Background of ASDA Company

Question:

With reference to the organisation that you studied for ASDA UK and the key leadership and management issues identified affecting its performance, you are now required to recommend how the organisation could resolve these issues.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the major issues related with ASDA Company. A different issue has been identified but issue relates with employee’s motivation and satisfaction has been majorly focused. The problem has been discussed briefly and different motivation theory that is Herzberg Theory of Motivation and Maslow Hierarchy Needs Theory in order to briefly explain and understand the situation. Lastly, recommendations have been provided that can help ASDA to increase employee engagement.

The management of business operations is crucial factor for engaging all the activities of an organization to one point so that set goal can be achieved in due time. The company can fall straight on face if there is gap in the activities and it can lead to management issues that can have long term affect on the company. The purpose of this study is to prepare a report in order to discuss the issues that might be faced by any particular organizations. Therefore, for this study ASDA has been selected which is an UK based company. ASDA is a retail industry or a supermarket chain that is engaged in business of retails food, general merchandise, clothing, financial services and other services. The market share of ASDA is 17.5% and is in second number after Tesco in UK (www.asda.com, 2015).

Employees performance: The issues that is currently associated with ASDA relates with the employees that are not able to enhance their performance to best level. The employees were feeling heavy burden on meeting the daily target due to heavy pressure from the superiors. On the other hand, some employees of the company ASDA were sacked even if the employees take a mere break of seven minute without notifying the supervisor. Therefore, it shows inflexibility in the workplace (Internationalworkplace.com, 2015).Double Charging Issues:

The next issue that is faced by the company is complaint of the customers for charging twice by the company. The customer complains that the grocery site of ASDA has a login problem and they cannot login at the time of need (Clear, 2013).

Online Delivery Problem:The Morley Distribution Centre of ASDA faced a system error that lead to delivery of order in time on the eve of Christmas. Due to the error in the distribution centre almost 200 customers of ASDA suffered delays and around 50 of the customers did not only receive the orders. The technical problem led a bad impression of the supermarket among the customers. The website of the company broke down and due to that customers faced difficulty in receiving and placing orders (MacDonald, 2012).

The problem that will be discussed in the brief manner will be related to the management issues of employees’ motivation. The employees of the company are not able to perform confidently that is lowering down their performance level and personal growth.

According to Rayton (2012, pp.1), the employees may not been complete into the task due to lack of proper guidance and support from the leaders or management of the company. The employees’ performance may dip down if the management or leaders are not taking their responsibility in due manner in order to provide right direction to employees to perform the work in productive manner. Therefore, it can affect the production and supply of quality service to the consumers.

Key Issues Faced by ASDA Company

On the other hand, Talukdar (2012, pp. 303) mentioned that the inability to perform or adopt effective leadership style can decrease the motivation level of the workers. Therefore, it can decrease the engagement of employee in the work or in management decision making process. In such case, the employee may no longer be interested to remain associated with the ASDA Company and may prefer to resign and work in other companies.

Apart from that, Foss and Lindenberg (2012, pp. 372) discussed that before takeover of ASDA by Wal-Mart, the manger of the company effectively linked HR policies with the major policies such as employee and customer satisfaction, quality service, employees can access to top management and had informal working place.

Working Conditions : The employees of ASDA may not find the working environment suitable if there is lack of proper equipment and high percentage of dirt in the working place can de-motivate the employees to work in effective manner (Jobmanji.co.uk, 2015).

Supervision: The lack of ability and efficiency of the supervisor or leaders to control the behavior of the employees can affect the performance of other workers of ASDA. On the other hand, the inability of the supervision from the management or managers may not be able to provide better direction to employees to complete the work in profitable and efficient manner (Korzynski, 2013, pp. 186).

Salary: The discrimination in the declaration of salary can upset the employees. For instance, the women that work in ASDA have issued legal action to the company as they claimed that male workers are paid higher than the women workers in spite of doing jobs of equal level. Therefore, it de-motivated and unsatisfied the employees to work in the company (Internationalworkplace.com, 2015).

Company Policy: If the policy of the company is too rigid and harsh then it can decrease the motivation level of the employees. On the other hand, in ASDA the hours of work for the employees is 8 hours in a day but if an employee is asked to work for overtime, the company does not have any firm policy for that and employees are not right paid for giving their extra time. On the other side, the retirement plan policy is only for the higher management not for the low level employees. Therefore, it de-motivates the employees to carry their business activities effectively (Naong, 2012, pp. 487).

Recognition: The Company in order to motivate the employees can provide respect and recognition to them for their work. This would help in making employees more engaged towards work.

Responsibility: The employee can be some amount of responsibility to take decision at the time of doing task so that in absence of manager or supervisor they can guide the other new employees to perform the job (Engr.sjsu.edu, 2015).

Growth: The employees can be provided better training that can help the workers to have professional and personal growth. The training can be effective in solving the work related issues of employees.

The other motivational factors can be work itself, promotion and achievement and other hygiene factors can be relationship with peers or top management, job security and status. Therefore, considering these all factors can help in motivating and encouraging the employees (Uroevi and Miliji, 2012, pp. 247).

Employee Motivation: The Main Issue

Physiological Needs: The management of the company may require providing basic needs of life to workers such as food, cloth, shelter, etc. This would help in motivating the employees to effectively work for the society (Vestal, 2012, pp. 535).

Safety needs: The employees may be provided with safety requirement so that they can carry the business activities with ease. The employee laws may be made keeping in view the employees requirement so that they can be protected if any wrong thing happens. Moreover, advanced technology can be used so that workers can be kept safe from any injuries (Huang, 2012, pp. 189).

Security needs: The senior management of Asda can provide job security to the efficient employees and can do a life insurance cover for employee that can stimulate and encourage the workers to remain associated with the company.

Love and belongingness needs: The manager or supervisor has to provide respect, affection, love, etc. that can help in generating a good feeling in workers. The respect and love can motivate workers to give their best effort and increase productivity.

Esteem Needs: According to this need, the workers can be given recognition and respect can be given for their hard work. On the other hand, giving the responsibility can motivate employees to perform and excel well (Talukdar, 2012, 497).

Self actualization: If the basic needs and other needs are fulfilled then it can help in developing personal growth among workers and can contribute more towards the organizational goal.

Conclusion

ASDA is majorly facing problem inside their management in context to employees’ motivation and satisfaction. The employees are having difficulty in working environment, salary and lack of guidance from the leader that affects the motivation stimuli among the employees. The other issues related with ASDA are online site problem and environmental impact. The issue of employee is great concern for the company because if employees leaves the company than the company would end nowhere. The theory helps in understanding the condition of the case and analyzing the factors that can help to retain and improve employee performance.

The company has to hire supervisor or leaders that have required skills and efficiency to monitor and direct the employees to increase the performance of workers and generate a feeling of job satisfaction. The quality supervisor should understand the problem that might be faced by the workers and providing solution to them. This would be effective in building relationship with each other.

The company has to adopt Training Development Program to enhance the skill of the workers and making them understand the requirement of each job. In training the employees can how to perform the job so that wastage can be done at minimum level. On the other hand, training would help in handling the orders of customers and providing them quality service.

In order to solve the double charging issues, the company has to build better and efficient online shopping system so that customers do not face bank charges and customers can shop more reliably.

On the other hand, in order to solve the online delivery issue, the company has to hire the expertise people that are capable of handling technical issue and distribution centers so that customer does not have to wait too long for the product. Moreover, the refund policy of the company can be reframed if customer faces problem to technical issues.

Reference List

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Internationalworkplace.com, (2015). Asda forced to pay out after staff complaint – again.

Jobmanji.co.uk, (2015). Reviews From People Who Have Worked At Asda.

Korzynski, P. (2013). Employee motivation in new working environment. International Journal of Academic Research, 5(5), pp.184-188.

Naong, M. N. (2012). The impact of management indecisiveness on employee motivation and performance. African Journal of Business Management, 6(9).

Rayton, B. (2012). “Employee Work Engagement, Affect and Outcomes”. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2012(1), pp.1-1.

Talukdar, A. (2012). Impact of performance pay on enhanced employee performance: mediating role of work motivation and pay satisfaction. JIBED, 6(3/4), p.303.

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Vestal, K. (2012). Which Matters: Employee Satisfaction or Employee Engagement?. Nurse Leader, 10(6), pp.10-11.

www.asda.com, (2015). Online Food Shopping, ASDA Direct, George and more at Asda.com.

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MacDonald, G. (2012). Asda hit by online Christmas food delivery problems.