Training, Developing, and Rewarding Employees at Tesco - Assignment Example

Training, Developing, and Rewarding Employees at Tesco s Executive summary Employeesand organisational performance are in separable. A company’s performance is determined by the way in which the workforce is treated. However, these employees have varied needs. This means that they the human resource needs to have varied ways of enhancing staff performance. The provision of non-financial benefits such as training and career development opportunities, reward and recognition make employees to be easily retained in the firm thus boosting their morale and job satisfaction. Employee motivation and job satisfaction plays a very crucial in the increased performance of a firm. A motivated workforce results in increased performance, thus an improvement of the firm’s profitability. Therefore, Tesco may motivate its staff by way of providing monetary rewards, non-financial rewards, training, and development. Training is of increasing significance of firms seeking to gain competitive advantage amongst the competitors. Various schools of thought have come to a conclusion that training and development is a human resource practice that may considerably influence the success of a company. Tesco’s growth could be improved by use of on the job-training, mentorship programs, coaching programs, use online marketing tools, and evaluating the effectiveness of the training and development programs. The other element that can affect the performance of a firm is reward. The provision of financial and non-financial rewards impact positively on the firm’s performance, financial gain, and employee motivation, and job satisfaction. Both the monetary incentives and non-monetary benefits, such as work-life balance, flexible working hours, rewards and recognition, leave, and vacation time not only motivate employees, but also staff turnover. As a result, there is proportionate correlation between rewards, training, learning, and development, with firm performance and growth. Introduction The universal competition and rapid changes put emphasis on the significance of human capital within a firm. An organisation’s success depends on the performance of the employees. Employees are considered as essential resources in the growth and development of the firm. In this regard, the success and growth of an organisation in any industry is reliant on its human resources. Even though there are numerous factors that play a major role, a firm needs to have effective employees in order to stay competitive and financially solvent. Motivation and satisfaction are viewed as the core element in the development of human capital in any organization. To that effect, for the employees to be retained and motivated, they need to rewarded, trained, and further their careers as they work. This is because the manner in which the employees are treated will have an impact of the company performance. Therefore, drawing on a variety of sources the business report will discuss the training, learning, and development, and rewards and provide recommendations to Tesco’s as a graduate trainee in the human resource (HR) department. Discussion Most firms are striving to have employees who have the capability to adapt quickly to the ever-changing business environment, thus investing in an on-going employee development. Measured by profits, Tesco is the third largest retailer on a global scale. Therefore, the reduction of profits in 2014, would negatively impact on the positioning of the firm in the coming years. The firm can reposition itself by focusing on its employees. For Tesco to turn around its falling profits and sales, together with the share price, it needs to train, develop, and reward its workforce. This would in turn motivate the employees, retain them, and also make them to be satisfied with their current employers. Motivation is what makes people have that drive to do something. As a result, it initiates, guides and maintains the goal-oriented behaviours (Cole, 1997, p.16). The motivated people include those who have consciously made a decision to devote considerable effort to achieve something that they greatly value. A motivated person will carry out his or her duties actively and industriously (Asghar and Akram, 2012, p.1). However, what they value differ greatly from one individual to another is why employers adopt various motivation and retention strategies to take care of the varied needs of the employees. Some employees can be motivated or satisfied with their jobs via financial and non-financial rewards, while via training, learning, and development. Batool and Batool (2012, p.59) assert that the elements of training and development include training design and quality, and learning experience. The Tesco workers need to be trained, educated, and develop their careers. The general advantages of training and developing employees consist of the following (Elnaga and Aimran, 2013, pp. 137-138): increased employee motivation, increased job satisfaction among employees, increased efficiencies in processes leading to financial gain, improved capacities to adopt new methods and technologies, risk management, reduce employee turnover, and innovation is also increased by bringing in new strengths to existing strategies, products, and the capacity of the company to adopt new technologies and methods. As cited by Sage (2010, p.185), the aim of training and development programs is to enhance the capabilities of the employees as well as organization. If an organisation invests in improving the employees’ knowledge and skills, the investment would be returned in the form of more effective and high performing employees. A study Vemic (2007, p.211) reported that most organisations invest about 3% to 6% of the total revenue in education. As a result, large organisations use a lot of funds in the provision of new skills and knowledge to the employees. Therefore, Tesco needs to ensure that it uses cost-friendly training and development programs. Tesco can hire trainers or use mentors. However, the hiring of the trainers can be costly to the firm. Therefore, the new employees will be assigned older and experienced staff that will act as their mentors and coaches in the firm. These mentors will not only act as their supervisors, but also serve as their guardians in the firm. Human resource studies have shown that mentorship programs improve employee confidence and job satisfaction. In this regard, the mentorship programs will be not only enhancing the worker’s capabilities, but also the organizational capabilities. Mentorship programs are one of the main channels of maintaining and improving the intellectual capital. This is cost effective since hiring of professional trainers is costly. Effective training and development programs take into consideration that employees are adult learner (Sage, 2010, p.186). According to Knowle’s (1990) theory of adult learning, adults are self directed and bring more work-linked experience in the learning situation. Therefore, by having a problem-centered approach implies that the employees will learn better by learning how deal with problems that they encounter at the workplace. To that effect, coaching and mentoring, as well as training are greatly valued by a large number of employees. Noe (2013, p.34) notes that spontaneous coaching is required since it is the most effective way of assisting employees in becoming more productive. As of 2013, studies had demonstrated that average cost of training a single employee was £800. Considering that the firm does not have a strong financial base, coaching will be done in groups so as to coach numerous people with one resource person anywhere and at any time. It is not only cost effective, but also saves time. Using the Roger Kaufmans theory of evaluation, micro levels will be designed to evaluate the small groups along with individuals. Organizations need to realise that learning and new knowledge are the key to growth and success (Vemic, 2007, p. 209). Since Tesco needs to make investments in improving the skills and knowledge of its entire employees, these investments should be returned in the form of more effective and productive employees. Therefore, so as to maximise on the efficiency of training and development, Tesco will continuously conduct assessments of their employee’s current training and developmental requirements in order to prepare them for their next positions. The assessment will be done by internal supervisors sourced from Tesco who will be provided with an incentive on the completion of the program. This is cost effective to the company since external assessors charge elevated fees. As a cost-effective strategy, the firm will source trainers within Tesco who will use professional training approaches including use of slide shows, videos and white boards besides the written material to keep the participants involved. The effective of training in relation employee turnover lies in the strategic approach used (Brum, 2007, p.2). Firms seek to attain organizational goals via various HR approaches. One such approach Tesco can use is the commitment strategy. The approach creates a psychological connection between the worker and company. By retaining the employees, the firm would not incur the training costs of the hired new employees. Besides that, the odds of the employee to look for employment elsewhere are reduced. It has also been evidenced that provision of lower levels of training can make the employee leave the organization to a competitor. Mobile technology companies such as Vodafone and Nokia have invested heavily in high quality training programs for their staff. This is aimed at increasing innovation and invention in order to gain competitive advantage. Therefore, Tesco also needs to provide high quality training and development programs to not only reduce the chances of employee migration, but also enhance the employees’ capabilities to perform complex tasks with ease. Training can be either on-the-job or off-the-job (Noe, 2013, p.41). The firm will on-the-job training that will be focused on the short-term and long-term goals of Tesco. For instance, in the short-term it needs to improve productivity, while in the long run, it would lead to the creation of a good customer relationship between the customers and Tesco. The firm also needs to establish the weak areas where off-the-job training would prove to be of significance such as strategic geographical coverage. This will be attained through on-site training that will be scheduled multiple times per year on a reduced training cost. So as to increase sales, a firm needs to train its sales personnel on how to use the social networks as marketing avenues. For example, Wal-Mart, Barclays, GlaxoSmithKline, and Unilever and other global businesses in the United Kingdom have incorporated the online selling channels, such as social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), video-sharing sites (YouTube), micro-blogging sites (Twitter), and photo sharing (Instagram), among many others in their sales departments. The use of social networks as marketing channels will ensure that Tesco’s products are sold to a wider customer base. Besides, in the past five years, more people have been shifting to online shopping since it is convenient and time saving as compared to physical store shopping. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Greggs, Gneral Motors, Benteley Motors, and Debenham among other have preserved their competitive advantage by training and preserving the skilled workers. Therefore, Tesco can follow suit by training and developing the employees and preserving by providing them with additional incentives. Ogaboh, Nkpoyen, and Ushie (2010, p. 105) are of the opinion that the provision of career development programs can be used as an employee retention strategy. Planning and development of career clarifies the match between organizational and individual employee goals. Moreover, ones self confidence is built. The major challenge of employing career development as an employee retention strategy is that it is quite costly to conduct check-ins for employees. This can be overcome by reducing the number of check-ins. In the present day businesses survival is of the essence (Vemic, 2007, p.211). Survival can only be attained a motivated workforce, which results in increased organisational performance and financial gain for the company. As evidenced in the research by Abdullah and Wan (2013, p. 1085), there is a linear relationship between rewards and job satisfaction, organisational performance, employee turnover, and the firm’s financial gain. In this regard, the provision of rewards can be used to motivate the employees. Tesco should provide both monetary and non-monetary rewards to motivate its employees. Traditionally, most employees are influenced by attractive financial packages. According to Maslow’s theory of motivation, one is always motivated by a need. As a physical need, compensation affects influence motivation which in turn will affect the employee performance (Asghar and Akram, 2012, p.2). The Taylor’s Theory that was developed by Fredrick Taylor postulates that money is the driving force for work (Eriksson-Zetterquist, Müllern, and Styhre, 2011, p.84). The well-remunerated employees at Tesco would be highly motivated, and thus increased performance leadint to increased financial gain for the company. According to a view shared by Ballentine, McKenzie, Wysocki, and Kepne (2005, p. 1), the monetary rewards to be issued to Tesco employees can be in the form of increased salary, insurance programs, project bonuses, project sharing, paid vacational time, and pension plans. The cash rewards mantain a positive and motivated environment for the employees. A motivated workforce forms the basis for improved growth and development of the firm. Pursuing this further, the non-monetary benefits affect the employees’ motivation. Herzberg (1957) proposed that employees are driven to work by two factors: motivation and hygiene factors (Harunavamwe & Kanengoni, 2012), p.3930). Employees are motivated by both financial and non-financial rewards (Cheema, Shujaat, and Alam, 2013, p. 2). However, the aim of non-monetary benefits is to reward the workers for their excellent job performance via opportunities. Most of the employees quit organisations due to dissatisfaction for better working environments, work life balance, job security, rewards and recognition, opportunities, and better working hours (Batool and Batool, 2012, p.60), as well as sabbaticals (Ballentine, McKenzie, Wysocki, and Kepne, 2005, p. 1). To alleviate this problem, Tesco needs to motivate its employees non-financially by the provision of better flexible working hours, leaves, vocational time, work-life balance, recognition awards, and overtime. Since the firm is currently cash strapped, the firm can use these non-monetary rewards since they reinforce positive behaviors and also reduce employee turnover (Manzoor, 2011, p.37). Studies have indicated that even though financial and non-financial rewards can motivate employees and result in job satisfaction and low employee turnover, the non-monetary benefits have been found to specifically lead to better organizational performance due to a motivated staff. Performance based bonus should be given to ensure that performance linked to the bonus, whereby a worker has the capability to relate his or her performance with the firm’s profits and hence will get motivated to work hard. Yousaf, Latif, Aslam and Saddiqui (2014, p. 1776) conclusively remark that the major function of the HR department is to implement practices that increase employee job satisfaction and motivation. The workers expect monetary and non-monetary incentives as a reward for their efforts and services. In the absence of training and development, rewards, and recognition, the workers get dissatisfied and under-perform. Conclusion In summary, employees are very crucial in determining the growth and development of Tesco. The firm can improve its operation by investing in its employees through monetary and non-monetary rewards, training, learning, and development. These not only reduces employee turnover, but also motivates the employees and enhance job satisfaction. There is positive a link between employee motivation, staff motivation, increased job satisfaction among employees, increased efficiencies in processes leading to monetary gain, improved capacities to adopt new skills and knowledge, and reduction in employee turnover and provision of both monetary and monetary rewards, training, learning, and development programs. When the employees are not rewarded and trained and developed, they will demoralised and eventually leave the firm through termination or layoffs. References Abdullah, Alkhaliel, and Wan, Hooi. 2013. “Relationships of non-monetary incentives, job satisfaction, and employee job performance,” International Review of Management and Business Research , 2 (4), 1085-1091. Asghar, A., and Akram, M. N. 2012. “Impact of financial rewards on employee motivation and satisfaction.” Global Journal of Management of Business Research, 12 (17), 1-7. Ballentine, A., McKenzie, N., Wysocki, A., and Kepne, K. 2005. 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Training and developing employess. Retrieved March 23, 2015, from http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/26858_7.pdf Vemic, Jelena. 2007. “Employee training and development and the learning organization,” Economics and Organization , 4 (2), 209-216. Yousaf, Sahira., Latif, Madiha., Aslam, Sumaira, and Saddiqui, Aman. 2014. “Impact of financial and non financial rewards on employee motivation,” Middle East Journal of Scientific Research , 21 (10), 1776-1786. Read More