Tesco’s Human Resource Management

Unfortunately, it was forbidden by Tesco to give me particular information about the potential for conflict in its human resource management. This is because; other competitors may be able to use such details to withstand a greater chance of attracting more customers in the same market. However, in any large organisation conflict is inevitable. Basically, the resources that can be devoted to this area are limited and everyone wants a large share of them. The following shows the main areas for conflict:

Human Resources may conflict with other functional areas, such as administration, marketing, finance, sales, Training and development, recruitment and Selection, and research. Marketing may demand more employees that have better qualifications and skills, they may need staff with specialist skills and expertise; therefore further training may be needed, or high wages that human resources may not be happy to pay. This will relate to Tesco’s training and development as they will provide the training that is needed.

Human resources may want to give their staff additional training to improve performance, morale, or even to promote within Tesco, but this will cost money and time. Recruitment ; Selection – This area of Tesco is in a great position to reward employees with better jobs and more attractive salaries. In making decisions, the department is unlikely to please everybody. This can cause many problems within the business. For example – if Tesco were recruiting internally for a sales assistance and came up with five strong candidates it would mean satisfying one of them and dissatisfying four.

This sort of method could quite easily cause conflict within the business, which is why external recruitment is sometimes the best but also, a more expensive procedure. Conflict can arise between the recruitment and selection and training and development if recruitment and selection appoint someone that requires specific training to undertake the job role without any reference to training and development who may not have the budget to pay for specialist training, or may not have the expertise to provide the training needed.

Human resource planning may plan expansionial growth of the business that will increase the work of recruitment and selection, without reference to recruitment and selection who may not have the staff in order to complete the planned expansion. Conflict may arise between performance management and training may disagree on training post appraisal and performance management and recruitment and selection regarding the quality of recruits. The sales team working on the shop floor may be lacking in communication skills and therefore customer service would be at a low standard.

The sales department-the sales department may require more employees in a specific department or feel that there is a lack of staff motivation in certain areas, therefore Human Resources will have the responsibility of boosting morale and therefore could be in disagreement. The administration department may be lacking in punctuality, therefore letters are sent out late, or staff do not receive important memo’s or messages, adverts may not be efficiently placed in the correct location or time, which could result in recruitment and selection having to reschedule appointments, which would be time costly for recruitment and selection.

This would mean that administrations job may need replacing or they may need further training which would result in finding the finance to recruit or the finance to train. Trade Union – is an organisation of workers that join together to further their own interests. One of the interests of the trade union is to maximise and ensure the best conditions for employees. Tesco’ human resource department has to ensure it can attract the best calibre of workers by offering them a fair but not too expensive salary.

In order to do this the salary must be at a minimum. Tesco are always “on top of things” when it comes to handing out fair wages to employees, therefore in the past it has never had a problem with trade unions and industrial relations. However, when each side is attempting to achieve the maximum, the potential for conflict is always there. The staff union and the finance department may also have conflict.

Finance may suggest that some staff may have to be dismissed due to Tesco losing too much money through staff wages. The staff union may disagree as well as the Human Resources department. Human Resources will feel that in the future Tesco will have to recruit again due to the profit argon increasing, repeating the recruitment process and this may result in losing more money. Unions will be unhappy due to fellow employees being dismissed, and may de-motivate staff and lower work output.

The finance department- the finance department may demand more workers, recruitment and selection will have the task of finding these workers, this will be costly. The finance department could also decide that their staff may need additional training this will cost time, and replacement workers to fulfil their job roles, and money form the training and development department. Human resources may not want to fund the training or supply extra workers, as they may feel that it is not needed as the staff have high performance rates.