Human Resource Management For Competitive Employment: Challenges And Strategies – Coles Group Case Study

Key recruitment challenges at Coles Group and recommended strategies to address these challenges

Discuss about the Human Resource Management for Competitive Employment.

In the present scenario, there are numerous challenges and issues faced by the organisations in recruiting the adequate workforce. The human resources are the most vital part of the organisations that can either make or break the future of an organisation. Their competencies and abilities are the most essential factor for achieving the organisational goals and experiencing long-term success. There are several issues in respect with the supply or demand of labour, talent management, the various demographic factors that comprises of cultural diversity, competitive employment, generation gaps, ageing workforce, etc. and the image of the organisation. All are the key factors that develop barricades in the successful recruitment process. Because of these issues there are several sustainability challenges which the organisations suffer. The paper will present the recruitment challenges in respect with the Coles Group of Australia which is one of the most well-known supermarket chains of the nation and gives employment to number of individuals. The company was founded in the year 1914 and is presently employing more than 100,000 individuals but is facing a number of issues which are required to be resolved for improved operations and organisational functioning (Coles, 2017).

Coles is one of the renowned organisations of Australia that have extensive business operations and vast employment opportunities for the individuals. But since last decade, the company is facing numerous recruitment challenges which are negatively impacting the business efficiency of the brand.

The first and the key recruitment challenge is the organisational image. The image of Coles Group is highly impressive but from the industry point of view, the individuals escape from employing in the retail sector as it is considered as one of the least preferred employment sector by the individuals. Thus, this results in decreased number of individuals applying for the jobs in Coles. There is also a developed image of the organisation as one of the retail giant that have high pressure on its employees to meet the sales target (Mokhlis, 2014). Thus, such set notions regarding the image of the brand restrict several potential candidates to be a part of the company sand develops recruitment challenges for the HRM (Lievens and Slaughter, 2016). To overcome the recruitment issues and challenges related to the brand image of the organisation, there must be initiatives taken by the organisation to develop an improved image in the minds of the individuals by exhibiting robust career opportunities to them as well as providing them with several growth and personal development opportunities so that they can get attracted towards the retail sector jobs too (Tang, et al., 2014).

Recruitment challenge: Organisational image

The second key recruitment challenge faced by Coles is cultural diversity. As Australia is a multicultural nation which has diverse cultural groups so there are employees who are nationals as well as migrants. It results in increased difficulty for the organisations ton manage these cultural recruitment challenges and issues. Because of increased cultural diversity in the workforce, it becomes difficult to manage the workforce and the same can be identified in recruitment process (Alexandre-Leclair, 2014). There are people who are from diverse cultural backgrounds and the recruitment managers found it difficult to have an understanding of the candidate because of diverse culture and this leads to rejection of some of the potential candidates. Many a times, the individuals also face diversity related issues and do not associate with such multicultural organisations because for the fear of losing their cultural identity (Peltoniemi, 2015). To manage the cultural diversity related recruitment challenges, there is an essential need that the employees must be offered with adequate cross cultural trainings so that they can easily adjust in a diverse cultural environment. It is also necessary that adequate discussions and feedbacks sessions must be there so that the issues and queries of the employees can be resolved. Above all this, the first key step to be taken by Coles is to develop an informal behaviour in the organisation so that the issues of cultural diversity can be resolved with increased level of communication among the employees (Wilton, 2016).

The next recruitment challenge is the shortage of labour supply and increased demand for labour. There has been analysed a sudden shrinking pool of labour in the regions of Australia. Due to globalisation and expansion of the several other industries in the country, there is an increased demand of the labour. In that situation, it becomes extremely difficult for the retail sector to fetch the attention of the employees and manage the demand for the labour (Cox, et al., 2016). Because of unavailability or shortage of labour force, the business functions get affected and such big organisations like Coles face issues in managing the extensive business operations in a smooth manner (Atkinson and Storey, 2016). To eradicate the recruitment challenge of shortage of labour supply it is essential that the company must add several rewards, recognition and incentive programs in its remuneration plan to attract the potential labour. In the present scenario, it is extremely essential to offer a work-life balance to the employees with adequate incentives and wages for retaining them in the organisations. If Coles will offer such employment benefits to the employees, then such shortage of labour supply can be managed and more number of competent individuals will be applying for the work role in Coles (Weller, 2017).

Recruitment challenge: Cultural Diversity

The next major recruitment issue faced by Coles is the competitive business environment and talent management. There are competitive organisations that are offering higher remunerations packages and employment offers to the individuals which are fetching the attention of the job seekers. It becomes challenging for the company to retain the employees in a lesser package and thus the there is squat pool of applications seeking job in the Coles. One of the biggest recruitment challenges for Coles is inability to recruit competent, skilled and talented workforce. The key reason behind this recruitment challenges is that in the retail sector it is not easy to recruit such sort of candidates as the maximum of the employees are graduates or under graduate (Sparrow, Brewster and Chung, 2016). Because of the lack of need of professional knowledge, the employees with higher qualifications And higher competence are not recruited in such organisations which lowers down the level of efficiency in the work because of less knowledge. And thus, managing talent in Coles becomes one of the biggest recruitment challenges for the HR managers (Coles Group Limited, 2017). To overcome the recruitment challenges of competitive business environment and talent management, Coles must take use of employer branding strategy. Employer branding can be understand as  the approach of developing an organisation or a company as the employer of choice from the perspective of a required target group of employees where such individuals wants to employ themselves and retain for a longer period of time. When Coles will invest time and capital on employer branding then there will be higher visibility of the organisation as well as the pool of potential candidates will try to associate themselves with Coles. Thus, to sustain the competitive business environment there is an essential need of employer branding by Coles (Tatoglu, Glaister and Demirbag, 2016).

There are few of the demographic recruitment challenges also which are faced by Coles such as the generation gaps and the ageing workforce. The Australian industries are suffering from a big issue of ageing workforce which explains that there are employees in the organisation that are of higher age group. These aged workforce lack innovative skills as well as there is low level of zeal and enthusiasm to learn new and updated technology based operations. To attain improved outcomes and better efficiency, Coles need workforce who are young and have fresh talent. Thus, it becomes one of the key recruitment challenges for the company and its operations. Because of presence of old age workforce as well as recruitment of young ones, there develops a generation gap among the employees which gives rise to several issues and challenges at workplace. Thus, use to autonomy of the older ones, the youth and young individuals do not want to get employed at the organisation because of lesser chances of growth and success (Schröder, Muller?Camen and Flynn, 2014). To manage and overcome the recruitment challenges of generation gaps and ageing workforce, it is necessary that Coles must take use of various types of advertisements which can fetch the attention of the youth and young individuals. These advertisements could be on social networking sites pr through campus visits to several institutes so that the company can explain the significance and importance of the youth in the organisation (Connell, Nankervis and Burgess, 2015). Once there will be understanding of the importance of work role, there will be higher applications of youth for the jobs in the company. secondly to manage the issue of generation gap, it is recommended that, there must be open forum discussions as well as regular informal meets where the employees can have exchange their ideas and develop a better flow of communication among themselves (Broadbridge, 2017).

Recruitment challenge: Shortage of labour Supply

Conclusion and recommendations

Managing human resource as well as having an efficient recruitment process is the two essentials for any successful business organisations. Coles is a big giant in the Australian supermarket and retail industry bit still it faces number of recruitment challenges and issues as highlighted in the report. From the insights and analysis, it can be concluded that to improve the organisational performance, Coles is required to have an improved and better recruitment princess free of these challenges. The issues such as shortage of labour, competitive business environment and talent management acne b easily resolved by offering better employee benefits and higher wages and incentives to the workforce. It is recommended to Coles Group that, it must pay higher attention on the recruitment process by implementing better plans and policies for attracting the potential candidates. The key strategy which can help Coles is expanding is visibility among the potential candidates through various types of advertisements on diverse channels. The more visible the organisation will be and the better will be the brand image of the company, the more competent and skilled candidates will try to have association with the organisations (Lievens and Slaughter, 2016). Thus, it is concluded and recommended that Coles must use its brand image as well as its sound financials for recruiting more number of employees which are both competent as well as skilled for effectively carrying on the operations of the company with long term retention in the organisation.

References

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