BM563 Operations and Service Management Assignment
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Introduction - BM563 Operations and Service Management
The reported discussion will be made regarding the operation management for the Human resource department in TESCO. Operation management plays a pivotal role in the operation and key attributes of the company. If the company is unable to manage its operations in a willful manner, then it will become tough for the management for earning the desired targets. The operations start with Human interference; therefore, the importance of Human Resources management is very high. Over the contents of the report, the discussion will include several issues with the HR department of TESCO, special in the views of the COVID and post COVID period, discussing the HR Theories and implementation of such into the operation. Along with this, the discussion will also include the range of operation techniques to the management and the supporting functions which will interact with the operation and their contribution to the organizational success factor. The overall report will summarise the entire HR management process, including the reward strategy, employee engagement and its role in the overall process.
Main Body
Company Description
TESCO is one of the household names in the UK for being one the largest chains of supermarkets in the UK and another part of the world. The companies headquarter situated in England. In terms of gross revenue, it is ranked as third in the world and ranked ninth in terms of revenues. It is listed in the London stock exchange and FTSE 100 component. The company has a total of 7005 operational stores and counting, which includes Supermarket, Hypermarket, superstore, and convenience Shop. The company has many brands such as BOOKER, MARKO and others.
Role of HR in operation management
A company can only be run successfully by engaging the appropriate employee for the appropriate job, and the employment is managed by the HR operations of the company. The role of HR is not limited to employment, but it includes many other important aspects of the company, which will lead to the smooth transition of the company and manage the overall operation in a controlled way. The HR Operation includes employment, administrative services, Job Analysis, employee relationship management, training the employers, giving support services, resolution the support services and others. Further, it is required to maintain adequate staff in the day-to-day business activities and achieve the organizational goal in a collective way.
Issues with the HR in recent Times:
In recent times the HR operation of TESCO and other companies over the glop is facing issues relating to its management. The major reason for such in the pandemic caused by the COVID 19, which has led to several months’ long lockdowns, restriction in operation and others.
Covid 19:
In the early days of the pandemic, the bulk buying and excessive purchase of the customers have vacated the racks of the TESCO, and the employees were being targeted for not having the products, further excessive pressure of the customer was not managed by the existing employees. However, the company cannot just start the hiring process as this crowd will not sustain for a long period of time. Rather due to restrictions made by the government and limiting the number of employees to work in the stores are increasing the difficulties of the HR managers of TESCO.
At this time, the company was facing issues like Employee safety; working culture is working with the personal protection equipment for ensuring customer safety and employee safety. In most case, other companies have switched to work from home for the operational employees; however this is not possible at large for TESCO for operating in the retail sector. It can switch a part of the overall process to Work from home and not the majority. Furter, a lot of employees, are not willing to work in this situation, and the company can not fire its trained and experienced employees in this situation (Tescoplc, 2021).
Hiring new Employees:
In the wake of COVID 19, it has become tough for the company for hiring new employees for the operations. Due to the covid restriction, the consumer prefers to get their grocery and other products to deliver at home. Though the company has an online delivery option, it was contributing only a small percentage of revenue. However, the situation has turned into the opposite, and the company is expecting to get more delivery for which it is required to employ a fresh batch of employees for the online trade. For the online trade and supplies, the company is willing to get at least 16000 staff in total in the COVID 19 situation, which is making an impulsive pressure on the HR operation as fining the reliable employees for the operation and mentioning their safety (Tescoplc 2021. , 2021).
Employee Training:
It is an important task of the HR operations to give adequate taring to its employees so that it can cope up with the operations and process of TESCO. However, in the initial phase, the company is willing to hire temporary employees for the operations. The key issue is giving formal training to a large number of employees in the COVID phases, which is increasing the difficulties of HR. In addition to that, the company is hiring new entrants for the temporal work; thus, it is increasing the cost, and the company will not be able to earn long term benefits from this cost (STANDARD, 2021).
Employee Reward and Recognition:
The employee reward and recognition task of the employment is managed by the HR operations, which increases the commitment of the employees towards the organization. Along with the remuneration, the employees are willing to get the reward and the recognition towards gratitude of the company for working with them. The HR department is required to make a standardised and fair employs rewards and recognition without being biased with their gender, culture, religion and any other aspects (Fadeyi, 2020).
Increase in operational cost :
The HR department will be getting pressure from the higher management for lowering the employee salary and expenses in the way of cutting costs. Further, the company is expecting an increased cost related to employee safety as they are required to give proper personal safety equipment, sanitization, regular checkup, and others which will be increasing the overall cost, and the company is relocated to get this additional burden especially in thus financial overhaul (Johnson et al., 2018).
HR Operation Theory
All of the above-mentioned issues concern threats to the HR operations management of the company and the constant supply of the labour force to the organization by managing the overall costs.
Human Resource Operations Theory:
The objective of the HR strategies is very clear, and it is primarily two outcomes such as engaging more efficient and effective job performance and secondly increasing the commitment of the employees towards the organization and motivating them to perform more. In the section of the report, the discussion will be made on the Four HR theories, which will be helpful in managing the operations of the HR department for Tesco.
Organizational Life Cycle Theory:
As per the organizational Life Cycle Theory, the overall process of origination is considered as the business, and it is developed based on the progress through a predictable sequence of development stages. A system scan is not made or developed in a single period. Rather it can be managed over time by making small and adequate changes in the operations (Pan et al. 2021). The HRM is required to make a model for employee engagement, remuneration, reward and recognition, training and others. However it cannot be made in a day or two. Every organization has different work culture and operations; thus its operations and life cycle will be different. In this case, the company and its HRM should be closely monitoring the same industry companies and their HR operations and implement them into its operations which is fit for it (the Deloitte United States, 2021). The HRM should be looking for the best policy. Rather it should look for the strategy which suits best for this role.
Strategic Contingency Theory
In the strategic and Contingency theory of the HR operations, there are two key aspects which the HR department considers, is that Contingency and strategic.
The contingency aspect relates to the different jobs that the organization is required to manage. In this case, the transaction of the offline store to sell products online, managing the orders, and others will be included in the contingency. The contingency will make the employment and taring of the employees according to the need of the organization. On the contrary, the strategic aspect of this theory is related to the long-term objectives of the company. This theory is majorly based on leader management. When a leader becomes a central part of the organization, then in such case, because of its ability to solve critical issues that others are unable to management become tough to be replaced.
Advantages of the Strategic Contingency theory:
As per this strategy, HR should be emphasizing the problem-solving ability of the individual and bring the leadership qualities of the employee by proper training. According to this theory the HR operations should be required to give more importance to the task or activities which are required to be made for solving the issues or probable issues. In addition to that, this theory suggests that the leader is required to give proper reasoning, which is beneficial for the emerging issues in real views of the world. This theory increases the adaptability of the leadership ability of the employees (Arunprasad, 2017).
General System theory:
In HRM, the general System theory is largely applied as it is focused on the interdisciplinary study of the business process. A system can preview only if its perfectly planed and it conglomerate between the human effort, policies and working integrally. In an origination, the performance and success of the organization are interrelated with the systems that it follows. If there is any change in the system, it will have an effect on the overall system as well. The objective of this strategy is to make an effort for adopting the changes in the external environment and consumer behaviours without affecting the system by making a dynamic system. According to this policy, the HRM is required to make a list of changes, their effect on the other department or overall organization, system dynamics, its constraints, and its mitigation process. According to this strategy, the company should be changing the operations or planned policy at a small level as a part of the pilot project and record the issues, benefits of such change. Based on the resulting outcome, it should make the adequate adjustment to the process based on the outcomes before implementing it to the overall system (Sato, Kobayashi and Shirasaka, 2019).
Transaction cost Theory
At a certain time, the HRM is required to analyse the cost of any substitute policy or employee for making an alternative to the existing system. If the company is willing to get a new employee or implement a new system, mostly in case of outsourcing the jobs relating to HR, it is required to overview this theory. In many cases, the HRM is willing to get replace the human effort with machines and artificial intelligence; this transaction will come at a cost and HRM should be considering the same and comparing the current cost along with the future benefit, saving or obligation along with the issues (Alexander, 2020). The theory relating to this is perfectly described in this theory.
Adoption of the HRM theories by TESCO:
Based on the above discussion, there are certain issues that can be identified, and it is very clear that the issues are alarming in context to the overall system. However, by using the above-described strategy, the company can easily adjust the same and plan accordingly.
Employee Engagement, remuneration and reward:
For the issues like employee engagement, terms of employment, remuneration, reward and recognition, the company can use the Organizational life cycle model. In this, it should be closely monitoring the operations plan for the leading retail stores like the Morison's, Walmart, Amazon, Sainsbury and others. However, the HRM of TESCO should be considering a plant and strategy which fits best according to its overall business process, like if it is willing to make a reward for its recently developing E-commerce business, then in such case it should be considering the number of deliveries, no dispute deliveries and others.
Change form offline and store sales to online sales:
After the effect of Covid, the company is required to plan and employ for its online operations and is required to hire new employees for the delivery Job. Here the stagey and contingency theory should be applied for making the overall process effective. Along with that, for the transaction of current operations to swift into the online sale and order process, the general system theory is also required to be made. The company should be implanting the policy and plan for the delivery operation for its selected store in the initial phase and record the issues relating to delivery, number of wrong items delivered, scanning the products and others and then it should be adopting the modified policy into the overall system.
Use of Artificial Intelligence :
In the modernization of the working and logistic system, the companies are required to adopt new technologies for the operations such as order processing tools, delivery system, rider and order tracking and others which will lead the company in effortless operation also it will increase the efficacy of the company is managing its online operations. However, the change of Human effort to an automated system will come at a cost and here the TESCO is required to implement the Transaction cost theory.
Role of HRM operation in companies’ success
A company and its operation are managed by its employees. Thus, hiring a good and appropriate employee for the job will make a portion of the job done for the company by achieving success. Further, the HR operation takes the part of the overall operational and managing the employee engagement, giving taring and bring the best effort out of them which will help the company to sustain its operation and work in an efficient manner (Ahuja et al, 2019). A company without having a striated and well-controlled HRM can not sustain for a long time, and it will then lead to less employee satisfaction, less employee engagement and commitment towards the company, high employee turnover and others.
Conclusion
The report describes that the operation of the Human resource is crucial for every business on a day-to-day basis. Here the role of HR operations for TESCO is described along with the possible issues. The report includes certain HR tools and theories which is described well and implemented in the emerging issues with the company and its operation.
Reference
Ahuja, J., Panda, T.K., Luthra, S., Kumar, A., Choudhary, S. and Garza-Reyes, J.A., 2019. Do human critical success factors matter in the adoption of sustainable manufacturing practices? Influential mapping analysis of multi-company perspective. Journal of Cleaner Production, 239, p.117981.
Alexander, I.N., 2020. The influence of technological innovations on organization's competitive advantage: Case study on Irish food retail company (Tesco) (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin, National College of Ireland).
Arunprasad, P., 2017. Inevitable knowledge strategy: A paradigm shift in strategic HRM practices to augment firm’s performance. Employee Relations.
Deloitte United States. 2021. Adaptable by Design: A Future-Focused, Fit-for-Purpose HR Operating Model. [online] Available at: <https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/blog/human-capital-blog/2020/hr-operating-model.html> [Accessed 1 November 2021].
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Johnson, S., Robertson, I., Cooper, C.L., Dickinson, J. and Jones, N., 2018. Tesco Bank Wellbeing Case Study. In WELL-BEING (pp. 179-188). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Pan, Y., Froese, F., Liu, N., Hu, Y. and Ye, M., 2021. The adoption of artificial intelligence in employee recruitment: The influence of contextual factors. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-23.
Sato, Y., Kobayashi, N. and Shirasaka, S., 2019. Deriving Challenges through Clarification of Areas to Strengthen the HR System Using A Matrix with the Three Axes of Target Employee, Life Cycle Stage, and HRM Policy Choices. International Journal of Japan Association for Management Systems, 11(1), pp.91-101.
STANDARD, N., Tesco HR chief appointed NHS workforce head.
Tescoplc 2021. . [online] Available at: <https://www.tescoplc.com/media/755761/tes006_ar2020_web_updated_200505.pdf> [Accessed 1 November 2021].
