Talent Management Challenges and Solutions: M&S Case Study

This report examines the critical role of talent management within the UK retail sector, focusing on challenges and potential solutions. The introduction outlines the study's aim to identify key obstacles in talent management, particularly within Marks & Spencer (M&S). The literature review explores the importance of talent management, common challenges like poor hiring strategies and leadership, and strategies to overcome these challenges, such as skill-based training. The project management plan details the research's scope, timeline, and budget. The research methodology employs a qualitative approach, utilizing interpretivism, and collects primary data through questionnaires and secondary data from literature reviews. The data analysis and findings section presents the results of the questionnaire, analyzing employee responses to assess talent management practices. The report includes recommendations for improving talent management within M&S and concludes with a performance review and logbook reflecting the research process.

Talent Management
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
LO1..................................................................................................................................................3
P1- Aim and Objectives...............................................................................................................3
LITERATURE REVIEW ...............................................................................................................4
Talent management importance within business ........................................................................4
Challenges faced by companies from talent management practices............................................4
Strategies to overcome from the talent management challenges.................................................5
P2 project management plan .......................................................................................................5
P3- WBS and Gantt Chart ...........................................................................................................6
LO2..................................................................................................................................................8
P4 Research Methodology ..........................................................................................................8
LO4................................................................................................................................................10
P5 data Analysis and findings ...................................................................................................10
P6 Recommendations.................................................................................................................19
LO4................................................................................................................................................19
P7 Performance review and logbook ........................................................................................19
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................20
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................21
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INTRODUCTION
Aim of the study is to identify key challenges and obstacles facing Retail sector of UK in
terms of talent management. Every organisation recruit and hire talented and experience people
to make their workkforce strong and effective within retail sector. For that they apply various
types of recruitment strategies. It is because strategy enable in hiring right candidate for right job
role Strategies like Reward management, training and development etc. Moreover, staff must
possess relevant skills and knowledge so that job roles are performed by them (Bailey,Jones and
Rosen Baugh., 2018). They need to retain and attract a lot of people so that goals are attained
like increase in growth, productivity and increase in sales. However, retaining of staff is
necessary as it helps in gaining competitive advantage in industry and also positive culture is
developed. The use of strategy depends on company needs. Moreover, concept of talent
management consists of many things such as hiring, motivating, performance appraisal,
retention, etc. of staff. So, it is responsibility of HR to apply different practices of talent
management. Besides, it is important to attract more people as it brings in new talent and
creativity within the retail industry of UK.
This research project will cover case study of M&S which is one of the leading organization
within retail industry. Researcher will discuss importance of Talent management within the
company and how it can help M&S to lead the market and take competitive advantages.
LO1
P1- Aim and Objectives
Rationale
The main objective behind conducting this research is to identify the importance of the
talent management within the Retail industry. Employees are most important part of the
company but having a skilful and talent employee can become the reason behind company's
success (Gordwin, 2021). HR department who are responsible to retail talent within the
organization should attract and retain the high quality employees so companies within this
industry can achieve success. This research outcome will provide benefits of talent management
and how HR department of M&S can achieve success thorough talented workforce. Reason
behind choosing the particular topic is to identify the challenges that are faced by M&S and how
they van overcome from the challenges.
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Aim- The key challenges and obstacles facing Retail Sector of UK in terms of talent
management- Case study of Mark's and Spacers
Objectives
 To understand the concept and importance of talent management
 To Identify Key challenges and obstacles faced by Retail sector related to talent
management
 To recommend strategies and ways to overcome challenges
Research questions
 What is the importance of talent management in organization?
 What are challenges and obstacles faced by business in talent management?
 Strategies to overcome from the challenges and improvement in talent management
practices ?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Talent management importance within business
According to the Whysall, Owtram and Brittain. (2019) Talent management is important
for the organizations within the retail industry to get skillful and talent employees and make their
workforce strong What is Talent Management? All You Need to Know to Get Started (2020).
However, in a argument Tafti, Mahmoudsalehi and Amiri. (2017) Talent management
implementation have proper process that should be followed by the Human resource department
otherwise it can be ineffective.
Challenges faced by companies from talent management practices
As per the view of Johennesse and Chou., (2017) There are various challenges and
obstacles from the talent management like Poor hiring strategies, poor leadership can result in
failure in implementing talent management practices.
In a argument Ali and Guha. (2018) believe that there are some strategies that can be
useful for the organization to overcome from the problems like taking advice from experts,
following proper process etc.
Strategies to overcome from the talent management challenges.
According to the Krishnan and Scullion. (2017) some of the strategies that can be used by
the organizations to overcome from the talent management challenges like improvement in
leadership, skill based training to employees.
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P2 project management plan
A project management is the formal document that helps to define how the project is
going to be carried out. It covers elements like project time, budget, goals, scope, timeline and
deliverables of the project management plan and its essentials for a project on track
Cost
Project cost are the funds that are needed to the project managers to create budget for
their plan. Project manager make an estimated budget by using the funds and cover the cost of all
the activities that will be done on the basis of cost. To conduct whole project estimated cost will
be $4450.
Scope
The scope of this research will cover only The key challenges and obstacles facing Retail
Sector of UK in terms of talent management. (Iarygina., 2019). Further the research will be
solely based in UK only.
Time
Time is most important factor in the project management plan and project manager have
to ensure that how many times project could take to complete. To complete this project, project
manager will take around 5 weeks and 36 days in total.
Quality
Quality in the project plays most significant role to deliver the project objectives and
goals. To ensure the project quality, manager will use quality management tools like Flowchart,
Histograms etc. To provide the best possible quality to the project primary research methods will
be used and Questionnaire will helps to provide appropriate result as a outcome of the research.
Communication
Communication within the project is necessary to make it successful and project manager
should ensure that each and every stakeholder of the project should have communication
between them, so they can share the detail and ensure the project goals.
Risk
There are various risk factors that can affect the project and make it fails so project
manager will identify the risk factors that can affect the whole project, so they can reduce the
likelihood of the risk like Errors in information, lack of resource etc.
Resources
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The resource basically signifies the assets that will be required by the researcher and
includes the technological or human resource assistance that will be necessary to complete the
current research successfully (Ika, Söderlund, Munro and Landoni., 2020).
P3- WBS and Gantt Chart
Work Breakdown Structure
The work Breakdown Structure is the project management tool that helps project
manager in getting a proper step. it can be followed project manager in their project plan done
successfully and project team can accomplish the goals and objectives of the project plan.
Project Gantt Chart
Project Gantt Chart is the most important tool that is used by the project manager to
assisting in the project planning and scheduling of the project size and make the complex project
simpler and arrange the activities within the whole project plan (Johnson, A. B., 2019). Gantt
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chart will help to provide path that can be followed by the project managers both critical and
simple path.
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LO2
P4 Research Methodology
Research methodology is the special procedure or the tool that is used by the researcher
to identify, process, select and analyse the information about the sleeted topic and collect the
research outcomes.
Research Type
There are two type of research qualitative and qualitative research and to make this
research study successful investigator will use Qualitative research method (Kivilä, Martinsuo
and Vuorinen., 2017). reason behind selecting quantitative method is that researcher will able to
gain the understanding the needs and importance of the research topic and it will help to develop
the idea or hypotheses of the potentials.
Research Philosophies
There are 5 Research philosophies but two mostly used for the research project that are
interpretative and positivism. To make this study successful, researcher of this project has used
interpretivism. Reason behind selecting this method is that it will help to identify that what
people believe and think about the talent management and how it can be helpful for the M&S.
Data collection
There are two data collection method, Primary data collection method and secondary data
collection method. Both the method is effective and helpful to collect the best possible outcomes
but some differences make them different from each other.
Primary data collection- Primary data collection methods are used by the investigator to
collect data directly by themselves thorough observation, rather than depending on the data that
are collected by the other researchers, Advantages of this method is that there are very rare
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chances that data could contain errors and mistakes, more accurate and provide the best possible
and fresh outcomes to the researcher. Primary method also has disadvantage like- it's a long
process and costly as well. Researcher personally need to observe and collect the data.
Secondary data collection- In this method researcher collect the data about the topic from
the secondary sources like internet articles, Magazines, surveys etc. They use information that
was collected by the any other author. Advantages of this method is that it is easy and time
saving methods and researcher can get some free survey on the internet (Larsson and Larsson.,
2020). On the other side it also has disadvantage like some of the survey are available on the
internet but researcher have to pay for it not every survey is free, side can be blocked and
information collected thorough survey can be wrong because old information has no use in
current time.
To make this research successfully, investigator will use primary research and secondary
method both by making questionnaire and conducting literature review. Employees of the M&S
will perform survey and researcher will collect information from their given answers. It will
provide fresh information about the talent management and what kind of practices can be used
by the M&S within their workplace related to the talent management.
Sampling
Two type of sample that most of the researcher used in their project research that is
probability and Simple Random. The Researcher of the project will use Simple random sampling
sampling to make this study successful. 30 respondents will be selected randomly from the
population of employees working in M&S.
Data Analysis
Data analysis tools that are used by the researcher in their study are SPSS, excel, thematic
analysis etc. To make this research successful, researcher will use Thematic analysis that will
helps to formed various charts, graphs and figure and by using them researches will collect the
result on the talent management (Mirakyan and Golomejic., 2019).
Ethical consideration
The researcher of this project will make sure all the compliance and the ethical
consideration by making each participant sign on the Consent form, it will help to maintain their
privacy. Researcher will private the name and other information of participants and 30
employees will take participation so the result can be accurate.
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Validity and reliability
The researcher has used valid sources that are not copied from the internet , and they also
ensure that information and outcomes should be relocatable to the topic.
LO4
P5 data Analysis and findings
Data analysis is one of the critical part of the whole research, where all the data and
information collected by the researcher are interpreted by the researcher, so they can create
proper outcomes and result for their research.
Questionnaire
1) Do you think Talent management practices are helpful to grow retail sector?
 Yes
 No
2) Does Marks & Spencer Human resource management perform Talent Management
practices at their workplace ?
 Yes
 No
3) What kind of talent management practices run by the HR department of the company?
 Recruitment and selection
 Employees training
 Reward management
 All of the above
4) Are you satisfied with the practices provided by the HR department of the Marks &
Spencer ?
 Agree
 Strongly agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly disagree
5) Challenges and obstacles faced by the organization in terms of talent management?
1) Increase in employee’s turnover
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2) Lack of leadership
3) Effect on workplace culture
4) Lack of knowledge about practices
5) Availability of skilful employees within market
6) What strategies can be recommended to the company to overcome from the challenges and
obstacles from the talent management?
 Strong leadership
 Identification of skills that company needed
 Considers carrier development offering
 Skill based training to employees
7) Provide suggestion to improve talent management practices within the organization for their
growth and development ?
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Theme 1- Majority of the employees believe that talent management practices are useful for the
organizations waiting the retail industry to grow.
1) Do you think Talent management practices
are helpful to grow retail sector ?
Frequency
Yes 20
No 10
Total 30
Interpretation
As per the above graph participants believe that talent management practices are helpful
to provide growth to the retail industry so it is necessary for the business within the retail
industry to implement talent management practices for retaining talented employees. 20 out of
30 employees says ye and 10 says no.
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Yes
No
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Column C