Organization Gender and Culture - Case Study Example

? How can Tesco fulfil its need to adapt to changes in its workforce? Table of Contents Introduction 3 Workforce planning 4 Conclusion 6 Recommendations 7 References 9 Introduction Tesco PLC is the second largest multinational company in the world grocery industry in terms of profit. It has its headquarters at Hertfordshire, England. The brand has a work force of 537,784 across the globe. Almost 86% of the business comes from the markets in United Kingdom (Simms, 2007, p.17). However, it has also opened stores in United States of America in order to expand and diversify its business. The company earned revenue of ?64.826 billion as on 2013 from its 6351 stores across the world. In terms of profit it is the second largest player and in terms of revenue it is the third largest after Walmart and Carrefour, who are the main competitors of the brand. For carrying out its operations, Tesco employs people both in store oriented and non store oriented jobs. For the stores it requires staff for a variety of activities like customer care staff, inventory managers, supervisors, stock takers etc (Humby, Hunt and Phillips, 2006, p.39). For successful distribution of products the company needs people who are well equipped with logistic management skills. The corporate office has people performing mainly the senior management roles like Finance Management, Marketing Management, Human Resource Management, Accounts Department, Production Control, Information Technology Department and Legal Departments. Tesco aspires to make sure that all functions work in harmony to steer its business goals. In order to do that, the company has to ensure that it employs the right people in the accurate work at the correct time. To accomplish this, the company has structured a method for staffing and selecting employees for managerial as well as operational roles (Argyris and Schon, 1978, p.987). Workforce planning Tesco like every successful organisation is involved in the process of planning which entails an analysis of the prospective needs of the company in terms of staff. They need to analyse how many more staff that they need, what skills they should possess and where should they be recruited from and put into operation (Hackman and Craig, 2008, p.543). It permits the company to map how these wants is to be met by indulging in recruitment and training. Tesco essentially needs to plan ahead of its inception of the work. A dynamic organisation hires new employees on a daily basis for all the variety of activities that the people in the organisation perform. Vacancies are created in the organisation when the company opens up new stores or expands in the present location. Positions are also opened due to employee attrition in the company. They might switch jobs or retire from the company after the end of their tenure of service. When an employee of one department gets promoted to a higher rank the previous position also needs to be filled. New openings are also created when the company changes processes or adapts to a new technology. This entire exercise is done for both management and non management position. The objective behind this is to understand the demand for workforce in a particular year for various departments. The reports at the end of every quarter gives an estimate of how many people would be required for the operations and accordingly Tesco manipulates the needs of staffing as per necessity of departments (Ravasi, and Schultz, 2006,p.654). By this the company can buy some time for planning and flexibility for meeting the demands of the employees. It helps the company in achieving the organisational goals and short terms objectives as well (Cummings, and Worley, p.67). They consider it as Talent Planning which in turn helps in motivating the people to do their work with efficiency and precision. They also encourage the staff to progress in their careers. The job descriptions for the various positions have to be free from any ambiguity and each person needs to understand his work and know his scope of action. The appraisal system which takes place annually is designed in such a manner that the people can move up their career ladder easily. Employees are given freedom to choose the roles they would like to play in the organisation. Thus the business objectives of the organisation merge with the personal goals of the employees. In this scenario any kind of change in the work force has to be accepted by the organisation or the existing employees. When a situation of change arises that has to be recognised and it has to me moulded according to the needs of the organisation. Regular training and development programmes are essential for the progress of any dynamic organisation (Mills, 1988, p.334). The implementation of change would be successful if the following criteria are met. If the employee benefits are managed well and the problems of the stakeholders are addressed properly, then the business can achieve a lot. A proper analysis of the costs, benefits and the risks involved is essential which would lead to a proper assessment of the future duties. This would help the company get the backing of the employees in every step of action that the company takes. The sequence of these steps should be coordinated and well organised. Now a day due to the advancement of technology, the outside world influences the employees in an organisation and in turn the culture of the organisation. When a technology change is supposed to occur, Tesco should adapt to that technology so that the company is not left behind in the race of the organisations and also the employees are well equipped with the new technology (Barney, 1986, p.90). This kind of change is complemented with introduction of training and development of the employees who are laid back in terms of adoption in culture. This has to be undertaken across the departments and levels of hierarchy. For new technology introduction the company should also spend on its Research and Development activities (Patrick, Burkhart and Suzanne, 1993, p.678). When such a change is implemented there naturally a situation of resistance may arise. In that scenario, steps have to be taken to motivate the people to accept the new change and it has to be pointed out to them that it is being done only to their benefit. For examples when computers were newly introduced in the organisation there was resistance especially from the old people because they were not accustomed to using the new technology and was hesitant about future use. But they had to be trained in the proper way to make themselves connect easily to the new progress (Hofstede and Geert, 1980, p.65). Conclusion Organization’s culture depends on its employees. The workforce change does not only means hiring or reducing more employees in the organization. Work force change means managing the workforce properly. Following a process change or a technology change Tesco needs to manage its entire workforce properly. (Bradford and Burke, 2005, p.863) Tesco has a proper workforce planning, time to time it needs to hire new workforce according to the department requirement. For proper talent management Tesco introduced proper training and development facilities. Through structured training and development an employee can also grow. Tesco evaluates its employee’s performance through the performance appraisal system. Through the performance appraisal system, Tesco finds out the problem associated with the employee’s performance and give them the opportunity to get training to solve the problem. In this way, the employees as well the company also grow (Kotter and Heskett, 1992, p.777). Recommendations Adaptation: Any change is not comfortable for the employees and the management both. Organization needs to adopt changes because in this competitive world stagnancy could lead to a failure for any organization. The work force change management includes several steps: (DuBrin, 2007, p.45). The stage of consideration: In the stage of consideration, Tesco needs to consider the factor how much change is required in the work force, why they need these change and what should be the effort to maintain the changed workforce. Change can be occurred for up gradation of any technology, by adopting any changes in the process. Consultation: This is the second stage where the management needs to consult the changes with the employees. Employees need to understand why the change is happening and how they will be benefited from the changes in future. Here, Coordination and communication is best possible ways to convey the need of the changes. Without consultation employees will not feel secure (Taylor & Hansen, 2005, p.1211). Implementation: It is important to know the previous effect of any changes happened in the organization. It is important to know what did work and what did not work. In this process, it is needed to show the senior leaders involvement in the change process to motivate the employees for the change (Lewin, 1958, p.876). Review: The last and important part is reviewing the entire process. For analysis the success of implementation, it is necessary to review the work. Work force change process is a continuous process. Initially it is not accepted that the change will come very smoothly because human beings are reluctant to change (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995, p.112). With the work force changes various issues are related like, change of the nature of work of an employee, the compensation and benefit packages of an employee. In a changed work force an employee requires some new skills to deal with a new process or technology. All this seems like a threat for the employees for their career. But as they can adopt the new system and can understand the benefits from the changes, organization can enjoy the success of change (Robbins, 2004, p.90). Tesco has always attempted to go for any change or progress the Tesco way which means caring for people both the customers and the employees. All the marketing strategies aimed at these two stakeholders. Thus employees received equal importance and treatment as the customers. Thus focusing on the employee satisfaction along with empowerment and motivation would help the company with human resources management which would lead to better customer service. References Argyris, C.and Schon, D., 1978. Organizational Learning: A theory of action perspective, Reading MA: Addison-Wesley. Barney, J. B.,1986. Organizational Culture: Can It Be a Source of Sustained Competitive Advantage?. Academy of Management Review, Bradford, D.L. and Burke, W.W., 2005. Organization Development. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. Cummings, T. G. and Worley, C. G., Organization Development & Change, Thomson South-Western DuBrin, A J , 2007. Human Relations Interpersonal Job-Oriented Skills . New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 2. Hackman, M. Z.and Craig E. J., 2008. Leadership: A Communication Perspective. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. Hofstede, Geert ,1980. Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work Related Values, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Humby, C., Hunt, T. and Phillips, T., 2006. Scoring points: How Tesco continues to win customer loyalty. London: Kogan Page. Kotter, J. and Heskett, J. L. 1992 Corporate Culture and Performance, Free Press; Lewin K., 1958. Group Decision and Social Change. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. p. 201 Mills A. J., 1988. Organization, Gender and Culture, Organization Studies, 9(3), pp. 351–369 Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H., 1995. The Knowledge Creating Company.New York: Oxford University Press Patrick L. Burkhart and Suzanne Reuss , 1993. Successful Strategic Planning: A Guide for Nonprofit Agencies and Organizations. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Ravasi, D.and Schultz, M., 2006. Responding to organizational identity threats: exploring the role of organizational culture, Academy of Management Journal, Vol.49, No.3, pp. 433–458. Robbins, S. P., 2004. Organizational Behavior - Concepts, Controversies, Applications. London: Prentice Hall. Simms, A., 2007. Tescopoly: How one shop came out on top and why it matters. London: Constable and Robinson Ltd. Taylor, S. & Hansen, H., 2005. Finding form: looking at the field of organizational aesthetics Journal of Management Studies 42 (6): p. 1211–1231 Read More