Human Resource Management Practices - Essay Example

Conclusions In conclusion it must be d that sound Human Resource Management (HRM) practices and employee retention strategies are vital in any business organizations. For some researchers and analysts it is a concept that invariably affects the organization's strategic environment including the external competitor environment and the internal employee relations. McDonald's fast food restaurants especially in the Leicester area, England, have adopted a broader framework of HRM policies and initiatives with greater emphasis on the employee retention strategies. In fact McDonald's restaurants in Leicester have been particularly focused on meeting only those achievable objectives concerning HRM and employee retention strategies. As a corollary of the above job enrichment and enlargement policies and programs were initiated with a view to encouraging and motivating the staff to accept new challenges. For instance employee welfare practices though were not many, could be seen to a certain extent in some of the surveyed restaurants. Absenteeism and labor turnover figures were low. In fact labor turnover figures were high only among crew members because most of them were college undergraduates doing a stint to cover up tuition fees. Most probably customer harassment could have contributed to the above average labor turnover figures among the crew members at McDonalds restaurants in Leicester in particular and elsewhere in general. McDonald's pay is based on performance and the monetary incentives are intended to encourage employees to perform better in the jobs and employees might require non-monetary incentives too to remain their current jobs in the long run whilst reducing the degree of turnover. Thus the pay rates determination criteria at McDonald's are essentially determined by evaluation techniques of the HRM Department. For example employees at these restaurants were given a selected array of monetary and non-monetary incentives with the hope that the well trained and skilled employees would not leave their jobs at least in the short run. While HRM related aspects of the retention strategy was focused on employee welfare, there was much less focus on the long term organizational capability building measures to retain employees. The best example of this inadequacy can be found in the fact that the whole staff at McDonald's takes customer harassments for granted. This research study has found a significant amount of positive correlation between McDonald's HRM strategy and productivity gains though the extent to which such gains can be attributed to HRM strategy isn't clear. In the first instance as suggested in the Literature Review, the theoretical perspectives on motivation and performance have taken a new turn with greater emphasis on Strategic HRM. Secondly cultural diversity of the workforce at McDonald's requires such SHRM practices to be aligned with international trends. Thus as borne out by the majority of responses to the questionnaire performance related pay at McDonald's would have a positive impact on employee motivation and the Company would try to maximize their incentives. However it has been identified as the most desirable policy to achieve organizational goals and survive in the long run. McDonald's success in Leicester could be attributed to well managed labor relations and good motivation policies in order to encourages greater participation of the employees in the decision making process of the company. Next those four McDonalds restaurants in Leicester along with the other three have not displayed any noteworthy divergence from the theoretical and conceptual contingency framework of analysis applied here as illustrated in the McDonald's approach to CSR. For example all McDonald's restaurants place equal emphasis on animal welfare, education, environment, people, quality and safety and Ronald McDonald's House Charities (RMHC). The connected success factors - sustainable supply chain, nutrition and well being, environmental responsibility, employment experience and community - have been noticed be more or less obvious at the implementation phase in many of these restaurants including those in Leicester. Sustainable supply chain management policies have directly been influenced by the Company's successful adoption of CSR initiatives. Despite the above conclusion this researcher has found out that those restaurants surveyed here in general have carried out their own management functions with greater emphasis on meeting pre-defined organizational goals such as profits, sales volumes, market share, market leadership and competitive edge. Thus it is obvious that McDonald's restaurants in Leicester have not diverged far from the behavioral convergence of the global network of restaurants. In other words organizational goals have at times effectively interfered with the implementation strategy of CSR related initiatives at McDonald's restaurants in Leicester. This in turn has had an impact on the organization's employee retention strategies. McDonalds' current level of operations have a big impact on strategic CSR related outcomes at the organization because it's essential to put in place a number of initiatives such as design, planning and implementation strategies. The strategic organizational environment demands attention be paid to such variables as internal quality management, Human Resource Management (HRM), internal value chain analysis, supply chain management, product portfolio development, product and marketing mix, market segmentation, strategic product/customer/market orientation, a sound communication strategy and above all a competitor orientation strategy. The primacy and the immediacy of HRM policies and CSR initiatives at McDonald's cannot be denied despite the fact that some respondents to the questionnaire were partially skeptical about the scope of such CSR programs. Thus the current dichotomy between strategic HRM related initiatives and strategic business environment is based on the organizational outcomes. The individual restaurant in the fast food industry is subject to a greater amount of competitive pressure. Thus the employee retention orientation strategy of McDonalds' is determined by a number of endogenous and exogenous variables as outlined in the data analysis section. Internal HRM policy implementation occurs in a variety of situations. How best to meet this competitive pressure depends on the individual restaurant's ability to create value. Internal value chain management process of the firm decisively places some limitations on its ability to meet these new demands for the implementation of HRM policies. Therefore it's the HRM and internal management culture that ultimately enable the firm to meet this requirement successfully. If the attendant VRIO (value, rarity, inimitability and organization) framework is sound enough to enable the management of the company to withstand pressure and devise alternate plans to initiate new HRM measures employee retention strategies would work out well. McDonald's strategic HRM initiatives have led to the development and recruitment of a new breed of executive leaders. This has been enabled by the intense focus on efficiency. This particular focus on quality of executives is determined by McDonald's commitment to serve the community with specific emphasis on customer care. The organization first had very high employee turnover rates. But subsequently these rates were brought down to a manageable level. The Balanced Scoreboard Technique - a new performance management and measurement system - was adopted. The system is intended to measure such variables as quality, service and people by using standard metrics. This system has enabled MacDonald's to identify and benchmark areas of improvement though such metrics depend exclusively on available data which could be influenced by bias and prejudice. Resource culpabilities of MacDonald's have also played a very significant role here. MacDonald's possesses a distinctly unique set of resources and connected capabilities thus giving it an advantage in cost over the rest of its rivals. MacDonald's restaurants in Leicester have particularly invested in related options by adopting a multi-prone strategy of Research & Development (R&D). This strategic initiative on internal resource development along with its formidable management culture has enabled the organization to evenly balance itself between the HRM related initiatives and organizational outcomes related to labor turnover figures. For instance MacDonald's staff responsiveness to efficiency related initiatives is basically determined by such factors as attitudes and loyalty to the organization, staff motivation, and the sense of well-being and perception of service quality, the staff's integration into the work Finally a comprehensive delineation of the micro and macro level parameters of the organization is essential. At the micro level there is a series of constituent activities such as HRM and CSR policy design and planning must be considered. At the macro level there is yet another set of activities including the changes and modifications to existing infrastructures and implementing all HRM and CSR programs. Fast food industry is necessarily entwined here with social welfare to such an extent that all consequential and subsequent strategic decision choices available down the line from the consultant to the manager are determined by the very structural dimensions and contingency imperatives. While many stakeholders - internal and external - would show an equally great amount of interest in the successful outcome of these HRM and CSR initiatives there can still be countervailing interests that seek to prevail over the rest. The degree of influence that each stakeholder group has on the eventual outcome of the policy is determined by a number of endogenous and exogenous factors such as the nature of the industry and individual organizational goals. The industry perspective analysis takes up a very important place here due to the fact that the fast food industry in general and HRM and CSR in particular conjointly produce organizational outcomes that are basically amenable to classical theoretical interpretations. Thus this research paper comes to the conclusion that there are some positive correlations between HRM/CSR policies and initiatives at McDonald's in Leicester and productivity related outcomes in which McDonald's employee retention strategies occupy a primary and immediate place. Although the greater percentage of respondents to the questionnaire and the survey agreed that McDonald's was more concerned about meeting day today sales and revenue targets HRM/CSR related initiatives were put in place with emphasis on retaining trained and skilled staff. Recommendations HRM policies and programs at McDonald's restaurants in Leicester in particular as surveyed in this research effort, have consistently been known for their emphasis on performance related outcomes and thus both monetary and non-monetary incentives are being offered to employees with the hope that they would perform well. While this is a universal HRM strategy adopted by a majority of big and small organizations there is a very critical gap between expectations of managers and the level of performance directly attributable to such measures as borne out by the responses to the questionnaire. Therefore this researcher suggests a far reaching change in strategy at McDonald's restaurants in Leicester. Performance based pay scales at these restaurants have been introduced in conformance with theoretical and practical compulsions. However as the majority of responses to the questionnaire and the survey shows there is very little doubt about the availability of dependable metrics to measure performance except the age-old marginal productivity concept. Thus this researcher suggests that these McDonald's restaurants in Leicester ought to identify the degree of variance and co-variance between the dependent variable of performance and the level of significance of the independent variable of pay. There is an obviously positive correlation between HRM policies and CSR programs at all McDonald's restaurants. However competitive pressure arising from the relative concentration ratio of restaurants in a particular geographical location like Leicester has compelled the management to adopt policy alternatives that often go against the general interest of employees. McDonalds existing strategic HRM and CSR initiatives have substance but they lack direction because employee welfare, public welfare and environmental sustainability programs do not always produce good results in the short run. In other words McDonalds must adopt a very long term strategy based on targeting not only retention of employees but also re-orienting them to meet HRM/CSR related challenges both at policy design and implementation levels. The CSR related policies and employee retention strategies need to be further enhanced with international HRM practices with greater focus on the McDonalds food culture. There must be a substantial policy level involvement of managers to change attitudes of employees as well. Read More