Definition of Human Resource Management

The shaping of human resource in a way that the company’s goals can be met by satisfying every employee at the highest level is known as Human resource management (Bach, and Edwards, 2012).  The nature of HRM is to bring people and organization together so that goals of the company can be met.

Purpose of HRM in Tesco PLC Company

At Enterprise Level

Organizations can invite and recall best and talented people in the business if a person is imbibed with good practices of human resource. If planning is done in advance it assists the company to recognize what category of people it needs particular time duration. Along with this, it helps the company in providing training to the employees for exciting roles, emerging right approach towards the company, encouraging an essence of the team between employees and emerging promise and devotion through the schemes of reward (Lumen, 2018).

At Individual Level

• Human Resource Management helps in developing teams and encourages team spirit among employees.
• HRM permits opportunities for growth for the people who have abilities and potential to grow.
• HRM creates consideration and assurance in people for their works (Price, 2011).

At Society Level

• The major beneficiary of the practices of human resource is Society.
• Human Resource Management helps in creating opportunities for employment.
• HRM is capable to make the best use of talents. Those Companies who have worthy policies of HRM always stay forward from their competitors and yield exceptional results.

At National Level

Proper practice of human resource offers better utilization of financial, natural, and physical resources. People with a good attitude, ethics, and accurate skills support the country to move forward and challenge the best countries in the world (Armstrong, 2010).

Functions of Human Resource Management in Tesco PLC

Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment – It is comprised of activities such as inviting the appropriate candidate to apply for the openings (Mayhew, 2018). Tesco advertises for the jobs in various methods. The procedure differs from the category of job accessible.

First, Tesco Company searches inside the company in order to identify talent and fill the vacancy. In this procedure, those existing employees who are thinking to move, either at the same level or are expecting promotion are recorded. If the company is not able to find an appropriate candidate in this Talented Plan, Tesco Company announces the job internally on its intranet for two weeks.

In lieu of recruitments from outside the company, Tesco announces openings by its online site i.e. www.tesco-careers.com or by store’s display boards. The online network is chosen for announcing openings for the managerial position. Candidates, who are picked, have to give interview tracked by attendance at a valuation center for the last stages of the selection procedure. People who are searching for the store based jobs with Tesco can give their CV at the Tesco store or can be listed by Jobcentre Plus. The store makes a list of waiting candidates applying and contact them as soon as jobs become obtainable.

Jobs which are very difficult to fill or are expertized in nature, such as bakers and chemists, Tesco prefer external advertising by subsequent mediums:

• By Television and Radio
• By offline and website media
• By doing advertisements in magazines or on Google

Selection – Selection includes picking the most appropriate persons from the list of applied candidates for a specific job (Mayo, 2018). Screening stage is a vital part of the process of selection. This process confirms that selected candidate for the interview is the most suitable and should fit the requirements of the job.

In the initial screening stage, panel member wisely looks at the CV’s of all the candidates. A well inscribed and optimistic CV assists Tesco Company measure whether a candidate is appropriate for the particular job’s requirement. The company also offers an instrument on its website called ‘job type match’. It assists people in understanding where they might fit within the organization.

Candidates who clear the screening stage of selection process have to appear in a valuation center. The valuation centers are placed in company’s stores and are handled by the managers. They assist in providing steadiness in the selection process. Candidates are provided with several tasks, this contains functioning in teams or exercises of solving the problem. These include examples of some of the problems that they can come across on the job.

Candidates who get agreed by the assessment centers then they have to give an interview. Line managers are involved in the interview to ensure that the selected candidate is fitting with the requirements of the job (Tesco, 2018).

Training and Development

The procurement of knowledge and skills by a person for performing specific tasks or job emphases on the person’s growth and encompassing his/her capabilities is known as Training and development (Aswathappa, 2010). Tesco Company takes the accountability for the employees and staffs training and development. Mainly, the trainee is accountable for his/her growth. The manager and trainee manager, both involved in the programme.

As a strategic strength, Tesco is at an improved position to successfully recruit and select people at a quicker and precise manner. Though, this kind of method can have additional influence on Tesco measured on the important feature in rendering online applications, administrative familiarity (Dudovskiy, 2016). This is said as characteristics of recruitment where company reflects its “staying power” in the remembrance of job searchers when they catch any notions connected to the organization in question. In such application, though Tesco may have displayed their necessity for workers in their company’s websites, adequate efforts should also be accomplished to advertise their image and notions in the direction of the public, through their framed online company site (MBA Skool, 2017). Based on this, it appears that Tesco had not been capable to do this, because it is only involved in posting the online job vacancies. Significantly, with less knowledge on the presence of Tesco, candidates are not influenced to apply because they do not recognize how and what the organization works on precise scales. In other words, it converts into a weakness as Tesco Company does not recover itself in such space, particularly as not all are bound to check their chosen website to have a look at their recruitment status (Bhasin, 2018).

Besides this, the flexibility of Tesco in managing walk-in-applications requires attention. For jobs that are store-based, concerned candidates can leave their application necessities and expect that their resume or applications will be accordingly entertained, whenever there will be an opening. This area of the resource filling could be operative for casual job assessment by confirming that there will be no prejudices, and similarly, all candidates are provided opportunities to struggle for the job, as each one will be screened and tickled in due time. Consequences of walk-in recruitment revealed improved retention of workforces, as well as a profitable method of enticing candidates. Considering this, the strategy of Tesco of accepting such candidates strengthened the process of recruitment and delivered efforts in long-term.

HRM comprises practices that are used by the managers and HR workers and mechanical systems in order to manage people. Examples of practices of HRM consist of performance management, payroll, firing, hiring, and training and employee benefits administration.

Benefits of HRM Practices for Employees

Promoting Positive Behaviour

A successful organization such as Tesco makes an optimistic environment of working and constructive benefits for employees by the practices of HRM, making employees happy and dynamic. In a broader perception, HRM practices strengthen and reward desired employee activities. The other side of the coin includes ways that managers don’t strengthen or reward employees’ unwelcoming behaviors (Mwaniki and Gathenya, 2015). These features of handling employees need to be fit in the culture of the company.

Developing Employees

Practices of HRM in Tesco Company gratify employees and inspire them to contribute to intellectual assets of the company. Skills and knowledge of the workers upsurge the company’s competitive advantage. Successful organizations take advantage of this positive outcome of HRM by assisting employees in improving their skills (Carthy, 2015). Tesco offers resources for the training and education of the employees and offers them opportunities to use and share the knowledge.

Increase productivity

Training and development programs of Tesco Company help employees to increase their productivity because these programs work on the enhancement of the employee skills and knowledge (Bradley, 2018).

Benefits of HRM Practices for Employers

Building a Flexible Workplace

Practices of HRM reflect unstable demographics in the organization. New Century workers anticipate diverse situations as compared from those belongs to the twentieth century’s second half period. There are workers in Tesco who are aged, disable and along with this, they have part-time workers. Effects of HRM on varied workplaces are linked to the flexibility of the employer. This is due to the reason that company desire to recall workers, they offer a flexible workplace, comprising flexible work environment designs, work projects, work agendas, the arrangement of work teams, locations of work, formats of communication and methods of accountability. The major benefit of flexible workplaces for employers as well as for employees is that they can customize the job aspects according to their lifestyle (Bianca, 2018).

Motivating Workers

The performance of the employee must be enhanced by the managers. This is the reason why managers are hired or promoted by the employers who can handle workers effectively. Effective managers execute the practices of HRM and support people to raise the feelings of being capable in their place and confidently impacting the company. Employees feel more motivated when they perform under the guidance of successful and positive managers (Werner and DeSimone, 2008).

Hiring and Training the Workforce

Planning of manpower is the major duty of the department of HR in the company. Human resource managers plan the strategies for carrying the right people in the company for performing particular task or job. They are responsible for preparing their description of the job which is required for the job in the company. After the appointment of the people, they plan the induction or orientation program for the employee with a well-organized training and development plans (Bhagria, 2014).

Tesco has deliberately included HR in all the plans of the company. Managers also make use of HR aspects in their decision-making process. This has reflected the high commitment of HR, operating to attain the employee’s acceptance, and providing general and extended training to each employee. The large image of strategic directions of Tesco is deliberated with every employee. This assists the individual employee to get familiarize with their part and their significance in the company. As a result, they give more importance to their human resource department.

Tesco Company has increased the training programs for their employees. Therefore, the department of HR takes a strategic role. HR is not called as a department of administration in Tesco they are considered as proactive and have a place at a strategic level in the company. This raises the importance of training which is reinforced by a growth in Human Resource Management. This practice underlined that augmented progress that can only be sustained in the long run; by preparing the employees with the abilities they need in order finish their task or work.

Strategic HRM has received both reliability and acceptance from last few years, precisely with respect to its influence on the performance of the organization. Every employee is the part of the strategy; hence they are trained on the significance of their job. This training is provided in a way that includes all skills of learning and allows for cultural difference.

According to Delany effective organizations keep the issues of people at the priority and at the central position of their planning and decision making process. Delany added that organizations that solve the issues of the people are the organization that can survive for the long term in the market and can earn high profits. Being the UK’s biggest Private employer Tesco takes this charge seriously, this is revealed through their development and training policy. This has surpassed the recommendations of the government for the individual training and a step towards a learning society.

In order to succeed HR should perform an active role in the organization. Strategic HR makes value by offering opportunities for gradual learning, the growth of intellectual capital and improves essential capabilities. This value is vital to the future success of the organization. Employers are trying to extract from employees their best performance. Best exercise will grow the abilities of the existing workforce, and with employing it will strengthen the culture of a workforce which is highly capable.

Reinforcing learning in organizations needs a shift from taking learning as being immediate facts to learning as a dynamic and multi-faceted process. This environment of learning in Tesco has been stretched to include all features of the work environment.

The process of learning has been challenged to make a culture that permits repeated learning in the organization. As knowledge is the only thing that matters a lot, individuals and organizations should convert them into a continuous learning. The organization that runs an academy identifies abilities in an individual. The training can be given with the help of leadership and operational skills. These programmes of development are custom-made to the according to the skill level of the individual. The method of delivery for the training is diverse, offered according to the learning preference of the individual.

Tesco Company function in a severely competitive sector, but with the help of their human resource they are able to gain the number one position in the market. The company can only sustain in the market till their strategies are working in the changing environment. In order to gain more profits, the company needs to realize that their human resources are the reason behind their success. Therefore, it can be said that company needs to give more importance and preference to the HRM department.

Every employee at Tesco shares a specific relationship with their colleagues. They need to follow this because they are a human being and not a machine which starts operating with a click of a button. They have to communicate and discuss with each other at the time of decision making. An employee can be motivated when he/she is working in a cooperating environment which cannot be evaluated in terms of money. It is very important that employees feel comfortable with their co-workers and perform their operations together as one single unit in order to achieve a common goal. Therefore, some of the employee relation importance is as follows:

Work becomes easy when performed with other workers

In Tesco, good relations between the workers reduce a load of work on any specific person and in return raise the probabilities of efficiency. As it is not possible for only one person to perform every task on his own, work should be divided between all the team members in order to achieve the desired object within the time duration. If the relationship between the employees of a team is good then they help each other which make the task easy.

Discouraging conflict among workers

The positive relationship between the employees at Tesco decreases the conflict chances and fights between the employees. The trust between the employees starts increasing and they assist each other in fulfilling the objectives and goals of the organization (O’Brien, 2014). They take their co-workers as their colleagues and not as their competitors. As an outcome, the efficiency raises which assist the Human Resource Management of Tesco to take an enhanced decision (Juneja, 2018).  

Loyalty of Employee

The satisfying and collaborating work environment in the Tesco supports in creating the loyal employees. They start feeling motivated in performing the job allocated to them by the management eagerly. They perform their responsibilities with extra efforts which result in increased productivity. However, the employee turnover rate is very less in Tesco which assist in decreasing the new employee recruitment cost very soon.

Guaranteeing Equality by communicating efficiently 

An operational communication system in Tesco supports in confirming the employees that there is no discrimination in the company. As a consequence, they feel inspired to accomplish their jobs to achieve their anticipated objectives set by the management of the company (Benjamin, 2018). An appropriate system of communication supports the Human Resource Management of the company to make an effective decision in proper time duration (Management Study Guide, 2018).

Laws, Legislations, and other regulations like Equal Pay Act, The Act of National Minimum Wage, The Employment Rights Act, The Disability Discrimination Act, and Sex Discrimination Act, etc. should be obeyed by every business At the time of decision making process particularly in the HRM decision making as it might be able to totally change any of the decision or plan made by the Department of Human Resource.

Same as other reputed and famous companies, Tesco also maintains the legislation of employees at the time of recruitment of new employees along with company’s existing employees that have a certain serious influence on the company’s Human Resource Management decision. Various elements related to employment are important in employment legislation which comprises following features:

• Affirmative actions
• Working time regulations
• Social security
• Equal employment opportunity
• Trade unions and other various industrial relationships
• Sexual harassment
• Working conditions
• Health, safety, and welfare
• Working time regulations
• Social security
• Special provisions for other occupations

The above-stated elements confirm that contractual agreements of employers match with the employees in obedience to regulation or legislation (Business Case, 2018).

The distant reaching influence of the legislation of the employment when Human Resource managers make decisions about the occupations and the whole company converses in the following:

The very first influence is on decisions about the work schemes and safety measurements of the employees where the Human Resource workers must obey the minimum necessities else they will be lawfully punished. All over again, as the main objective of the regulation is defending workers from judgment and disparity, Human Resource managers need to frame special plans of Human Resource and workplace handling strategies.

Legislations also control policies of payroll and other payment and benefits strategies in line with the employed time arrangement and planning consequently so that all decisions of Human Resource goes correctly approving justice and fairness. Furthermore, employment legislations influence plans of social security of the business and superior provisions dependent on circumstances and nature of the job (HR Council, 2018). 

References

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Aswathappa, 2010, Human Resource Management 6E, Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

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