Human Resource Management in UK - Essay Example

Human Resource Management Introduction Human resource management is mainly responsible for the management of human assets of an organisation. The main functions that are important in human resource management include recruitment, selection, training, development, retention of employees (Martin 2008). The main focus of the essay is related to strategic human resource management. For the purpose of formulation and implementation of an HR strategy, a fashion chain in the retail industry of UK is selected. Brief information of selected organisation In this segment of the essay, the main focus will be on elaborating the name of the chosen organisation, it size, structure and culture. Name The name of the organisation that is selected is ‘Redesign’. The main intention behind the name of the organisation is to redesign the dressing sense of individuals and generate a positive feeling and developing fashion sense amongst them. The name is selected keeping in consideration the segment of industry in which, the company is operating. Size In the year 2011, the worth of the UK clothing market is around £33.8 billion (UK market leaders 2013). In this amount 57% is contributed by women clothing, footwear and accessories. The company is the leading market share holder in UK women wear categories which also further includes women’s dresses. It is the largest retailer in the teens wear segment of UK on the basis of total revenue and holds about 16.1% of the market. Structure The organisation has a tall organisational structure, which helps in maintaining a hierarchical arrangement of authority, communications, rights and duties (Madura 2007). The organisation Redesign follows a tall structure, which is diagrammatically represented as under: Culture Organisational culture is the collection behaviour shown by human who are the main assets and their actions add meaning to the organisation. They are unique cultural beliefs that are shared between the employees of an organisation. The organisational culture of the company is in compliance with pragmatic organisation culture (Alvesson 2012). The major emphasis of the company is on the customers and external parties of the business. The main focus of the employees is on customer satisfaction. Customers are treated as Gods and all the rules are followed as expected by them. Every employee of the organisation strives hard for meeting the expectations for their client for fulfilment of maximum business. Market Faced By the Organisation and its Main Competition The main focus of the company is on producing excellent results with the use of straight forward methods. The focus is on encouraging teamwork, investing in processes and constantly creating work challenges (Koekemoer and Bird 2004). The main target market of the company includes 9-15 years youngsters who have high interest in the new fashion that are prevailing in the fashion industry. The main focus of the company is value-price approach and tries to deliver the best products and cheapest price available so that its target audience is able to fulfil their expectations from the products. The company has been managing its operation on the local and global market with an intention to facilitate expansion. The quality of services that the company is providing to the customers is the reason behind the high level of popularity amongst the British customers on steady basis. The company aims to hold and retain its position in the retail chain of UK by being one of the leading women cloth retailers. Company has to face high level of competition in the market from the other leaders. For this purpose the company has to constantly redesign its strategies to match and revert to the high level of competition. Some of the major competitors of the company include New Look, Marks and Spencer, Littlewoods Organisation, Debenhams, Tommy Hilfiger, Etam, Mark One, Next and Matalan (Ranking and profiles of UK retailers 2010). These are some of the top players of the fashion industry of UK market and the company faces constant challenges from these to make improvements in its working patterns. Vision and Mission of the company The mission of the company is focussed towards fulfilment of wish of each female which is related to have similar latest styles similar to famous fashion models. The company believes that every female can take the pleasure of fashion despite of their age, shape or size. The main focus of the company is on making them feel cool, funky and trendy all at same time in a constant manner. As one of the major player in the fashion industry of UK, the company is always focussed on trend, in fashion and in style. The mission statement for the company includes “an attempt to enrich lives of its customers, to lead a transformation style in fashion and to help them in survival and fulfil their fashion expectation.” The vision of the company is, “to be trusted, leading fashion retailer and make the best attempt to fulfil the expectations and requirements of its customers.” Goals and Objectives The main goals and objectives of the company are listed as under: To fulfil the expectation of the customers in relation to design, delivery and tailor the outcomes to meet the specific requirements of the customers. To provide a supportive environment for the stakeholders by enabling them to gain knowledge, skills and attitude. To fulfil the philosophy of stated by flexible training partners and also expects that working in this direction will help in fulfilling its vision and mission. To continuously grow and maintain its position amongst the other top fashion retailers of UK. To fulfil the prime objective of maximising sales and levels of profit for marinating its competitive position in the market. Above listed are few of the main goals and objectives, which the company aims to accomplish from its business operations and functionality. Rational behind its Vision, Mission, Goals and Objectives The main rationale behind the vision, mission, goals and objectives of the company are its values and objectives towards its customers and society that it aims to fulfil. The main values of the company include quality, innovation, trust and best financial results. The major objectives of the company revolve around employees, organisation, sales and society (Rees and Porter 2008). Employee objectives of the company relate to higher objectives that are set amongst the staff of the organisation. The company aims at adoption of succession planning which plays a crucial role in developing career paths for employees. The company aims at attracting retaining workforce which has high levels of potential with an intention to transform business and deliver improved performances. Organisational objectives of the company relate to its attempts for regaining its position and maintain its leadership in the cloth retail industry (Rees and Porter 2008). This objective is accomplished by translating the scale and capabilities of the company into superior quality, value and appeal which attracts customers. Further, sales objectives are the objective of the company which requires high level of improvement as it is the main objective. The focus of the company is to maximise its returns which will help in tapping the market and roping in better competitive position. Further, the last objective of the company is related to the responsibility which the company owns as the corporate citizen. All these objectives have played an important role in deigning the vision, missions, goals and objectives of the company. Overall these have been helpful in forming a strong base for business operations and the success of the company. Human Resource Strategy of the Company Human resource management is an important aspect of organisation which is adopted for the purpose of managing people in a well designed manner. The major functions that are covered under the human resource department include staffing, retention, pay and perk, change management, rewards management, etc. It is mainly connected to the socio-economic activities in an organisation and relates to the fulfilment of the goals and objectives of the organisation by retaining the bets employees in the organisation (Erasmus and Schenk 2008). This managerial function has a major role in building cordial employment relations at the work place. The function is equally practices by both business and non-business organisation which includes healthcare, education, etc. It is the responsibility of this department to recruitment right employees at the right place at the right time to make major contribution in improving the organisational effectiveness of the business. The role of human resource is not confined to this aspect only but it also incorporate the role of giving strategic direction to the company which play an imperative role in demonstrating the higher value it gains in organisation (Kaila 2005). The major focus of the strategy is to align the goals and objectives of the HR department with the overall strategy of the including mission, vision, goals and objectives. The major focus of the company is to align the strategies relation to resourcing and recruitment, development, rewards and relations with its overall directions. Every organisation needs to understand that importance of constantly change and upgrade the policies in order to sustain itself in the highly competitive market (Thomas 1996). The major strategies that will be discussed in relation to HR are resourcing, development, reward and employee relations Resourcing The main function of human resource management is to provide the organisation with the right resources at the right place at the right time. For this purpose, recruitment function is given high level of importance in the organisation. Recruitment is that process of organisation which is related to attracting a pool of candidates for the specific job in compliance with their knowledge, skills and attitude. . The HR department of the company involves many processes (Brown 2011). The major steps which are included in this process include scrutinising the applications of the applicants for the post. Further, there is call for application and then an interview in conducted. After the interview there is short listing of the desirable candidates who meet the specific criteria. After the interview the next stage relates to negotiation for salary to be given and finally the job allocation. Resourcing is the most important function and following the above discuss steps by step strategy indicates the level of importance that is given to this aspect by the company. The step of resourcing is given such a high level of importance as all other functions are directly related to this function. If the organisations are able to recruit the right human resources it can be assured of its high level of organisation effectiveness (Gatewood, Field and Barrick 2010). Keeping this point into consideration the company makes the attempt to recruit the employees who are loyal and highly productive. Thus, resourcing is the main focus of redesign in the context of human resource management. Development The company has also been laying high level of focus and attention to training and development which is the next important aspect of HR after the selection of desirable candidates. Every year the company employs new staff and in order to make them ready for performing managerial function it is important to impart them with right training and development (Hale 2006). The company provides clear opportunity to the employees so that they get clear opportunity for displaying their talent and polish it to bring out desirable results, each employee is given similar opportunity to develop knowledge and learn aspects to improvise its performance (Barrow 2003). At some instances the company also rolls in some of the specialist training companies like fishmongers and bakers to provide well recognised and quality training to the employees. Further, the training program of the company progresses on a well defined path which teaches them about the next level of their job in a step-by-step process. The company makes use of effective communication and consultation practices under training program to derive the best results from training the employees (Cartwright 2003). Overall the focus of the company is to polish the employees to improve their performance and achieve best results for the organisation. Reward The company understands the importance and significance of rewards and makes use of well channelized system for providing adequate compensation and rewards to the employees. The company makes use of pay for performance for designing the compensation for its employees. Pay for performance is the best practices which can be followed by the company as it constantly motivates employees for improving their performance. The pay for performance concept makes use of base salary and risk element (Shields 2007). The employees are able to gain the basic pay but they only get the risk element when they are able to match the high standards of benchmarks. Along with this, the company also has a long term rewards strategy across all its markets in which it is operating (Heneman and Werner 2005). The employees are able to gain discount in all its stores and in some big projects the employees all have a share in bonus from the growing market. The company is still working on deigning of a refined reward strategy but because of a complexity of the issue its makes use of multiple programs simultaneously to meet the requirements of its staff. Relations The main focus of the company is to build cordial relations with its employees which also play an important role in increasing their productivity by positively motivating them. One of the main attempts of the company in direction of building good relations with its employees is to encourage workers to work near their homes which will also save on time spent in transit (Rose 2008). The company also gives them easy options of transfers so that they do not have to leave the job because of residential shifts. The company has always directed its employees and promotes unity in the company by maintaining easy exchange of information. Since the company employs employees from different cultural and societal background it also becomes the responsibility of the company to take an initiative to develop a healthy environment in the work place. The company also provides complete training in relation to disaster management so that employees are capable of facing any strange situation that might generate suddenly (Dicker 2003). Along with this, employees’ feedback in relation to the task of the organisation is also respected. They are collected on regular basis and the management of the company makes sure that they make use of this feedback (Farnham 2000). This helps in building feeling of care and sense amongst the employees and final results in cordial relations among two parties. Thus, overall it is clear that the main strategy adopted by the company for building relation is to give high level of value and priority to the employees and their ideas in organisational functioning. Conclusion Human resource strategy is the most significant managerial function of the organisation. It is very important the organisations are able to fulfil the specific criteria in relation to recruitment, development, rewards and relations to achieve organisational effectiveness and performance. Overall, Redesign has been able to understand the importance of human resource and laid focus on building a strong human resource department by paying high level of attention to all its HR related managerial function. 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