Analysis of Performance Management Strategies at Marks & Spencer (M&S)

This report provides a detailed analysis of performance management strategies at Marks & Spencer (M&S). It begins with an overview of M&S's performance management approach, highlighting its role in achieving organizational goals. The report then delves into specific aspects, including the performance management process, the setting of team performance targets using tools like McKinsey 7S, annual appraisals, management by objectives, and Vroom's Expectancy Theory. It compares and contrasts these theories, evaluating their advantages and disadvantages. The report also examines team performance tools and the application of Six Sigma and SMART targets to enhance product quality. Furthermore, it discusses motivational techniques, communication, and resources. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of training, resources, and team meetings in fostering a high-performance environment at M&S.

Developing Performance Management
strategies
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Performance management at Marks & Spencer in brief:
M&S is one of the most well-known retailers of cloths, food, home products in United
Kingdom. The performance management helps to find the way of an organisation’s managers
how to achieve the organisation goals. It helps and set strategy for managers and employees
to be capable of day to day work.
The information about employee’s ability, problem areas, need and future plan is very
important for an organisation to know him/her better. Performance management helps M&S
to gather those informations; those informations help M&S to recognise when training
needed when to reward employees. Performance management helps M&S to improve the
relationship between employees and management and services (Marks and Spencer, 2016).
According to Marks and Spencer itself when supervisor and employees are involves
finding out the common goals of an organisation it become easier to achieve the proposed
objectives of the organisation. Motivational theories have great impact on M&S’s
performance management. Rewards, encouragement help employees to work hard to achieve
organisation goals. Every 12 months at M&S held appraisals for its employees. It helps M&S
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to find out what has gone well, what has gone wrong, what can be done to improve and
suggestions from the employees for future improvement.
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INTRODUCTION
It is very important for an organisation to achieve its proposed objectives within the
time limit. For organisation to achieve strategic success, organisation needs support from its
all departments. By good practice of developing performance management, organisation
could easily improve the employee’s performance and achieve proposed organisation
strategic objectives (Schaubroeck, Lam and Peng, 2011).
TASK 1
A.C 1.1
Performance management process sets the stage for an employee of an organisation to
perform according to the organisation needs. Organisation objectives are need to be shared
within the organisation so its employees can have clear views what they are going to do or
what they need to get job done. Employee’s clear understanding about the organisation’s
objectives means high level of performance will take place without any doubt (Braun and
et.al., 2013).
Every member of a team has some specific task to do, which is contribute team’s
collective output. The task within a team is interlinked if one member fails to finish his/her
task within proposed time whole team will suffer. Slow progress or underperformance leads
to loss revenue which against the strategic objectives of the organisation. To avoid
underperformance, managers need to set effective team according to their ability, necessary
training must be available when needed (Mohammed and Nadkarni, 2011).
The Strategic objectives of M&S:
 Increase earnings at its international business by 40% over the next three years by
opening new stores and online business.
 Increase sales in France by 25% over the same period by opening 250 stores (3 years).
 Best customer service by offering quick check out at the till, reasonable price and
innovative products.
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 Providing reward, career progress, promotion for all employees fairly and timely.
To increase sales by 40% internationally and 25% in France M&S doing very
effective advertisement and train its employees by the experts. M&S is going to open more
than 100 stores in India by 2016 and for online business expansion M&S hiring IT experts. In
our store (London) revenue has increased 25% last year compare to previous year because of
high-class customer service, feedbacks from the customers and performance review helped
me and my team to win the reward last year, collective team effort helps Marks & Spencer to
achieve its objectives (Groves and Feyerherm, 2011).
A.C 1.2
The target needs to be fulfilled within time limit to achieved organisational objectives.
There are many tools and techniques are available setting team performance target such as
McKinsey 7S, Annual Appraisal, management by Objectives, Vroom’s Expectancy theory
etc (Pieterse, Van Knippenberg and van Ginkel, 2011).
McKinsey 7S:
Strategy, structure and systems call hard part of Mckinsey’s 7S and soft parts are
skills, shared values, staff and style.
Hard Elements
 Strategy: It considers long term vision and direction of an organisation.
 Structure: It considers basic ground of an organisation such as committees,
collaboration, governance etc.
 Systems: it considers decision making systems within an organisation by having IT,
operational, financial, human resource etc. it could be manual, automatic systems
maintain by experts or management (Zhang, Cao and Tjosvold, 2011).
Soft Elements
 Style: It is an unwritten common culture or behavior within an organisation which
helps organisation to run smoothly its day to day tasks. It includes leadership style,
organisation culture, and common goal etc. organisation.
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 Staff: To run an organisation’s day to day tasks organisation has to have human
resources, who will be fit for purpose (Torrente and et.al., 2012).
 Skills: It considers employee’s individual ability to do a task effectively. Its
company’s duty to select or train the fittest employee who will be able to carry out
company’s day to day tasks.
 Shared values: It’s an advantage for an organisation that every employee shares the
same values as organisation does itself. Regular meeting, well communication,
promotion, reward etc. help to fell employees that they are belonged to the
organisation (Janhonen and Johanson, 2011).
Advantages of McKinsey 7S:
 It helps to improve performance of an organization (Zhao, Song and Storm, 2013). It helps to examine the effect of the future changes within an organization.
Disadvantages:
 The external environment is not mentioned in this model though external environment
has great impact on organisation.
 The model is complex; organisations using this model have been known to have a
higher incidence of failure (Pieterse, Van Knippenberg and Van Dierendonck, 2013).
Annual Appraisal:
Company’s performance depends on employee’s performances. Appraisals help
organisation to monitor and review its employee’s performance. Individual’s poor
performance not only bad for him or her it also has negative impact who works next to
him/her. Appraisals are the way managers could find the strengths, weakness of an employee,
it allows mangers to find out right people for right job and right training for individual. It
improves relationship between management and employees (Kanaga and Kossler, 2011).
Advantages:
 Annual appraisal helps to find right people for right job within an organisation.
 It helps to plan future training for an employee, by analysing strengths and
weaknesses of an employee (Yemm, 2013).
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Disadvantages:
 If annual appraisal not done right way they can create negative atmosphere within an
organisation.
 Annual appraisal can be overwhelming to managers with many employees if the
organisation is too big (Addo-Atuah, 2011).
Management by Objectives:
MBO helps or insists all managers to be involved in the strategic planning process in
order to improve, design and implement the plans. By daily meeting or discussion managers
and employees negotiate their goals to be achieved by breaking down the tasks. The primary
principle of MBO is to set clear objectives for individual and make sure they understand their
responsibility. In this process the individual has to be very motivated by them to be self-
leader (Mell, Van Knippenberg and van Ginkel, 2014).
Advantages:
 There is less confusion between managers and employees because targets have been
agreed both parties they know whom to do what.
 Management by objectives helps to improve communication between managers and
employees (Chi, Chang and Tsou, 2012).
Disadvantage:
 Top management has to be very active to be successful.
 Workloads lead low morale within the subordinates in the organisation (Bernardin
and Wiatrowski, 2013).
Vroom’s Expectancy Theory:
Performance varies on him/her personality, skills, experience, motivation etc.
Expectancy, Instrumentality and Valence three most important elements help individual to
increase performance. Expectancy helps individual to work harder for better result when they
get all the resources, training, clear objectives and other support. Instrumentality means that
when an individual perform well, he/she gets some benefit from it such as trust. An
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individual works hard when he/she expects there is a definite outcome and benefit such as
salary(DeNisi and Sonesh, 2011).
Advantage:
 Expectancy theory helps to find why some people choose to work in certain way to
achieve certain goals from others (Selden and Sowa, 2011).
Disadvantages:
 Expectancy theory doesn’t take emotional state of an employee into account.
 Expectancy theory may not work within a group environment (Gupta and Kumar,
2012).
Compare and Contrasts:
All the theories have common factor, they improve communication and performance
within an organisation. Where Vroom’s theory separates the performance, outcomes and
efforts of individual but other theories are not. Vrooms theory doesn’t work well within a
group on the other hand management by objectives works very well with the group
(Dusterhoff, Cunningham and MacGregor, 2014).
McKinsey 7S theory doesn’t explain about the external environment.
Management by objectives is better than other theories (McKinsey 7S, Annual
Appraisal, Vroom’s Expectancy theory) because in that process employees and managers
mutually agree about the objectives, so level of confusions are very low, any kind of issues
could be short out immediately. The manager plays an important role at M&S not only in
motivating, coaching and but also organising resources and development opportunities,
monitoring, revising performance (Salleh and et.al., 2013).
A.C. 1.3
Team performance tools to measure future performance of an organisation. It helps to
check the efforts are working the way it supposed to work. It assists direct financial gains,
minimise the cost, maximise the sales, avoid overruns, achieved organisation goals (Goetsch
and Davis, 2014).
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Marks & Spencer uses management by objectives model, vast amount of resources
(money and time) allocate for coaching training its staffs. Management by objectives help
the Marks & Spencer to improve customer service. An experienced customer service team
always stay close with other staffs at the time of operation; they help floors staffs’ instant
assistance or training within a particular situation. Once Marks & Spencer has implanted
Broom’s Expectancy theory but it was gone wrong because of workloads on individual, lots
of skilled employees have left the organisation (Zheng, Zhang and Li, 2012).
A.C. 2.1
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The technique of Six sigma would be employed as it assist in assessing the number of
defects in production of particular unit with greater effectiveness. The smart targets of the
business includes enhancing the quality of the products. This includes meeting the quality
targets by 2017. Further this can be measured by the increasing level of satisfaction among
customers. As the base of customers is enhancing this implies that company is offering
quality products in accordance with the needs of the target market.
SMART targets for the entire team have been discussed below:
Specific: One of the main objectives is to enhance quality level of the product so that sales
volume along with the profitability level of the business can be enhanced through this
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Methods Current performance Required performance
Balance score card Balance scorecard has applied
in the customer service
department of M&S. There is a
clear indication of low
customer satisfaction; it means
that current performance of the
customer service department is
not meeting the customer
needs or not effective.
Customer satisfaction is very
important for long run of an
organisation; it’s required by
the M&S to increase the level
of customer satisfaction, only
it will be possible by offering
training and development to its
employees.
Six Sigma Six- sigma has raised issues
about team member’s lack of
co-ordination and mutual
understanding; it creates
conflicts within the team
members.
To achieved organisational
goals and objectives the team
has to be effective, regular
team meetings and effective
communication will help to
developed team co-ordination.
Kaizen Blitz- This tool has been applied in
the human resources
department in M&S, it has
indicated about weakness of
innovation in the organisation.
To increase M&S’s sales and
profit, its HRM department
could try to innovate new and
unique products to get more
control over the competitors.

Measurable: In order to measure accomplishment of this objective customer satisfaction
survey can be carried out through which it can be known whether customers are satisfied with
the range of products or not
Attainable: For accomplishing this objective proper system of monitoring is required with the
help of which targeted objectives can be accomplished.
Realistic: The objective which is being set is realistic as organization is having right skills
and knowledge through which overall operations can be carried out efficiently
Timely: The time frame required for accomplishing this objective is around 1 year
TASK 2
A.C. 2.2
Performance management helps to create a high standard performance environment
within an organisation where individual and team take responsibility and contribute
organisation’s improvement process. Appropriate training and assistance needs to be
provided to achieve organisational objectives. Resources should provide on time. Team
meeting and review helps individual to perform better (Schaubroeck, Lam and Peng, 2011).
There is a motivational technique at M&S calls “staff value awards competition”
which helps to improve staff’s morale or commitment towards the organisation. Poor
Communication, lack of individual commitment, lack of training, social needs, lack of
resources and lack of merit of an individual makes some trouble within a team to achieve
organisational goals. The organisation that invests and cares about motivation its staffs
perform better then who doesn’t. Training, review and reward always help the organisation to
make employees happy (Zhang, Cao and Tjosvold, 2011).M&S managers always encourage
its employees and provide full assistance to perform well. Bonuses and discount voucher are
motiving reward for the staffs to do their best. Career improvement path also encourage
M&S employees to perform better for their future need (Addo-Atuah, 2011).
A.C. 4.1
There are lots of Motivational theories available in the market to use for organisation
such as-
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 Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow’s)
It stated (1943) that people are motivated to achieve most important needs for
survival. When basic needs (lower order needs) fulfilled a person wants to fulfil the higher
order needs. According to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory M&S encourage its
employees by offering promotion, rewards to its employees (Janhonen and Johanson, 2011).
 X and Y theory (Douglas McGregor’s):
Theory X believer, mangers think work need to be done by strict rules and close
monitoring needed. On the other hand theory Y stated that managers should create a friendly
working culture where all employees will work for their own initiative (Kanaga and Kossler,
2011).
 Frederick Hertzberg Theory:
Hertzberg research identified there are some factors in the work place make
employees satisfied and there some factors don’t satisfied them (Chi, Chang and Tsou, 2012).
M&S pays bonuses, rewards vouchers, promotion to gain individual commitment.
M&S posts the names on the notice board in the store who has been nominated monthly best
customer server. M&S gives their employees fair salary, good working conditions, sick pay,
pension schemes etc. M&S also give their employees responsibilities to make sure that they
fell worthy or important for the company. Paying bonus has lot of advantages but there
disadvantages as well, it makes employee’s expectation to high, grows unnecessary
competition within organisation etc (DeNisi and Sonesh, 2011).
A.C. 4.2
All the motivation theory I have discussed above, aim to address organisational
objectives and ultimate aim to improve performance. All the reward, bonuses, discount
voucher, promotion has been offered by M&S to its employees, motivated them to focus or
being committed to the organisation (Groves and Feyerherm, 2011).
Every organisation follows their own systems very strictly which leads to power play
and internal politics. There are lots of factors can change organisational politics such as lack
of clarity about the policies, objectives etc. Ambitious individual can make workforce too
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