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Tescos Main Business Objectives Management Essay

Paper Type: Free Essay Subject: Management
Wordcount: 5364 words Published: 1st Jan 2015

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In this assignment, I am going to investigate about the significant roles that Human Resource management shows business in achieving my chosen organisation aims, objectives and the future objective of the organisation. . My selected business is Tesco, which is UK’s largest retailer; it operates in the tertiary sector.

The first task of the assignment is to cover the two human resource model and explain the approaches which have been using in the organisation to achieve the objectives and as well as has to refer at least three key human resource activities of Tesco to evaluate the effectiveness of Tesco human resource management function that are using to meet the objectives.

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Profile of Tesco:

Tesco is recognized to be United Kingdom’s biggest supermarket, dominating in British retail segment with both worldwide sales and domestic market share. It originally caters in food but expanded it scope of service to garments, consumer electronics, customer financial services, internet service, and consumer telecoms. Tesco strategy is determined in long term engagement and based into four key parts namely: core UK industry, non-food industry, retailing services, and international presence In 2004, stores continue to expand from ninety-eight (98) to an anticipated two hundred seven (207) in 2005, half of which will be located in Asia and more than (390) at the end of 2009.  Tesco triumph as the company explains is due to an brilliant Operating Strategy and Management team.

Tesco did start off with self-service supermarkets in the U.S. throughout the 1930 to 1940s. After a few years of operations, Tesco management then realized that selling a wider mixture and larger supply volumes, and employing less staff dramatically lowered product prices. This was the start of large things for the company. Even as everything else crumbled into pieces at some stage in the war, Tesco was at the beginning of its prosperity, thriving in the centre of adversity. It was in the 1940s when Tesco came to Britain to launch self-service stores. About 20 years after, Tesco had become a common name, not only for groceries, but also for fresh food, clothing, and other domestic goods (2009). 

Objectives:

An objectives or target is a goal that must be achieved in order to identify the stated aim. It tends to be a intermediary to long term and set in order to synchronize business action, guides the actions.

Tesco has some objectives which they are working on to achieve the fixed way:

* To become a pleasing place to work by giving their staff the chance to be themselves, actively encouraging their strength and well being and support their work/life equilibrium needs.

* Tesco’s target is to expand their sale of organic manufacture to 1 billion pounds over the next five years.

* Tesco now has a 6.5% market share in Non-food business. Their target is to be as strong in non-food as in food.

Tesco have many objectives in the past, which included:

* Tesco’s target is to enlarge their sale of crude produce to 1 billion pounds over the next five years. This could be done by supplying more organic products, which therefore will raise the number of customers for crude products, and leading to an increase in sales.

The way of the aims and objectives of a business may be achieved through Planning:

Human resource objectives inspire the development of people to be their best in order to meet up the needs of an organization. A successful performance management system as well as department, team and individual business objectives, personal improvement plans, performance appraisal, career planning, etc., aims at enhancing the personnel’s commitment to developing the business durable.

The principal objectives of Personnel services are an efficient and effective workers and payroll system responsive to staff needs collectively with the flexible remuneration system. These objectives can be attained by functioning of different modules, such as budgets and commencements module, candidate tracking module, occupational health and safety module, etc

The main business objectives of Tesco:

 to provide customers with outstanding, unsurprisingly delivered, individual service

to earn the respect of its objects for the values and realize their contribution

to recognize customers better than anyone

to be competitive even on the fundamentals

give customers a broad range of tough relevant promotions in all departments of the store

to give customers what they want under one roof

provide an environment that is easy and pleasant to shop in

upgrade existing stores to the standards that is normal from Tesco

to distinguish Tesco has brilliant people, use this strength to make customers’ shopping pleasant in a way no competitor can

  use intelligence, scale and technology to deliver unassailable value to customers in the whole thing Tesco does

to make the most of profits to provide high returns for shareholders

  advertising should request to all customers in a relevant

The main mission statements of Tesco:

8To be world’s best and biggest supermarket retailer.

8Completely increase value for clients, and to earn their time reliability.

To accomplish the objectives of Tesco plc, the board of director use various types’ approaches. The two main approaches are:

There are 2 main approaches:

8      Pro-active were change is undertaken before it is forced by external events. It is designed.

Customers are the core assets for the biggest retailer business in the world. They constantly think about the customer satisfaction and for this they attempt to make the plan on the basis of outside events that mean what customer needs?

8      Re-active were transform only occurs after the environmental factors force the firm to do something. It is surfacing

As consumers plays the support role in Grocery Retail industry, TESCO approach remains Re-active, were it adopts low price strategy to catch the attention of the middle and lower level customers.

The effectiveness of achieving the objectives of Tesco:

Tesco have been running as a successful business since 1995 from when they overtook Sainsbury’s who were at the time the strongest hypermarket running. Tesco soon changed that and by 2001 proved that they were the UK’s leading supermarket by taking 16.5% of the grocery market. As stated before Tesco is now dominating the market by their present market share of over 27.5% which 12% more than their most competitive rival Sainsbury which is great achievement for Tesco over the past 10 years. Sainsbury did opt to merge with Safeway but this was not an alternative for Sainsbury as it was disallowed by competition authorities. So by Sainsbury being left to support itself it has seemed to manage and by Safeway’s being sold off to Morrison’s, this has identified a few problems as Morrison’s has had difficulty to adjust to Safeway’s which has resulted in a profit warning, Sainsbury seems to be the only major competition which Tesco face as they are the only supermarket which are stabilising their profits and attempting to continue with Tesco.

Tesco have previously and at present proving that they are able to achieve high profits, which again has been proved by their 2.900 million. In order for Tesco to continue or gain further market share they have introduced new stores and goods to attract a wider range of customers as opposite to food orientated products.

Tesco growth has totally affected its competitors greatly specially Sainsbury’s and Safeway as they are having difficulty to keep up their customers. This is due to supermarkets not being able to keep up with current changes in which Tesco is constantly introducing such as the contest of prices and the range of products which they are offering. This is due to numerous issues mainly due to limited profits made by Tesco’s rivals which have controlled them as to what they can offer to customers which has resulted in a loss position.

In response to the current business environment Tesco has paid more concentration into meeting stakeholders interests Tesco is currently looking at other options to keep their sales levels flowing in order to do this they have introduced with other non food stores, as this will aid them to make more and more sales. The environmental factors which are holding Tesco’s back is the decrease in oil which has resulted in an increase in the price which is an issue which has affected all businesses and can not be prevented.

Tesco is going to achieve these objectives by the following ways:

Tesco is always committed to retaining its own position as the UK’s largest supermarket retailer. Customer feedback forms, in-store discussion groups and a continuous analysis of sales figures have enabled Tesco to identify the importance of the key principles of price, quality and service of their business.

The company owes its success to its emphasis on meeting shifting customer needs through service and innovation of new product, while maintaining its commitment to value and quality.

Underlying its business success is a commitment to upholding certain values and working and working philosophy and seeking continuous development in its ethical performance.

Companies are part of the society in which they always operate and must take note of the interests and concerns of many different groups. For Tesco these include its customers, its stuff, its shareholders, its own suppliers and people in the local communities close to its stores and in the world beyond. Each group has expectations of the company which Tesco has to meet and handle if it is to maintain its situation as a leading and successful retailer.

Tesco must provide its customers by providing the goods they want and the service they expect. By meeting customers needs better than its others competitors, Tesco earns profits and creates value for its shareholders as a loyalty.

Tesco, like other large companies, however, recognises that its wider character depends on other things such as its stuff family, its attitude to the environment, its support to the community, and its relationships with suppliers. Also as a leading food retailer, the business must ensure that its provides products which are really safe to eat or use, as well as giving customers advice on matters such as healthy diets.

Tesco expects from its staff in order to achieve this objectives:

Tesco staff:

4Are all retailers, working as a one team.

4Trust and respect each other.

4Respect all customers, the community, suppliers and the competition.

4Strive for personal excellence in everything they do, leaving no stone unturned in order to get it right.

4Are encouraged to take risks, give support and do not blame to others.

4Are rewarded for creating value for their customers.

4Are talked and listened to: and their knowledge is shared with everyone, so that it can be used.

4Have fun, celebrate success and learn from all failure.

Four functions of human resource and how they meet the objectives of Tesco: The following four function of human resource always responsible to meet the organisation’s goals or objectives.

I. Developing the Human Resource Planning:

One of the reasons why Tesco is always successful is because of its excellent human resources department.

These are all the internal and external factors that have to be taken in to account when developing a plan of any organisation.

 Internal factors are:

 Age profile

“Tesco always employs people with different ages. Tesco knows how important it is to balance the age group of its employees, Tesco employees in the over-55 age bracket has soared from 10 per cent of its workforce” . Tesco majority employees are middle aged employees who are more qualified and qualified then younger employees but with younger employees they can pick up and learn from older employees who have been in the business longer.

Training needs

Tesco have to take to account the significance of training its employees who require certain training. Tesco identify individuals training needs by considerate out appraisal, which then Tesco can plan for training. 

Expansion plans

Tesco is already a huge organization spread all around the world, however, it has more plans to expand and grow in other countries to increase the amount of profits. It wants to be more recognisable in other countries and wants to increase its profits and have more people can invest in them.

 Finance

Finance is one of the most important internal factors to be measured when planning. If Tesco does not have enough finance it will fight back and it will have restrictions and limitations to work around, also this will affect the Tesco if it wants to invest in new markets and competitors will have the upper hands. This will have an affect on HR planning because they will have less money to spend on staff such as training and bounces and making work a better and safer environment.

 

External factors

Inflation

Inflation is now becoming more worrying for biggest supermarkets like Tesco.Tesco know that it will be affected by the credit crunch all over the market. This will have an affected on HR planning because when inflation hits an any economy cost of living raises more than doubled.

 Competition

Competition is another very important external factor and should be considered when developing a new plan. We already know that Tesco is a very successful organisations and is known to be one of the UK’s leading supermarket, but still it has to face its competitors like Asda, Sainsbury’s ,Morrison’s and mark Spencer . This will have an affect on HR planning because Tesco well have to compete with other competitors in the market for staff especially when the economy is doing well, they might have to provide better packages or better retirement package to attract the potential people in working for Tesco.

 Taxes 

“Tesco is the UK’s largest supermarket chain. With 440,000 employees it is also the UK’s largest private sector employer”. Tesco is expected to pay huge amount of money to government. Which government use it to pay for Public sectors like, Education, Health career, and finally on security as well.

Government   

 Tesco has to be careful with following government rules and regulation or it could be fine substantial amount money. Government set a numbers of Laws and regulation which should be conceded like Equal Pay Act 1970 and Race Relations Act 1976 and finally The Sex Discrimination Act.

All of these internal and external factors play a vital role in developing the human resource planning for Tesco. These all factors affected the planning process because Tesco had to put these factors into account and consider them in their human resource planning. Without any internal or external factors, the human resources department of Tesco will not the purpose properly and the organization itself will have not been as successful as it is at the instant.

When Tesco go for planning human resources need to take into account the following factors:

a) Local employment trends

Local employment trends tells Tesco about the levels of employment in the area and gives them a common idea of the type of jobs people are reaching and the type of jobs that there are a shortage in.

b) Local skills shortages

Local skills shortages are an important aspect to Tesco’s human resource because it informs them about the lack of people with certain qualities in the local area. This is important as it can be used to compare against the Tesco’s skills criteria for all new employees. If they are looking for certain skills from people and theses are not available then they will either need to negotiation or look elsewhere.

c) Competition for employees

There may be the very few people with top qualities willing to work for a company like Tesco. It would be in the best importance of Tesco to seek and take theses enthusiasts on board.

d) Availability of labour

Availability of labour is very important factor for Tesco. They need to make sure that they are aware of the quantity and quality of workers available when they are recruiting. This understanding will permit them to make right decision when employing people. If there are very few appropriate candidates then they will have to choose someone amongst those. It is important for Tesco to know the availability of workers in their region as this will enable them to prepare and make back up plans for when there is a shortage of suitable people who are willing to work for Tesco.

II. Recruitment and Selection

Tesco recruit the staff for a number of reasons. Initial recruiting is needed when a new store opens and after that there will be a constant need for recruiting due to the changing needs of Tesco and the needs of he employees of the store.

4The growth of Tesco is usually seen with the opening of a new store. The opening of stores means that they need to recruit new employees so that the employees can run the store.

4Resignation, retirement, dismissal also means that recruitment needs to take place in order to replace these workers and keep the business running as before they did.

4Internal promotion means that new recruits are needed when active employees are being promoted to higher positions, which leads to vacancies which can be filled by internal candidates.

III. Training and Development

A general definition of ‘training’ is:

‘The achievement of a body of knowledge and skills which can be applied to a particular job’

Training can be divided into 2 main categories: ‘on the job’ training or ‘off the job training.

1. ‘On the job’ training

This means that the employees obtain their training or development in the workplace itself. An example of this in Tesco is when they recruit a school leaver who has little bit work experience. One of the supervisors will show the new hire what they have to carry out and may show them how this is done.

2. ‘Off the job’ training

This means attending courses which may be in a collage or training centre institute away from the work place. This usually applies when there are insufficient facilities or people to train up the trainees.

Induction

This is an introduction to the any organisation for new employees. It is designed to familiarise new recruits with the organisation, its rules, facilities, policies and key staff.

The induction is must important to both Tesco and their new employees at the same time.

Mentoring

This can take a number of forms. It may involve an experienced member of staff following a new recruit through initial stages after joining the organisation. Mentoring will allow the new member to pick and choose up new ideas quickly and will be more beneficial for the company.

Coaching

Coaching is a term which is becoming increasingly used in association with training in business. It involves an expert helping employees to develop particular skills through explanation, practice and encouragement. Coaching is becoming too popular as a means of developing the skills of senior managers.

Apprenticeships

Traditionally, an apprenticeship involved a trainee working for a period of time with a craftsperson in order to learn a trade.

External training

Sometimes it is very necessary to send staff to do courses elsewhere. This type of training will make the employees more efficient as they won’t be wasting their valuable time on the shop floor trying to figure out what certain buttons on a machine do.

Transferable skills

These are the skills that, once learnt and may be applied in many different situations. The key skills of Application of Number, Communication and Information Technology are movable. This could be for example cashing up till.

Non-transferable skills

These are narrow skills that are job specific; they apply for only to a particular situation. This for example could be the process of dealing with out of date food.

Conclusion on Training and Development

Knowledge and skills of the staff are vital to the success of Tesco. Therefore, they must have to ensure their employees are best trained and that they are always developing day by day.

VI. Performance Management

A business needs to ensure that its employees are performing effectively and efficiently. It will wish to:

4Identify the area which are unsatisfactory

4It may wish to find areas where employees need to be well trained and developed

4It may wish to encourage and incentive good performance – perhaps with performance-related pay in the form of bonuses or pay increases.

Performance management refers to the rehearsal of setting targets, measuring performance against these and suggesting courses of action.

A number of methods may be used to ensure performance the choice will depend upon the business in question.

Performance reviews including appraisals

An increasingly important way of reaching feedback on employee performance is through appraisal. Appraisal may be closed, in which case the report remains classified. More usually the process is open, in which case the evaluate takes an active part in the review process and discusses the results.

Self-appraisals

Self-appraisals involve employees assessing themselves against a progression of criteria.

Peer evaluations

This involves employees on the same level within the organisation assessing to each other. This may mean that managers in different of Tesco monitor each others and write a report.

Measuring individual and group output/production

Tesco employs staff in order to help the organisation sell the products and provide its customers with excellence service. The efforts of the human resources managers will be towards improving the performance of employees and thereby enabling the organisation to attain its objectives. Performance can be calculated in a number of ways:

4Performance through profit

This may means comparing its profit for different years or against its other stores.

4Performance through quality

Today, quality is a word used in all organisations; those provided that service as well as those providing goods. This means that Tesco can use methods such as proposal box for customers to praise customer service or to make complaints against staff. This will permit management to work with the employee in question or to reward them.

Performance through productivity

In Tesco, sales representatives, for example, keep records of sales they make. Tesco can for example, compare two staff at the checkouts working the same shifts to see how fast they are serving the customers, by analysing how many customers they have served. They can use this to determine training needs.

For the management in Tesco to be able to raise the business performance listed above they have to consider both the Internal and external factors for the business environment.

The External factors to be considered within Tesco are as follows:

P → Political

E→ Economic

S→ Social

T→ Technological

L→ Legal

E→ Environmental

Political – This factor consists of the government and parliaments in the Uk as well as the European Commission, Council and European Parliament passing of laws and policy which might affect the business and the way of the business operates and functions. The network of the laws, regulations, commands and court decision presents a complex environment for business. Tesco usually responds to this political factor by studying the potential legislation in order for them to develop a business strategy, which deals with new legal framework within the necessary time period.

Economic: This has effect on Tesco based most principally for two reasons namely:

As it relates to price level changes on the company

The level of economic activity which indicates the universal likelihood of consumer’s expenditure either rising of falling, which affects the company’s sales, wage rates, cost and profit.

The economic environment is mostly determined in Tesco by the following due to the effect they have on the business based on the facts that they are stakeholders in Tesco and they are:

4The Supplier: They provide the organisations with raw materials and components for its needs. Tesco has to buy these at a Price and quality which they can afford and still make profit from it.

4Customers: They influence the growth of Tesco because their demand determines the business manufacture and din which way the goods and services are going to be rendered, at what price for the goods to be sold.

4Government: With the fiscal policies and monetary policies this influences Tesco as in relative to cost and availability of credit, the level of taxation, interest rates and exchange rates. Specially if the company import their goods

4Investor (Existing and Potential): The confidence and the willingness of investors to lend or give money are linked up with the expectations of the future level of the economic activity. The state of the general economic determines the ability of Tesco to borrow money for their investment purposes or for stake and share holders to continue to invest

4 Competitors: They are simply the strong threat to the Tesco in the economic

Social: This makes up the major part of element in the whole Tesco business environment. This is most important because it determines the class of the environment of the business such as Age, Sex, Political facts e.t.c. This has a significant influence the business and the business is being managed as the organisation is made up of people.

Technological: This has a great influence on the ways in which a Tesco operates. Revolutionaries computers have helped in the new products development, Packaging and manufacturing. This also changes the work patterns as most jobs are been done through computers, which has eased the workload of business staffs.

Legal: This factor is a restriction on Tesco. The law sets out the operating conditions for most business which ranges from certain circumstances such as bans of specific items, behaviour. Tesco has to comply with laws on employment, practices such laws are included:

Human Resource Management – Two Models

For any social group to perform its tasks efficiently and effectively achieve its common objectives, the management of its most important resources – the people – is of greatest importance.

Until about the 1970s the task of ‘finding and controlling people’ was handled by Personnel Management which was mostly an administrative function, dealing with the management and control of the subordinates.

The concept of Human Resource Management developed with a verity strategic level of thinking about the nature and role of people (as total 24hr per day human beings) working in organisations which are ‘cultures’ in their own right.

Recent thinking has been moved from the control-based model to the compliance model.

The soft edge of the latter involves eliciting employee commitment and expecting the effectiveness and efficiency to follow.

The hard edge of the latter involves ridding the organisation of unnecessary layers of middle management which, when exposed of control functions, have very little by way of value added.

 

The management task is to cause the people to be as most creative and productive as possible.

Policy Area

Control-Based HRM

Commitment-based HRM

Job design principles

sub-division of work; specific job responsibility – with accountability ; planning separate from implementation

broader jobs; combined planning and implementation; teams

Management Organisation

top-down control and coordination; hierarchy; status symbols

flat structure; shared goals for coordination and control; status minimized

Compensation

fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work; job evaluation and appraisal; individual incentives

reinforcing group achievements; pay geared to skill and other contribution criteria; profit sharing

Employee Voice

Unionised (damage control, bargaining); Non unionised (attitude surveys)

mutual mechanisms for communications and participation; mechanisms for giving employee voice on issues

Labour Management Relations

adversarial

mutuality; joint problem-solving and planning

Management Philosophy

the boss dictates; management obligated to stakeholders

fulfilment of employee’s needs is a goal rather than an end

Key activities of Homan Resource Management:

Efficient and effective Human Resource management is a challenge to all HR professionals. Staffing, training and helping to manage people so that the organization is likely to increase the performance level is imperative to work in a productive manner. Normally, human resource functions are tracking data points on each employee. These might include experiences, capabilities, skills, data, personal histories and payroll records. In the most general sense businesses carry out different activities dealing with managing their approaches to employee benefits and compensation, as well as employee records and personnel policies.

The core Human Resource activities are:

1. Payroll

2. Time and labour management

3. Benefit administration and HR management.

These activities correlate with the HR objectives which are largely the responsibility of Human Resources.

Effective Management of Tesco:

Effective management is making the best use of resources to attain high level of performance thereby successfully achieving its business aims and objectives while still meeting its responsibilities to its Stakeholders, customers and potential and existing investors. Effective management means a lot to Tesco as good and continually running of the business and meeting its aims and objectives are very vital for this reasons the effective and well function management has help Tesco in a lot of ways thereby increasing Tesco effectiveness in the following areas:

4      Been Market leaders running for almost four year beating their competitor to prices, product range and diversification into other leading market product

4     The biggest retail business with their own brand names and product, thereby making them another manufacturer of own products and good range

4      Continual increase in Shares prices thereby provide them with more investors nation and world wide

4     Ability to respond to fast opportunities and sudden threats

4     Strong visionary leadership from the top management to the lowest with powerful management team has helped in the effective management of tescos as they

 

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