Organisations Learning and Development of B&Q Home Improvement Retailer in the United Kingdom - Essay Example

? Organisations Learning and Development B&Q, UK Introduction Organisations operate in tough and competitive markets, which pose continuous challengeto their performance, profits and sustenance. Contemporary management lays much emphasis on employees that work for an organisation because organisations’ performance is majorly dependent upon their employees’ performance, motivation and commitment. Changing customer expectations, varying market trends, innovative products and services are all compelling organisations to be prepared to face tough times in their businesses. For this, organisations rely on their employees’ capabilities; furthermore, these challenges necessitate constant upgradation and acquisition of new skills and capabilities to continue to perform by bringing newer approaches, products and services. To help employees acquire these capabilities and to hone their existing skills, many organisations are investing heavily on learning and developmental activities, which will help in achieving changing organisational objectives. Learning and developmental activities are also employed to motivate and retain skilled and experienced employees, which will not only enhance organisational capabilities but also save costs. The present discussion is based on organisational learning and development at UK-based B&Q, a leader in do-it-yourself retail home improvement sector. B&Q is the biggest home improvement retailer in the United Kingdom and have maximum customers than any other retailer in this sector. B&Q offers more than 40,000 do-it-yourself (DIY) products, which certainly requires highly talented and skilled staff that prepares such diverse products. B&Q employs more than 25000 full time employees in their retail stores in the UK. Started in 1969 by Richard Block and David Quayle, this store has about 321 stores in the UK and more than 50 stores in Ireland and other countries. Apart from numerous other awards and recognitions, B&Q has been winning the Gallup Great Workplace award in 2010 for four consecutive years for highest employee engagement and productivity in the world. This exemplary performance of B&Q is credited to its employees’ contribution, which is supported and promoted by workplace policies and practices followed at B&Q. B&Q’s main office is located at Southampton, and is referred to as Store Support Office, from where their HR function provides specific learning and developmental opportunities and support to its employees in different locations. Their HR team works closely with organisation development team to improve performance through identifying, shaping and supporting initiatives meant for employee learning and development (About B&Q, n.d). Argyris (1999) emphasizes that contemporary management views effective organisational strategy as that which promotes continual development of new understandings, models, and practices; this management aspect is referred to as organisational learning. From this perspective, organisational learning is one of the crucial tasks in strategic management. Organisations that encourage creativity, employee empowerment and involvement require employees to be continually learning and developing new skills and competencies that can help in their performance and contribution; this is more crucial for organisations that produce innovative products and services. Moreover, for employee empowerment to be effective, employees must have the knowledge and skills to make logical and correct business decisions. Although employees come with some learning through education and prior experience, learning at organisation should continue for many reasons. Workplace learning helps in maintaining high motivation and enthusiasm of the employees. This is demonstrated in statement made by Glendinning, the Business Services Manager in Finance department of B&Q: ‘It is a big part of my job to always be thinking ahead, to be able to analyse my current performance, to be a good team manager and of course to hit my sales targets. B&Q are a great support in getting me where I need to be with helpful career planning and honest feedback’ ( n.d). A job or work that requires high creativity and futuristic thinking approach also requires immense knowledge about the products, market, services, types of customers, and other technical skills, which keep changing from time to time. Hence, continuous learning and development of new skills and competencies becomes extremely important for the business and employees’ performance. B&Q’s investment of ? 2 million in staff training on designing home interiors made big news in the UK. The company invested for training 17000 staff members on City & Guilds courses in 13 regional centres. B&Q’s main priority for this initiative was to have highly self-reliant, knowledgeable and skilled staff that can offer trusted service and attract more customers (Hiscott, 2009). This in-house training has been so effective that it qualifies as national qualification, as per City and Guilds accreditation (2008). City & Guilds (2009) quoted, ‘B&Q is committed to raising the skills levels of its employees at all levels and already has a robust training plan in place for employees of all levels. Training ranges from basic skills, through to leadership and management training and can be done on the job, in a classroom or through remote access. Learning from feedback is given special importance at B&Q, an approach that is implemented by managers through one-to-one sessions with their employees. Besides this, B&Q’s performance management is linked to its strategic objectives of driving sales, reinventing the business and changing the way it works; and is measured through communications strategy by which it conducts online feedback surveys after specific events. The outcomes of these surveys are converted into briefing packs and other media such as DVDs or interactive games and are distributed via road shows by its managers to all its employees. These objectives and learning become the training and development activities. Implementation of skills and knowledge acquired from training and developmental activities are then tested through sustainable employee performance, which is further linked with their compensation and pay rises. Moreover, managers’ appraisal is directly linked with employee engagement score at B&Q. The connection between company and individual performance, employee training and reward, permeates all areas of the company, not just the shop floor (Hjul, 2007). Knowledge sharing practices at B&Q are profoundly demonstrated through its employee engagement strategies. The most noted strategy is their ‘one planet home’ strategy dedicated to greener environment, which required about 30,000 B&Q employees to share their own ideas with each other and with customers about improving their environment and business. In this article, Beavis (2011) concluded that the scheme was enormously successful in delivering the sustainability message in a highly interactive way. It carried a public campaign into the homes of B&Q staff who could in turn talk to B&Q customers with greater authority about how to start making a difference. This practice not only helped in immense employee engagement but also sharing of ideas helped in using immense knowledge potential of its employees. An organisation that supports innovation and employee empowerment greatly benefits from team working. Learning and development are positively correlated with social support in case of human development (Anderson-Butcher, Lawson & Barkdull, 2002). The same principle can be extended to employees at workplace. Team working promotes learning and development from each other through empowerment. Such interactions and support provide employees powerful learning and information. This is facilitated at B&Q through its work ethics, which promotes ‘The B&Q family’ through creation of belongingness; providing support and encouragement to each other; real team work; and fun from being with each other (Armstrong & Brown, 2006). However, it is also important for leaders to ensure all employees fully understand organisational values and ethics. They should also ensure team members adhere to work ethics and contribute to organisational growth through honesty, integrity and commitment. This can be fostered by assigning measurement metrics to performance, commitment and contribution to teamwork. Many factors impact learning and development in an organisation, which include organisational culture, leadership, systems, climate and structure (Lussier & Achua, 2009) Culture that supports openness, creativity and experimentation help employees to acquire, process and share information. These cultures also allow and encourage employees to take calculated risks in order to innovate new ways of working and also making new products (Cummings & Worley, 2008). Employee-engagement strategy at B&Q demonstrates learning culture that it fosters. Secondly, the work ethics that encourage team working and belongingness further increase opportunities to learn from each other. Leadership forms the most critical factor because it directly influences all other factors in promoting learning and development. Linking managers’ performance measurement with their employees’ sustainable performance partly ensures effective leadership in terms of developing their employees to achieve desired results. Secondly, feedback sessions help in identifying gaps in performance, which can be addressed through appropriate training and coaching. Leaders/managers play the main role in driving desired organisational culture, which is aligned to organisational strategy. Leaders also play a significant role in putting in right systems that foster learning and development. For instance, HR executives and managers design training plans in consultation with store managers. Store managers own the responsibility of identifying their staff members’ training gaps. Moreover, managers play an important role in disseminating information obtained from various surveys in the right manner so that employees work on the feedback and cause better results. Senior leaders decide the organisational structure that can be conducive to more learning and development. Structure with lesser hierarchical levels promotes better learning and empowerment. Employees will be motivated to take on higher responsibilities and learn tougher aspects of their job. Practices followed at B&Q such as the employment-engagement strategy, communication and involvement, rewards and recognition, feedback and monitoring lead to enhanced commitment. As quoted by Will Astill, B&Q’s Reward Manager, ‘engaged employees will go beyond the strict boundaries of the job and offer better service. This means customers become more loyal and increase their overall spend thereby boosting profits’ (qtd in Armstrong, 2007; p.146). Further, B&Q believes in employing diversified workforce that can bring different perspectives at work, which can be capitalized to encourage creativity, understand different segments of customers, create more business, and foster a healthy work atmosphere through equality. Diversity is a great tool to increase learning and development through team work. Other platforms for encouraging learning and development include information, technology, professional training and certifications. B&Q makes optimum use of the IT systems to impart training and knowledge to its employees. It uses computer-based training with locally run DVD-ROMS and network management tools to provide and track trainings, respectively (Perry, 2006). Learning and development activities come with varied benefits. For instance, knowledge sharing through various practices not only helps knowledge transfer within the organisation but also improves working relationships and environment, which impacts customer satisfaction and organisational growth. Knowledge sharing also helps organisations to create skill contingencies and knowledge pools that are spread across the organisation and not limited to specific group. This will come to rescue whenever few employees leave the organisation. Training from experts within the organisation or from superiors will be beneficial as they would possess exact knowledge and expertise of the work being performed. Secondly, such training can be linked to specific outcomes as well as eventually measured for effectiveness. Trainings organised by external agencies will help in acquiring new perspectives and understand market trends, as done at B&Q by City & Guilds (2009). These approaches also have certain limitations such as, in-house training limits exposure to external factors. Secondly, training schedule is highly vulnerable to other emergencies or workload. Moreover, such training can inhibit openness in discussing critical issues related to work or superiors. Knowledge sharing will be effective only through strong team work and collaboration, which would require strong leadership support. In conclusion, for organisations to sustain their position and to continue to perform, learning and development must be adopted as one of their key strategies. Organisational learning and development should be interwoven with organisational culture, systems, structure and its HRM; leadership holds most crucial responsibility in making this happen at all levels. B&Q’s immense success is partly attributed to its values and policies, which foster employee learning and development. This is evident from its motivated employees, their commitment to creativity, skills and performance. Employee motivation results in employee satisfaction, which translates into customer satisfaction and continuing growth of business at B&Q. However, to continue their top market position, B&Q should continue to explore new niches that can be captured while involving employees in this process through in-house and external training, team-based learning and activities; implement other knowledge sharing processes that can retain knowledge even when employees move out. References About B&Q. n.d. History of B&Q. www.diy.com. Viewed 16 August 2011 from, http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/corporate/content/about/index.jsp Anderson-Butcher, D., Lawson, H.A. & Barkdull, C. 2002. An evaluation of child welfare design teams in four states. Journal of Health and Social Policy, 15(3-4), 131-162. Argyris, C. 1999. On organizational learning. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Armstrong, M and Brown, D. 2006. The Reward Environment. In Strategic reward: making it happen. London: Kogan Page Publishers. (Ch.5; pp:73-90). Armstrong, M. 2007. Engagement and Organisational commitment. 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