HRM or Human Resource Management has immense importance for a firm if it is to achieve success in a competitive business sector like retail markets. HRM is no less than an approach that is strategic in nature for ensuring that business development is massively assisted by the joint performance of employees and management together. In international business place, an approach like human resource management puts some additional importance like overpowering competitors in sense of service delivery, quality assurance and growth achievement. In addition to this, long-term success in a competitive sector like retail is largely dependent on HRM as this is viewed as adequate means of performance development as well as performance delivery to survive in competition. In this article, the case study of Morrison’s has been discussed.
Background of the company
Morrison’s is a UK based retail company with headquarter in Bradford in England. In the UK this company is considered as the fourth largest supermarket chain. The foundation year of the company was 1899 and William Morrison was the founder of the company. The initial business of the firm was egg and butter stall in Rawson market in Bradford, before it emerged as an important retailer in the UK. Until the year 2004, the firm’s presence was limited within north England but its presence got spread remarkably across south England along with Wales and Scotland. The major reason for the firm’s expansion of business in southern England was the acquisition of Safeway which was a supermarket chain of England with 479 stores. This acquisition helped Morrisons to have its business presence across southern England (Albrecht et al, 2015). Until the year 2016, the firm had 498 stores. Morrison’s is a London Stock exchange listed firm and is included in the FTSE 100 index of organizations. Market share of the firm is also significant in comparison to Aldi but behind some firms like Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Asda. While the full name of the firm is Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, the business operation or trading functions of the firm are carried out in name of Morrison’s.
Company objectives (Vision/mission)
Morrison’s believes that its business must march towards the fulfillment of a commitment to customers and community. Hence it sets its vision and mission with a considerable focus on its values. Thus the vision and mission of its business reflect the overall values the firm does have. The mission statement of the firm is to offer their several benefits to customers so that they feel that the best values for their money invested in the purchase of products all through weekly shopping.
The vision of the company is to become a food specialist for every person. It wants to differentiate its business from other major firms in competition in support of own production and packaging facilities with an uninterrupted focus on quality aspects for the satisfaction of customers.
Current business performance
Morrison’s stretched its businesses to Scotland and more parts of the Southern part of England. This firm is now available to a considerable percentage of Households in England (Bolman and Deal, 2017). The financial performance of the firm as interim results for a half year till August 2018 denotes that group like for like sales without considering fuel and VAT was 4.9 percent higher than 2017-2018. There is a 4.5 percent increase in revenue and the amount was £8.80bn. Profit before tax was reduced by 29 percent and it was £142m in comparison to £200m of 2017-2018. Net debt of the firm was reduced to £929m by £44m since 2017-2018.
HR strategies
The companies have some core HR strategies which keep the employee performance better and business expects to achieve growth. The company has its own plant for manufacturing as well as supply chain which depend on a large number of employees who keep the entire process operational by their effort and skills. Thus need for better HR strategies is always important for the firm. HR strategies of Morrison’s always consider HR functionalities. Talent management is always focused part and along with succession planning depend on SAAS which has a full form like software as a service system. Training and talent management are important functions of HR professionals of the firm and this is helpful for the company to upgrade the talents and performance of employees in the retail sector in the UK. Morrison’s has a trade union named Union for shop, distributors and allied workers known as USDAW in abbreviated form. The firm keeps its HR strategies in the alignment with employee handling guidelines. People are the main assets of the firm and are considered highly instrumental in bringing about success (Bloom, Sadun and Van Reenen, 2015). Therefore USDAW expects that Morrison’s always conduct practices and follow guidelines which are employee friendly and consider discussing with the trade union before any practice is put into effect. Another significant aspect of the HR strategy of the firm is that the business is also focused on corporate social responsibility. Brewster (2017), stated that CSR is a business functionality while taking this strategy into the ambit of HR strategy is not a fitting planning. This argument has been canceled out by Chelladurai and Kerwin, (2017) saying that people of a business firm need to be aware of societal functions of their organizations and HRM professionals are right in this matter by arranging knowledge development programmes for employees to get to be aware of the corporate social responsibility. This sensible and realistic operation of firms keeps them motivated in their present engagement with firms’ operation of the business. A scholar like Cohen (2015), is critical of the plan which is not adequately strategic. In this respect, Morrison’s is often weak. But according to Conway et al (2016), leadership with proper organizational vision is of better help to define strategy and planning to employees and their better management to help top management. Morrison’s, always puts an effort to keep its leadership appropriate as per the vision and culture of the business.
Figure 1- The Harvard model as an HR management model
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This model is largely comprehensive with six components for Morrison’s. In this model, important dimensions are stakeholder interests, situational factors, HRM policies, HRM outcomes and, long-term consequences and lastly feedbacks loop through. This model is in use by Morrison’s HRM division.
Employee development
Morrison’s keep it’s all out effort to make sure that employees are always delivering better services to customers every day. The important basis for employee development of the firm is to become a food specialist for every present and potential customer in the retail industry. To fulfill the purpose of understanding its employees for ensuring their better development the firm conducts colleagues’ attitude survey. That makes way for areas identified by the firm for development of employees for business optimization along with growth assurance. Four integral aspects are taken into a priority by the firm to fulfill its employee development objectives for the growth of the business. These are values, leadership with talent as well as performance (De Lange, Kooij and Van der Heijden, 2015). In these areas, Morrison’s has its structured policies for making certain that the development of employees is unhindered. According to Deery and Jago (2015), these four factors together only help business to infuse knowledge and motivation among employees and absence of any aspects could affect the function like employee development. This has been argued by Brewster (2017), giving reasons that each of these factors has the potential to nurture dreams and ambitions and motivation level goes up. Values propositions encourage the firm to conduct education programs. Employees take participation in workshops of vision and values which are always at the core of the educational framework for employees. Leadership as another factor brings the best performance individually and team-wise. “Leading the Morrison’s way” is a leadership development programme which aims for employees development. Training and performance are two separate elements of employee development though are set to achieve overall performance standards of the industry and the company’s own. Donate and de Pablo (2015), stated that training and performance are two interrelated factors cannot be valued without results seen or measured against the set standards. It has been argued by Gatewood, Feild, and Barrick, (2015), that training develops confidence and performance is the final outcome which is dependent on training quality even untested. This remains crucial as a performance input for getting expected service delivery by staffs. Morrison’s on basis of these four factors keep employee development high. Like many big retail firms, this firm also adopts resource-based view as a basis of competitive advantage that plays an instrumental role in Development of employees. The aforesaid discussion relating to employee development affirms the rationality of taking the resource-based view for the understanding strength of resources for achieving optimal growth of employees. The process and functions of employee development through values, leadership, training, and performance involve an investment of adequate resources by the firm (Hollenbeck and Jamieson, 2015).
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Table-1 VRIO framework
Resources of Morrison’s are viewed as valuable, rare, inimitable and organized for measuring overall competitive advantage further put into effect for employee development.
Employee relations and grievance handling
This is the most highlighted part in the HR agenda of Morrison’s for keeping workforce motivated and performance oriented to defeat attrition. The firm always tries to be the employer of equal opportunities to employees no matter the sex, race, age and nationality and marital status they have. Applications for service in the firm by disable persons are always attentively considered by management. Full consideration followed by assistance is given to people with physical disability during employment in the firm. People avail fair and equal treatment in time of recruitment, promotion, performance appraisal and so on. Needs of employees are evaluated and any application of policies for employee empowerment (Jamali, El Dirani, and Harwood,2015). Merit is the main criteria and grievance reduction and its better management are the important functional aspect of the firm to achieve better employee relations with a minimum grievance. Morrison’s has its ethical trading policy which helps to improve employee relations and grievance management. Some norms under this policy are supportive of employee welfare measures and grievance free working environment. Moreover, consumers are also satisfied with being aware of the ethical trading policies of the firm and this improves the level of trusts among employees of the firm. Marchington (2015) stated that positive working feeling together with the better working environment are useful for achieving better employee relations and minimization of employees’ grievances. Human relations theory is applied by Morrison’s for treating its employees with friendly and better working atmosphere. As per this theory, there are some basics that are maintained by the firm and these are personal along with the professional satisfaction of employees.
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Human relations theory—Employees feel personal and professional satisfaction |
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They are engaged in organizational work |
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Rights of employees are recognized. |
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Workplace related satisfaction is assured. |
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Employees are involved in the regulation of work. |
Table-2 Elements of human relations theory
Employees are engaged in the organization and work for achieving the goal of business, rights for employees are identified and workplace-related satisfaction is always made certain for every employee. This theory is largely helpful for the firm to achieve better relations with employees with reduction of grievance among them (Marchington et al, 2016).
Training
Morrison’s identified some areas which need to be developed more and accordingly, training needs to be imparted to their staffs. Store management and IT skill development were considered important for all staffs as the firm identified that floor worker are not confident in working with a computer system. Therefore a training as a separate HR function in the firm has gained huge importance as a continual process. Customers are foremost priority for the firm and accordingly the firm started training to ensure training for staffs to improve services for customers. According to Moore and Jennings (2017), the retail industry entails working on shop floors for maximum out of the total working schedule and this does not necessitate all firms to impart IT training for staffs but this has been argued by Brewster (2017), that a tough industry such as retail rolls on multitasking approach and needs to keep industry workers ready for performing tasks in computer also. The training name of this programme is customers’ first service training. Across all the stores the firm started a drive for improving customer service. This training programme e is a constituent of the working strategies of the firm. Service for the customers comes as an urgent task. In this regard, all employees are trained to serve customers faster. They are trained to “drop the box” and to help customers who are looking for assistance in shop floors. Morrison’s train and motivates staffs in a way to make them appear friendly so that customers remain happy and loyal to the firm.
Figure 2- Transitional model (Training model)
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According to the transitional model, an organization is always viewed as a whole in which the outer sphere defines values, vision, and mission of the firm. On basis of these aspects training activities which are viewed as inner sphere get prepared. In Morrison’s this training, model is considered for arranging training programs. Firstly objectives are set, taking into view vision, Mission and values and then training framework is put into the application (Mostafa, Gould?Williams and Bottomley, (2015).
Conclusion
Conclusive Thoughts on Morrison’s practice
HRM is an important branch of study and organizations irrespective of their sizes eagerly depend on human resource management to prosper in industry. The retail industry is full of challenges which are often beyond the control of firms. However, with better HR strategies, the challenges like attrition, excessive cost involvement in recruitment along with the changing the trend in the industry are always difficult to handle by many firms. In this respect, better HR strategies are helpful for negating such challenges (Cohen,2015). Morrisons being aware of the issues and challenges has focused on better strategy preparation for making its HRM division effective. In this report HR strategy and related aspects like employee development, employee relations and their grievance management along with training arrangement in a strategic framework governed by the firm have been presented. These individual aspects of HRM of Morrisons relate to each other and are constituents of the larger HR framework implemented by the firm. The overall objective of the HRM framework of Morrisons is to create a competent workforce and development of competitive advantage in the industry by employee training and their motivation followed by long-term retention in the company. With help of case study analysis and knowledge preparation, this particular report has achieved more logical shape which is of help to relate knowledge concerning HR strategy to the selected case study. Some recommendations at the end of this report have been mentioned that underline measures of further improvement in the HR domain of the firm in a few years ahead (Reiche et al, 2015). Depending on the HR strategy business of Morrison’s has grown over the years with many new stores of the firm opening up across the UK. Training and talent management, low-cost recruitment, maintenance of employee handling guidelines, discussion with its trade union named USDAW are all examples of HR strategy maintenance. Employees are also prepared to engage in corporate social responsibility work of the firm and they get to know about the ethical trading of the company and feel proud of them being parts of the firm. Some important theory or frameworks used by Morrisons under its HRM realm are VRIO framework, Harvard framework of HRM, human relations theory to support functions such as strategic HR, employee development, employee relations, and grievance handling. Training segment of the firm is largely influenced by a transitional model which undertakes the firm as a whole with training as an important outer scope with values, vision, and mission of the firm being defined to employees for their performance improvement.
Critical Analysis in comparison to Asda
The retail industry in the United Kingdom confronts with the huge competition with numbers of competitors exist in the industry. Morrisons apart, there are many big firms including Asda which is another English supermarket chain based in the city of Leeds in West Yorkshire. Asda occupies the second position in the UK retail industry. This firm is known as a friendly superstore food retail firm. HR strategy of Asda is significant for bringing success in its operation and business performance. In this analytical description, two firms like Morrisons and Asda of UK have been compared with each other in terms of HRM aspects involving HR strategy, employee development, training, employee relations, and grievance handling. Additionally, it can be said that this report has taken an evaluative shape based on a logical base due to the comparison being incorporated. Training and talent management is the foundation of HR strategies of Morrisons. The firm follows employee handling guidelines for practicing HR strategies. The firm has its own production plan and supply chain and this is the reason, need of manpower and their training requirement are high from a business perspective. The firm has developed trust among its staffs as important issues are dealt with jointly by the firm’s trade union named USDAW and management. Corporate social responsibility related knowledge and motivation get developed among the staffs of the firm. HR domain essentially focuses on this aspect. Harvard model of HRM offers a comprehensive set of planning and strategy in the HR domain of the firm to help HR professionals of the company to make employees aware of corporate goal and required level of performance.
On the other hand, Asda has people strategy that is operational on basis of recruiting, training as well as the motivation of staffs by the firm to retain them. Asda keeps its focus on selecting highly talented people to offer better services to meet with business priorities. It is mainly the people strategy that relates to the performance delivery of business consistently. It is argued by (Nankervis et al, 2016), that people strategy and people management are not different and are parts of HR strategies and most essential for firms to know that people management or strategy alone does not secure business performance unless organizations have well-set vision and mission and objectives and better leadership. This is viewed seriously by Asda and the firm aligns its HR strategy with the business for keeping performance better and adopts suitable leadership strategy to maintain people management strategy. HRM of Asda is more focused on workforce planning, their recruitment and selection followed by training and better evaluation of performance or appraisal.
Figure 3- Model of HRM
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By practicing the above-shown HR model Asda links its HR strategy with business planning for optimal achievement of HR efficiency to improve overall performance. Values, leadership, talent, and performance are four elements that are used by Morrison’s in its employee development program. Asda has focused on employee engagement, training and practice of organizational culture to leverage employee development in the firm. Renz (2016), said that leadership is the most essential which holds several qualities together and motivation even is not present among employees it’s only leadership that brings the best performance. This is Shen and Benson (2016), as it was said that leadership cannot ensure success unless employee engagement and their better relation with management are ensured by firms.
Figure 4 – Employment relationship cycle
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In course of maintenance of employee relations and grievance handling, Asda adopts several activities. The term employee relations and grievance handling are interrelated for the firm as both support each other. Therefore host of activities like employee engagement, employee training, and internal promotion leverage employee relations. Grievances are minimized always by the effort put by the firm and this has been possible due to the presence of a better working environment. Feedbacks of employees are listened to by management and these are reviewed and discussed in meeting for faster resolution. In employee relations and grievance handling process, Asda uses employee engagement as a means for minimizing the possibility of grievances and even if grievance occurs, a considerable amount of attention, commitment, and speedy evaluation help the firm to manage grievance. Morrison’s employee relations and grievance handling approaches are more effective as the human relations theory plays an influential role in the HR approach of the firm (Shields et al, 2015). By practicing this theory Morrison’s tries for implementing a more humanitarian approach to employees which finally make them feel appreciated and proud. This helps to manage grievance if there is any.
Scholars like Stone and Deadrick (2015), stressed on more knowledge build up by firms for the handling of grievances as this enables firms to motivate workforce but this is argued by Tung (2016), saying that firms are typically averse to the occurrence of grievance and should avoid any possibilities for grievances to take place. Training is a most vital segment of HRM of Asda. Organisational culture and performance objectives are combined into training needs fulfillment by Asda. Induction programme like ‘Best welcome’ is significant. Asda Academy’s framework meant for training is another effective effort of training purpose achievement. Career development program of Asda is run under a scheme named ‘Colleague steps’. Unlike customer first service training of Morrisons under the framework of a Transitional model of training, Asda is more focused on overall training for staffs to make them competent in retail markets. Tung (2016), opined that the retail sector is highly competitive, sales oriented industry which always looks for effective customer services while the rest of the factors are taken care of. But Brewster (2017), argued that customer service skills are always effective, provided employees are motivated and their presentation skills are better. Based on system model of training Asda follows some stages to arrange and complete training programs and these are analysis, design, development of planning, implementation and evaluation.
Figure 5 – System model training
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Although Morrison’s work upon its existing HR strategy to make it most effective but still there are scopes for improvement. Some recommendations for the firm to strengthen its HRM functions can ensure a long-term competitive advantage in the retail industry. The firm must develop its store management team who will coordinate with the HR team twice a month regarding their working aspects and difficulties they face during work. HR team needs to develop a specific training team which will only impart IT related training to floor staffs or supervisors to handle computer-related tasks on floors. Through its trade union, the firm may think of collective bargaining if it is felt by the firm that wages payment is increasing a lot. Talent management needs to be always evaluated on a frequent basis by the firm. Moreover, HR strategies also need periodic review (Shields et al, 2015). Its manufacturing plants must have better safety mechanisms and these are to be regularly checked. An appraisal system based on the 360-degree method of appraisal could be more motivation booster. A separate cell of grievance handling by HRM of Morrison’s may produce better results and effective employer-employee relations.
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