Background and Company Profile

The organization chosen for this above assignment is Woolworths, one of the leading supermarkets of Australia. Woolworths is considered as second largest industry in Australia as well as in New Zealand.

Being one of the second largest company in Australia, in the next three to five years the organization tends to be the leading retail industry in Australia and globally (Amendolagine et al. 2015) Accordingly in the next years, the organization is also planning to target the middle class people and the lower standard group and planning to earn more revenues by evolving their drinks business.

Woolworths comprises of large number of employees that consist of 24,649 employees, therefore the employees do not feel much workload stress (Anderson 2015). Sometimes, there are workload drivers such as when demand and supply are high workload increases; sometimes lack of control over the work also leads to workload in Woolworths.

Implementation of new projects or services will help to expand the business and accordingly also helps the organization to provide better customer satisfaction, will help in increasing growth and will provide better effectiveness in case of delivering services.

Woolworth’s current business objective is to provide better quality services and products to its customers and accordingly it executes its work function through lunch meetings, office party and more (Anitha and Begum 2016). In the near future, the organization tends to expand its business goal by providing the best shopping experiences to its customers.

Woolworths being one of the leading retail organizations globally, comprises of diverse employees of different cultures at all levels of hierarchy and thrives to respect the differences in the business and the professional relationship (Craig 2015). Furthermore, the major competencies of the organization are the ability to maximize their cost depending upon the current situation and they thrive to sell their own manufactured products.

Over the planning period, the anticipated changes in the business strategy of Woolworths focus to expand their business footprint in the market of Africa (Maarry and Balke 2015). Prior to that, they also planned to introduce motivated culture for the employees through rewards and recognition.

Woolworths follows a hierarchical organizational structure, where the main power lies on the hand of top level managers. Depending on the structure, the organization, current and the future staffs are employed depending on their skills and talents. For instance, in order to communicate with the customers in Woolworths, staffs are hired based on their communicating skills.

Business Goals and Target Audience

Woolworths always thrives to promote cultural diversity and inclusion within the work environment through respect and dignity. Policy related to the diversity in the workforce is the diversity and the inclusion policy that implies employees irrespective of their cultural differences, will have equal opportunities within the organization.

With the change in the demand of consumers, Woolworths has undergone rapid changes with the advancement of technologies. As per the report, in the next five years Woolworth will increase its revenue through technological changes by $97.7 billion (Feigin 2016). As, Woolworths has shifted its business with online shopping, and introducing technology to reduce carbon footprints, therefore employees need to be skilled in the specific sector through various training program.

The Australian Government could intervene in the organization through various methods that includes introduction of new laws, price ceiling policy and more. This might create a positive and negative impact on the business. For instance, introduction of price ceiling policy can have a negative impact on equal employee opportunity, as employees will be provided unequal rewards that might led to loss of employees.

With the implications of new technology and better strategy planning, Woolworth has increased its economy revenue by A$59 billion both nationally and globally (Goodman, French and Battaglio 2015). It has also been noted that the operating income generated globally by Woolworths is $1.6 billion.

In order to attract employees and customers, Woolworths tends to provide better salary packages with better incentives to its employees. Prior to that, various training programs and rewards have been allocated to the employees. Whereas, in order to attract customers, Woolworths tends to provide better quality products at affordable prices and customers who are loyal to the brand are provided with loyalty benefit packages.

Decentralization of Woolworths can have a positive impact on the overall business as it will help in maximising the intra-regional disparities. Moreover, restructuring with the advent of modern technologies and with better management, the organization can increase its growth and profit.

Most of the employees in Woolworths are the part-time students who are always in need of part-time jobs; therefore the current employee turnover is very high. The overall company turnover comprises of 25.582 per year. Apart from this, some employees leave for job for better opportunities in term of rewards and salary.

As mentioned above that most the employees are part-time students, they lack the skills and knowledge required for the respective jobs. In order to reduce employment turnover, staffs should be given proper training, proper motivation can also reduce employment turnover.

Organizational Structure and Workforce Diversity

Staffs turnover sometimes do create labour problem as they do not feel engage with the work or with the managers or supervisors (Grissom, Viano and Selin 2016). Apart from this, turnover can be money and time consuming, as all the training and education invested on the employees will go in vain and hence it reduces the organization productivity. This in turn can create labor problem within the organization

In order to achieve business goals, Woolworths thrives to maintain a proper balance of staff by providing various rewards to its employees such as lucrative incentives, bonus and more. Apart from this, they have planned to provide online mentorship assets to all its employees and also provide employee discounts on all purchased from the stores.

Woolworth faced some management issues that results in the loss of profit. Issues such as employees failed to satisfy the customers that result in the customer’s retention. Apart from this, employees were not provided with the basic training facilities that results in highest number of employees’ turnover.

In order to reduce employment turnover, employees within the organization are provided better training facilities to develop their skills and knowledge. The current workforce of Woolworths comprises of 111,000 and in order to engage them, organization provides motivational support in the form of rewards and recognition (Hou 2015). The organization also tries to foster team work among its employees in order to increase their performance level.

Woolworths mainly focus to provide diverse culture workforce to all its employees in order to meet the organizational goals and needs. In diverse workforce culture employees need to respect each other cultures and differences that help the organization to fulfil all its needs and goals. Hence, the workforce of Woolworth is diverse.

In order to attract large number of customers, employees in Woolworths are facing serious workload pressure. The current workload pressure in the organization is the increase in shift hours of the employees and sometimes they need to work on the holidays too.

Employees in Woolworths are retired once they reach the age of sixty-five. Apart from this, employees are also transferred temporarily to other departments in order to observe their skills and knowledge. However, employees’ turnover is also a major issue which need to be reduced by the organization with possible alternatives. As per the report, in every year 25.582 is the employee turnover (Humphreys et al.2017)

The labour budget of Woolworths comprises of $65 million, to provide better training facilities through programs and workshop (Wong et al 2016). Current skills such as employees should be technologically challenged and should have better communication skills to provide better satisfaction to the customers.

Employee Turnover and Training Programs

In the external labour market, the above mentioned skills of the employees will help to increase the growth in the external labour market. In the external labour market, skills will help employees to protect them from discrimination.

Through casual employments and contracts, organization is hiring employees on the basis of part-time jobs and they are mainly hiring the part-time college students through contracts.

The number of employees hired on the basis of contract or casual employment comprises thirty-five percent of the overall employee strength. However, the employees hired on the basis of casual employment do not have any fixed shifting hours and they are intended to work for long hours (Jepsen and Townsend 2015). Skills of those employees comprises of they can easily engage themselves with the diversified cultured staffs, can learn new things easily and more.

Contingent workforces are mainly hired in customer service department and in IT department. They are mainly hired in the specific departments as they are active learners, hence organization do not need to provide ample amount of time and money to train them.

In order to compete with other competitors, Woolworths has implemented external benchmarking data that to increase the efficiency and to be cost affordable. Apart from this, Woolworths is also responsible for various CSR activities such as ‘the Woolworths trust, surplus food and clothing and more, as a part of their benchmark data.

References

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