Workforce planning helps an organisation to estimate its future workforce requirements and calculate the numbers, nature and sources of potential employees who might meet that demand. In other words, it's about getting the right number of people, with the right skills, in the right place and at the right time.
Work force planning involves gathering of information, defining goals, and making decisions to enable the organization achieve its objectives. At its simplest, workforce planning is about predicting the future demand for different types of staff and seeking to match this with supply. Effective workforce planning is an important tool to help councils maximize their resources and build capacity in a structured and planned way.
Tesco seeks to fill many vacancies from within the company. It recognises the importance of motivating its staff to progress their careers with the company. Tesco practises what it calls 'talent planning'. This encourages people to work their way through and up the organisation. Through an annual appraisal scheme, individuals can apply for 'bigger' jobs. Employees identify roles in which they would like to develop their careers with Tesco.
Recruitment and Selection of Tesco
Tesco is the biggest private sector employer in the UK. The company has more than 360,000 employees worldwide. In the UK, Tesco stores range from small local Tesco Express sites to large Tesco Extras and superstores. Around 86% of all sales are from the UK. Tesco also operates in 12 countries outside the UK, including China, Japan and Turkey.
The company has opened stores in the United States. This international expansion is part of Tesco's strategy to diversify and grow the business. Tesco uses a workforce planning table to establish the likely demand for new staff. This considers both managerial and non-managerial positions. In 2008/09, for example, Tesco calculates that to support its business growth there will be a demand for around 4,000 new managers.
Career at Tesco
Key features of career at Tesco include:
Flexible schedules that fit into employee's way of living
Benefits and jobs that turn as a career satisfaction
Celebrating cultural diversity through hiring different people from different cultures
Leadership Practices Training
Diagnose and correct factors leading to poor quality food
Identify strategies to build employee commitment
Translate classroom activities into action plans
Using leadership approaches to develop high-performing teams and individuals
Recognize the importance of team building and developing skills in leading teams
Helping individuals to translate their learning into action plans
Employees Motivation
Motivation
The modern approaches of Human Resources emphasises that only financial reward cannot be considered as a major tools of employees motivation and encouragement. Employees are the most important resources of an organisation. They ensure the interaction of financial, industrial, and other resources for smooth functioning of an organization. Motivation is the driving force for achieving our goals. It can be defined as "Psychological forces that determine the direction of a person's behavior in an organization, a person's level of effort and a person's level of persistence." (Gareth R. Jones and Jennifer M. George, 2008)
Now-a-days needs of an employee should be viewed as bases of major entity to identify financial and non-financial motives. The motives that lead to employee's satisfaction of need could be as follows:
Self actualization
Quality of Life
Learning valuable skills and etc
Recognition
Employee participation in decision making
Monitory incentives
Personal growth (Promotions)
Importance of Employee Motivation
What is the use of having an exquisite glittering car if it does not equipped with a powerful engine to run smoothly? Wondering what has a car and its engine got to do with employee motivation? The point here is that, actually an organization is the manly polished car and employees are considered as its engines. It is a proven fact that, just like a smooth and powerful engine is crucial for the continuous functioning of the car, motivated and encouraged workforce is essential to manage the organization effectively and efficiently (Dr. Woody 2011). Motivated employees brings lot of significance in an organization, few of them are as follows:
Increase in Organization Productivity
Loyalty of Workforce
Innovation and Creativity
Improved Morale of Employees
Customer Satisfaction
Similarly, motivation is important to a business as:
The more motivated the employees are, the more empowered the team is.
The more is the team work and individual employee contribution, more profitable and successful is the business.
During period of amendments, there will be more adaptability and creativity.
Motivation will lead to an optimistic and challenging attitude at work place.
Employees Motivation System at Tesco
It is proven fact that optimum use of human resources of an organisation is considered as one of the most significant competitive advantage, which helps companies to become market leader. Tesco have been able to flourish around the world just because of establishing a logical integration of employees into problem solving. They have established four simple principles to encourage the employees to give their maximum towards achieving organizational goals.
Intricate different systems of motivation for every department
Employees must have clear, concise and attainable goals. It is better to have one goal for one person.
The goals must change: Managers should have one aim for half of a year. For example, at first a manager examines the number of clients, then he/she examines the number of returning clients; and then he/she should analyze the increase in business sales. This method gives the possibility to find new abilities of employees and to check new methods of work.
Sensible pay rise for every employee
Maslow's Motivation Theory at Tesco
They apply three main components of motivation system:
Financial
Non-financial Motives
Social Policy
All above mentioned three factors are part of Maslow's motivation theory. However, Maslow states that all the needs must be fulfilled one after another. However research and practical experience at Tesco differs with this point of view and believes in simultaneous fulfilment of employee needs play a key role in employee's performance and motivation level (Olivia Hunt).
Performance Appraisal
The main purpose of appraisals is to measure the performance of employees and organization to achieve its targeted goals and objectives. It helps managers to effectively formulate their teams and use human resources in a most effective way. The process of evaluating employee's performance against pre-defined performance parameters by an organization is called performance appraisal. It is necessary for identification of each employee's abilities, competencies, skills and significance with respect to organization. It is used for rating and caparison of employees in terms of their performance.
Role of Performance Appraisals
It provides an opportunity to better understanding each employee's ability and recognize achievement. It helps organizations to:
Showing employees how to improve their performance
To decide on perks and promotions
Job rotation and transfers
Employ termination
Employee's incentives plans
Maintain a proper feedback mechanism for future planning
Recognize employee achievement
Setting employees goals and targets
Evaluation of job progress
Training and development of employees
Performance Appraisal Methods
Following two appraisal methods are mostly employed by prominent organizations:
Appraisal through "Management by Objectives": Comparison of performance against certain standard goals set for an employ by the organization as per their objectives.
Appraisal through "360 Degree": Appraisal is conducted by every one from his supervisor to his subordinates, peers and from outside parties e.g. customers, suppliers and other key stakeholders.
Performance Appraisal Plan at Tesco
They have developed a Performance Development System (PDS) as part of employee appraisal system. It provides flexible, competency based tools which help all management employees build individual work plans and development plans as a mean to assess results once the plans are put in action. This system merges the knowledge and expertises of each manager to create a uniform employee development. This system provides a greater opportunity for employees to contribute his share in success of the organization.
Individual Performance and Development Process
For the individual employee, the Individual Performance and Development process is used which comprises of following characteristics:
Clarifies individual goals, objectives and expectations
Set priorities
Identifies performance assessment parameters
Training and development needs
Drives high performance through the development of competencies
Implementing Change in Workforce
Today workforces are more trained and equipped with modern and latest theories of management. They are flexible enough to absorb changes happening in business environments. The business environment today is very competitive and dynamic you cannot survive with one old methodology of success parameters you have to be more proactive and keep changing your methodology with changing environment.
Human resources working in today's challenging and competitive environment are well are of this fact and that's why they are not hesitant to changes. The performance appraisal systems used by organization are also having a flexibility of job rotation and transfers so that employees keep adjusting themselves with the requirements. Today's organizations are more comfortable on adopting democratic ways of implementing changes instead of autocratic. As it involves employees in the changes process and provides a sense of responsibility among employees as the changes has been made with their involvements.
Recruitment involves attracting the right standard of applicants to apply for vacancies. Tesco advertises jobs in different ways. The process varies depending on the job available. Tesco first looks at its internal Talent Plan to fill a vacancy. This is a process that lists current employees looking for a move, either at the same level or on promotion. If there are no suitable people in this Talent Plan or developing on the internal management development programme, Options, Tesco advertises the post internally on its intranet for two weeks.
At Tesco this phenomenon is clearly evident from their employee motivation policy and performance appraisal systems. They keep changing their strategies to meet the expectations of their customers and their employees are always being at forefront in this changes process. It provides an excellent platform for adopting new ways to remain at top in highly competitive market.
Conclusion
Tesco has developed an effective motivation and encouragement system which has leads them achieving increased employee's performance and company's productivity. The situational approach applied by Tesco administration staff has turned out to be the most relevant to the current situation. Company has implemented effective motivation strategy based on existing motivation theories. Mallow's theory of needs and Self Determination theory is at forefront which helps in identifying intrinsic and extrinsic reward for employee's satisfaction and loyalty towards organization.
