in maintaining strong customer relationship and
their world class standards in industry.
Knowledge skills and behaviours needed to be an effective people manager
Managing people is one of the essential task which requires adequate knowledge,
skills and behaviours to be an effective people manager in a company. These are as
following:
 Planning- Planning is one of the essential skills for becoming an effective people
manager. Planning is a process of developing future action plans for reaching desired
position. It is the firstmost activity and management function which is important for
developing and reaching goals and objectives of a company. Managers should posses
psychological and cognitive skills require in planning activities. It is essential for
achieving desired position bridging gap between actual and desired position. Marks
and Spencer develop various plans for ascertaining desired position. Top management
develops major plans for long term which is followed by lower mangemnt people.
Middle management develops further plans for achieving overall company goals and
provide direction to subordinates in forming action plans. Company follows
management by objective model which helps in engaging subordinates in decision
making for developing effective plans (Lappalainen, 2020). This made subordinates
responsible and accountable in achieving goals framed in planning process.

 Good communication- It is one of the necessary skills in managing and leading
people of an organisation. Communication is the process of exchanging messages
with same intent helps in direting and influencing people. Thus, communication is
vital skill for managing large number of people in a company. It involves written,
verbal and non verbal communication methods. This leads to effective management of
people which helps in sharing right messages with same intent for achieving goals and
objectives of company. Marks and Spencer utiles various principles of management
which helps in free flow of communication. This is achieved with clear line of
authority and understanding of roles and responsibilities within company. Also,
company has build clear line of hierarchies which helps in developing subordinates
and supervisor relationship (Leroy, Segers, Van Dierendonck and Den Hartog, 2018).
 Decision making skills – It is required skill for a manger to be decisive in making
fast decisions. It is important skill for developing plans and achieving goals in a
company. Managers and leaders have to make various decisions for making work
done from the people. This is essential skill which helps in fostering decision making
in a company.
 Team building- Team building is the formation of groups with similar skills and
background in a company. It is essential in a company to develop effective team for
achieving group efforts resulting in synergy effect. It helps in forming effective teams
within company to perform task in group efforts. Marks and Spencer uses tuckman
model for building effective teams which results in reaching peak performance stage.
This leads to better management of people in groups with a leader which helps in
achieving group goals. Company has large number of people with diverse skills and
background. This leads to conflicts due to different personality and behaviours which
requires effective leadership and management.
 Leadership- Leadership is one of the essential skill for managing people in an
organisation. Employees are human resource which requires effective leadership to be
directed in right direction. They need constant feedback and motivation in reaching
desired position. Leaders perform various responsibilities in leading people in right
dorection. It performs various roles in managing people effectively with the helps of
implementing situational styles of leadership. Marks and Spencer leads people with
collegial and democratic style (Martin and Siebert, 2016). This help in bringing and
implementing change effectively for serving customers with emerging and customised
needs.
What HR process underpin and support management when it comes to effective performance
management
Performance management is a process of analysing and evaluating outputs of
employees with the help of various tools and techniques. It is an evaluation process which
involves various models and methods for assessing employees and developing plans of
improvement. This helps in assessing employees strengths and weaknesses and formation of
individual profile in a company. Following are the methods for performance management in
HR process of a company-

 Performance management review
It is the process in which employee profile is developed with the help of review
techniques and tools. In this employee's strengths and weaknesses are assessed which helps in
developing improvement plans and tracking performance of individuals. It is important to
understand emoloyees performance in a company effectively which results in developing
plans. It is one of the important method which helps in assessing employee performance and
reviewing goals of company. It is vital technique which leads to management of performance
in a company. It is achieved with assessing individual performance with the help of charts
and graphs. Individual performance profile helps in analysing strengths and weaknesses
which further helps in assessing position and roles in a company. Marks and Spencer
performs this activity every year with formation of individual profile. This helps in assessing
and evaluating individual performance effectively to achieve goals and objectives of a
company. It involves planning, reviewing, tracking and implementing goals and objective of
company. It is one of the effective strategy which helps in developing improvment plans and
assessing needs of individuals. This method helps company in developing individual profile
which leads to understanding of individual needs and characterstics (Moeller, Maley, Harvey
and Dabic, 2016).
 360 Degree Appraisal
In this performance evaluation method feedback forms are develop for assessing
individual behaviours and outputs. These feedback forms are filled by peers, supervisors and
subordinates of an individual. This method helps in understanding employees behaviour and
assessment of individual profile in a company. It leads to formation of profile with the help of
feedbacks given by various associates and senior management. It is called 360 degree
appraisal method because of assessment of an individual by all the people associated and
performs various functions (Stankevičiūtė and Savanevičienė, 2018). It is essential in
managing and assessing employees of a company effectively. Thus, it is one of the important
method for appraising employees performance and benchmarking standards with forming of
improvment plans. Marks and Spencer has been using this method for understanding
employees needs and characterstics. This helps them in optiomising human resource as per
the organisational objectives.
Recommendations
People management is an essential skill which helps in optimisation of human
resources in a company. It involves various activities which helps in better understanding of
people with the help of analysis and assessment techniques. It is consist of HR processes and
perfromance management review techniques in a company. It is recommended to assess
people fairly with unbiased behaviour excluding favouriotism by the evaluators making
judgements (Wellington, 2017). Also, managing people is an essential skill of HR managers
which requires right skills and behaviours such as problem solvoing, motivating and
recognition etc. Marks and Spencer performs HR function or people management effectively
with the help of utilising employee wellbeing policies. This help them in achieving goals and
objectives of company effectively and efficiently with good performance.

CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that managing people is important for
achieving better performance in a company. It helps in assessing and developing effective
plans which leads to implementation of good practices in a company. Human resource
management plays an important role in effective management of people in a company. They
formulates various plans and review needs of employees which helps in developing right
skills to perform task effectively. It helps in filling training needs of people which leads to
better performances and increased productivity. Managers faces various challanges in
managing people effectively due to diversity and different people in a company. It leads to
conflicts and clashes in performing task. It also leads to problem in achievement of goals and
objectives effectively and efficiently. Thus, people management is necessary for a company
to perform activities and roles together with coordination.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Denning, S., 2018. The emergence of Agile people management. Strategy & Leadership.
Hoffman, M. and Tadelis, S., 2018. People management skills, employee attrition, and
manager rewards: An empirical analysis (No. w24360). National Bureau of
Economic Research.
Knies, E., Leisink, P. and Van De Schoot, R., 2020. People management: developing and
testing a measurement scale. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management. 31(6). pp.705-737.
Lappalainen, P., 2020. Walking and talking sensors: conceptualising restorative leadership to
enhance people management education in engineering. European Journal of
Engineering Education. 45(3). pp.473-490.
Leroy, H., Segers, J., Van Dierendonck, D. and Den Hartog, D., 2018. Managing people in
organizations: Integrating the study of HRM and leadership.
Martin, G. and Siebert, S., 2016. Managing people and organizations in changing contexts.
Routledge.Shrivastava, S., Nagdev, K. and Rajesh, A., 2018. Redefining HR using
people analytics: the case of Google. Human Resource Management International
Digest.
Moeller, M., Maley, J., Harvey, M. and Dabic, M., 2016. People management and innovation
in emerging market multinationals. Journal of Management development.
Stankevičiūtė, Ž. and Savanevičienė, A., 2018. Raising the curtain in people management by
exploring how sustainable HRM translates to practice: The case of Lithuanian
organizations. Sustainability. 10(12). p.4356.
Wellington, P., 2017. Effective People Management: Your Guide to Boosting Performance,
Managing Conflict and Becoming a Great Leader in Your Start Up. Kogan Page
Publishers.
(Denning, 2018)(Hoffman and Tadelis, 2018)(Knies Leisink and Van De Schoot, 2020 )
(Lappalainen, 2020)(Leroy, Segers, Van Dierendonck and Den Hartog, 2018)
(Martin and Siebert, 2016)(Moeller, Maley, Harvey and Dabic, 2016)(Stankevičiūtė
and Savanevičienė, 2018)(Wellington, 2017)