Research Proporsal on the Impact of Human Resource Management in the Retail Idustry a comprensive research proporsal based on the impact of human resource management within the retail industry: One of

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IMPACT OF HRM IN THE RETAIL INDUSTRY ON THE EXAMPLE OF TESCO PLC 14

An Investigation into the Impact of HRM in the Retail Industry on the Example of Tesco PLC

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An Investigation into the Impact of HRM in the Retail Industry on the Example of Tesco PLC

Human resource management and other related services have gained the utmost significance in organizational innovation, efficiency, and productivity at all levels. Unlike in the days when the organizational human resources were considered to be a mere factor in the setting, they are currently as the central factor in the entire equation of organizational productivity. For instance, the human resources within any business serve as the key asset which if managed properly, leads to transformation for the long term development within the entire organizational operations. However, successful management of the organizational human resources and practices empowers the employees which in turn helps in unleashing the innovative potential in them through their capabilities.

Hence, human resource is considered to be one of the primary areas where organizations ought to put more focus on the operations especially in the modern-day era are determined to emerge victorious in the current competitive market. This proposal seeks to study the human resource practices of the food retailing company on the example of Tesco PLC. However, this study proposes the most significant ways for improving the working conditions for any company through an introduction of shifts within the organizational culture, highlighting the importance of changing the organizational culture if the organization has to set new working standards.

Rationale for the Chosen Topic

The choice for this topic has been fostered by its relevance which is closely related to organizational change management. Multiple ways can be applied in fostering change management within businesses and the levels involved in organizational productivity (Delery and Roumpi, 2017). The creation of changes through an alteration of the organizational culture has been witnessed in many organizations including Harley-Davidson, IBM, and Google.

However, there has not been much research conducted within the retail industries based on employee motivation. Through this research, it is evident in various ways that can be employed in the improvement of strategic conditions within the companies. However, it is also possible to explore the potentials of this human resource philosophy. As a result, it is possible to gain a deeper insight based on how closely the organizational culture affects the entire performance of the business in the retail sectors (Kianto et al., 2017). Additionally, this research proposal also provides an understanding of human resource hiring, organizational culture, motivational practices, and trainings.

Objectives and Aims of the Study

The purpose of this research is to study the various ways that can be employed in the improvement of the organizational culture along with the organizational structure. Thus, the primary objectives and aims of this research are to make a review of the modern-day working conditions and the organizational culture at Tesco PLC (Brewster, 2017). However, this study also aims at understanding how an organization can increase its productivity and employee motivation through fostering an improvement in the working conditions. However, this research also aims at proposing changes that can be introduced concerning the strategic and cultural policies within the company used in aiding it to make the potential working conditions.

Literature Review

Human resource management is concerned with the management of the organizational activities related to people and work management within the firm and other formal business settings. However, human resource is strategically operationalized by the human resource policy which is then converted into the human resource practices. Notably, these human resource practices are the recapitulated managerial behaviors that are, however, based on the particular policy standards. The human resource management practices have a direct relationship to the net organizational performance but with an indirect correlation with the outcomes from the human resource management which include commitment, satisfaction, involvement, and motivation (Brewster, 2017). Since most of the studies and research has been cross-sectional, the causality from this kind of correlation cannot be properly inferred.

Tesco is among the major retail companies in the UK which originally started as a small grocery store. However, it has expanded itself across many product lines and countries to form a large retail corporation. This Tesco has grown to become one of the largest food retailers all over the UK. For the company to sustain its position in the market, the company had to carefully monitor and keep track of the organizational performance and the main variables that are linked to the company (Chambers, 2018). However, Tesco has greatly been influenced by the working environment as one of the organizational factors which overly contributed to the productivity in the company. There is too a strong need for conduction of an evaluation of the human resource conditions since this is considered to be a performance variable. For instance, this is witnessed in the human resource practices in most of the large corporations since the human resource management in these companies is taken in an utmost concern within the retail environments.

Retailing is one of the primary concepts which involves gaining more significance based on the context of the modern-day consumer and marketing culture. Over the recent past, most business societies have grown consumer-centered while the retail industries have exhibited tremendous growth. However, this has increased the competition rate among the retail outlets as well. For instance, there is an increasing trend towards spending long hours in the stores larger outlets and more complex retail outlet layout designs. Notably, these require increased productivity from the human resources, making the employees to be under the influence of the growth of the retail itself (Guest, 2017). The retail employees tend to provide a lower rating to their place of work as compared to the employees from the other industries.

On the other hand, it is contrary to this negativity that most of the retail employees are more satisfied in their positions within the job designs they work under as they can make a direct identification with the of their link with their effort and the performance of the entire company. The staff members also tend to be overlooked by their companies since the least possible store hierarchy the employees within the companies can be treated more as the company’s mathematical functions (Stewart and Brown, 2019). Most of the organizations thus tend to focus on the control of the costs and the methods of layoff within their setting.

Changing the working schedules for the staff members appears to be one of the solutions less costly to the organizations than laying off the management staff. Not only does this action within the company and its overall performance, but it also prevents further development of a reliably empowered and determined workforce even in the least possible level of the organization (Tang et al., 2018). Since this is known to come into direct contact with the potential consumers in the market, it has a significant implication on the sales and the level of customer satisfaction.

Therefore, once it has been established that the employees ought to be trained and motivated at the level of retail staff, the following should be identification of how that can be achieved. In this study, the organizational culture within the business is considered to be one of the major factors contributing to the existing working conditions and the prevalent organizational performance. However, employee retention is a primarily direct function in the cultural values within the business (Draper et al., 2018). The strongly performing employees usually remain for long in the organization and this is fostered by the emphasis of the values for the tasks in the organizational culture.

The Research Design

Research Methodology

The primary data to be collected in this method will be acquired from interviews with different businesses from the retail industries along with the aggregated responses from the sales associates. Additionally, a sample prospect population will have to be taken and this will focus on the specific industry and the alignment of the available human resources (Draper et al., 2018). The initial stage of this research will majorly focus on the causal relationships between human resource management and organizational performance based on the trading results published within the previous seasons not extending past one year. However, it will also identify the primary set of business services required in the enlargement of the corporate structures and market growth that the industry has been more successful in offering.

Research Questions

1. What are the potential impacts of human resources in the retail industry?

2. Do the human resource management strategies affect the overall performance of an organization?

3. Is there any need for the implementation of changes within the organizational setting in the retail industry to suit the increasing needs for more employee management and consideration?

4. What are the implications of having strong human resource management for both small and large retail businesses?

Research Strategy

The primary data collection methods in this research will be qualitative where much of it will be provided by the involved personnel in the interviews and questionnaires. However, less of the research will be quantitative and this will be taken from the trading results of the companies and this will be taken from the databases of various companies in the retail market including Tesco PLC. However, some of the information will also be acquired from the aggregated feedback from the sales associates and this will be in the form of both qualitative and quantitative data. In addition, there will be a sample prospect population that will be acquired from and this will as well focus on the specific industry under focus. That will as well focus on the alignment of the available human resources with the organizational culture and structures in achieving success within the business.

Data Collection Method

The primary data collection technique will be interviewing the company representatives and managers in the retail industries that deal with foodstuffs. However, the research will also include the use of questionnaires. The questionnaires will be filled by the sales associates and employees based on the human resource management strategies employed to govern them in their everyday work within the organizational premises. The secondary sources will include information from the organizational database over the internet based on their trading affairs and dealings leading to their productivity. Through this, the research will be able to acquire first-hand information on ground-based on the human resource practices within the retail businesses. Additionally, using the questionnaires will allow the employees and the sales associates to share information freely based on their encounters with the human resource management’s strategies within their workplaces.

The data acquired will be then subject to quota sampling where the interviewers will be provided with subject quotas based on a specific attempt type to be recruited. For instance, this is very convenient since it is a relatively strategic forward with a potential representation. One of the greatest challenges in the research will be a failure to submit some of the questionnaires by some of the research subjects while others fail to answer all questions covered in the questionnaires. However, some of the data in the company database may not be revealed as it may be treated as confidential information to the companies and organizations that operate in the retail industries. As a result, this limits the amount of information requires to make substantial inferences from the research findings.

Data Analysis Method

The quantitative data acquired from the quantitative analysis of the companies’ financial statements will be recorded in excel spreadsheets. However, all figures will be arranged systematically to have a strategic order based on the trending patterns observed from the statistics. On the other hand, the qualitative data will be subject to thematic analysis. The available themes will then be easily identifiable and this will allow for easy accountability of the trends cited in the research.

A Gant Chart for the Project Timeline

Limitations of the Research

The study will be based on Tesco stores in London since time constraint is the primary challenge. As a result, this research will not take into account the impact of the ethnic, cultural, and personality diversity from the workforce in Tesco. Since Tesco has diversified its operations to other countries, there is a need for an integration of cultural diversity within its culture (Schabenberger and Gotway, 2017). The study will also not be able to research on and offer any possible implications which forms a very significant aspect of the company.

Summary

Human resource management is a very distinctive approach to the management of employment that often seeks to achieve a competitive advantage. For instance, this is achieved with the help of a capable and highly committed workforce which relies on a potential array of personnel, cultural, and structural techniques. The organizational practices based on employee resourcing correlate obtaining the right to most basic materials in the form of a workforce that has been endowed with the most appropriate potential, skills, qualities, and knowledge necessary for future training. Typically, the selection of employees and recruitment of workers which is deemed at meeting the needs of the particular organization is bound to the responsibility of formulating one key activity upon which the other policies on human resource management that are geared towards motivation and development could be built on.

Reference Lists

Alam, S. and Raut-Roy, U., 2019. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Reward Strategy at Tesco: Evidence from Selected Stores in the UK. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 55(1).

Brewster, C., 2017. The integration of human resource management and corporate strategy. Policy and practice in European human resource management, pp.22-35.

Chambers, J.M., 2018. Graphical methods for data analysis. CRC Press.

Delery, J.E. and Roumpi, D., 2017. Strategic human resource management, human capital, and competitive advantage: is the field going in circles? Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), pp.1-21.

Draper, J., Young Thomas, L. and Fenich, G.G., 2018, January. Event management research over the past 12 years: What are the current trends in research methods, data collection, data analysis procedures, and event types? In Journal of Convention & Event Tourism (Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 3-24). Routledge.

Guest, D.E., 2017. Human resource management and employee well‐being: Towards a new analytic framework. Human resource management journal, 27(1), pp.22-38.

Kianto, A., Sáenz, J. and Aramburu, N., 2017. Knowledge-based human resource management practices, intellectual capital, and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 81, pp.11-20.

Schabenberger, O. and Gotway, C.A., 2017. Statistical methods for spatial data analysis. CRC press.

Stewart, G.L. and Brown, K.G., 2019. Human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.

Tang, G., Chen, Y., Jiang, Y., Paille, P. and Jia, J., 2018. Green human resource management practices: scale development and validity. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 56(1), pp.31-55.