Woolworths’ Priorities

Question:

Discuss About The Human Resource Management Policies And Procedures?

The goal of the organization is giving priority to the customers first, regarding every brand of Woolworths. For achieving this, the company is having five priorities, such as, building a customer and store-led culture and team, generating a sustainable momentum in sales regarding food, evolving the company’s Drinks business for providing even more worth as well as ease in respect of customers, empowering the portfolio businesses of the company for pursuing the strategic aspects towards the delivery of the value regarding the shareholders as well as becoming a lean retailer via end-to-end method as well as process superiority.

The strategy formulation process commences with the aspect of developing a brilliant retail team that will be listening to the customers, members of the team as well as suppliers. With the support of Woolworth’s Voice of the Customer programme across the company’s brands, the store teams of Woolworths as well as the Support Office team will be receiving a regular feedback from the customers of the company. This is stating that the organizational team will be focusing daily on continuous improvement of the company’s offer as well as the customer’s experience related to shopping (Sharma  2014).

The drink business of the organization, which includes Dan Murphy’s as well as BWS, will be continuing to provide innovation regarding the company’s offer for providing optimum worth as well as ease in respect of the customers, within the store as well as via online.

Woolworths is doing the formulation of a ‘Lean Retail’ Operating Model for driving its three-year growth plans. The economy stated that the Lean Retail model will be delivering more than $500 million of cost depletion that will be enabling the investment to improve each and every aspects relating to the experience of the customer that includes reduced prices, improved expediency as well as better service and admission and an assurance towards innovation.

It is being stated that the Lean Retail Model will be getting built on the organization’s historical approach to drive development through the seeking of effectiveness as well as to make investment in the company’s customers but with clarity towards recognizing that the approach is required to be customized to a modern period. The investment of Woolworths regarding the customer offer will be funded with the help of an important as well as continuous concentration regarding the management of cost in its non-customer facing functions (Morgeson 2013).

The Company is doing the acceleration of its Lean Retail model for competing in a new environment. In this context, it can be stated that the company is building a low-cost foundation for providing it with options for serving each and every segments of the customers through a multi-channel approach. Woolworths did the setting up of a central cost-out program known as ‘Fuel for Growth’ for the realisation of cost saving endeavours in areas that are non customer-facing as well as delivering benefits that will be getting reinvested towards reducing the prices as well as doing the improvement of various aspects relating to the experience of the customers (Budhwar 2013).

Woolworths will be following the Lean Retail model, which will be using the technological aspects as well as network architectures for the reduction of costs as well as enabling the innovative aspects, will also be increasing the agility of the retailer to respond and shape the experience of the customers. The major views of Lean Retail approach are,

• Whenever there will occur a possibility, the tools for IT should be shifting from the store to the data-centre
• There should occur the consolidation as well as virtualization of IT equipment within the stores as well as the data-centre
• There should occur the maximization of the functionality relating to the IT equipments within the store

The Lean Retail approach assists in making the process more fast, easy as well as less costly for the deployment of services required by the store operations team, the web team as well as the consumers.

As because, leading retailers like Woolworths do the creation of trends and follow them as well, data plays a pivotal role for them. Retailers should be trying out innovative ideas, finding out whether they are financial and also finding out in what ways and how the customers are purchasing. For the execution of the decisions relating to business, a retailer is required taking into consideration the different ways by which customers are making purchases.

In regard to the Lean Retail model, Woolworths has provided a detail description of its strategy implementation process. The company has provided a three year strategic aspect that it is claiming will be transforming the company into a customer-first business and will be assisting in neutralizing competitors of the organization. The three-year strategy will be focusing on three major areas such as to improve the core offer, to innovate products as well as services for better actualization of customer requirements as well as to initiate new effectiveness via the ‘Lean Retail’ model of Woolworths for improving the service as well as value of the customers. This strategic aspect will be resulting in reduced prices, more convincing offers as well as increased innovation (Mitchell 2013).

A prominent element of this new strategic aspect is in what ways the measurement of the employees will be done in respect of performance. In this regard, there will be the introduction of a basic, customer-first process to do the measurement of the in-store teams, having a new 8-metric scorecard doing the replacement of its earlier 20-metric process. This will be placing the consumer metrics at the top of the rankings. The company also did the purchasing of an additional 58,000 work hours every week for the lifting of the levels of customer service in-store, as well as will be doing the addition of further 63,000 in the coming financial year. Moreover, Woolworths did the flagging of a revised as well as better loyalty system, having more offers regarding the customers that are being targeted (Sparrow 2016). This will be getting supported by the newly launched consumer insights tool. The company is controlling distinct data assets for driving new insights as well as competitive benefits not available to the other retailers. As a result, this will be driving the focus of the company towards the customers by making every decision throughout the business commencing from customer insights, utilizing data regarding their actual requirements as well as behavioural aspects rather than surveys and known behavioural aspects (Konrad 2016).

The role of the strategic human resource manager regarding the strategy implementation process states that there are four essential tasks that every business should be accomplishing. The appropriate fulfilment of these four tasks will be assisting in the implementation of the strategic aspect. These are assisting the staffs in understanding the strategic aspect, augmenting staff commitment regarding the strategic aspect, streamlining local endeavour with the strategic aspect, as well as inducing cross-system collaboration (Sparrow 2016).

This changing process as organized into four tasks is rather distinct among most strategic HR designs. Although, most of the plans are focusing towards the ways by which HR will be appealing to, encourage as well as do the enrichment of the individual contribution, the Four Jobs method will be recognizing the work that is required to be done regarding all three organizational tiers, from the individual to the unit of work to the overall department (Sheehan 2014). Strategy implementation is considered being an all-encompassing process that demands change at every level of the social system regarding the business.

The role of the strategic human resource manager are mentioned as under,

Strategy Implementation Process and Employee Performance Metrics

To create an environment for work that is free from needless risks is considered being the functional aspect of a strategic human resource manager. Strategic growth in respect of safety regarding the place of work will be entailing the management of risks as well as mitigation of potential losses from job related accidents as well as casualties (Alfes 2013).

The compensation of the staffs as well as benefits structure will partly do the determination of the business reputation as well as image of the organization. Moreover, the decisions that human resource managers will be making in regard to the pay-scales as well as staff benefits will be impacting the satisfaction of the staffs, and the ability of the organization for recruiting skilled workers. The evaluation of job, conditions of the labour market, workforce deficiencies as well as budget restraints are issues that strategic human resource managers take into consideration in respect of compensation and benefits (Sikora 2014).

The role of the strategic HR manager regarding staff training as well as development will be preparing the workforce in respect of future positions within the organization. Training and development does the motivation of the staffs and in certain cases, will be improving the retention of the staffs (Reiche 2016).

The strategic HR manager’s role is combining the components of employee relations into the recruitment and selection strategy of the staffs. To do the integration of staff recognition programs towards promotion-from-within policies is an efficient kind of staff motivation that does the combination of staff relations as well as areas of recruitment and selection regarding human resources (Storey 2014).

A primary step to create human resource management policies and procedures is to ensure that human resources as well as executive leadership are functioning towards similar goals. Developing a high-performance workforce does the supporting of the company’s goals in becoming profitable as well as successful (Purce 2014).

To set the foundation of human resource management is where the organization is standing in concern with, compliance regarding federal and state labour as well as laws of employment.

Workplace policies as well as standard operating procedures are providing the company with the much-required structure. An equal opportunity policy for employment as well as statement regarding the zero-tolerance policy of the organization in respect of getting discriminated or harassed should be part of the company’s code of conduct. These policies will be acknowledging the obligation of the staffs for providing a working environment that is considered to be safe where staffs are feeling like cherished contributors (Brewster 2016).

Role of a Strategic Human Resource Manager

To do the improvement of value regarding human capital is resting with the recruitment and selection procedures of the company. The viewpoint of every recruitment policies is equal opportunity, but recruiting procedures that are considered being more specific will be including human resource communication with leaders of departments regarding their staffing requirements, job postings and interview stages as well as decision-making authority of the recruitment managers (Marlar 2013). To be more precise, the overall strategy of the company in respect of success will be driving the development as well as execution of the policies regarding human resource management.

The major objective of employee recruitment and selection is associated with the aspect of finding the best sources of recruitment, hiring the best skilled professionals from the job market as well as to keep the company competitive on the job market. The process of recruitment and selection is associated with the management of large numbers of job resumes and the capability for selecting the most suitable candidates. The process of recruitment requires an entire method description (Jackson 2014). The performances regarding the process of recruitment are required getting measured, evaluated and, new, innovative solutions for recruitment should be applied.

The main areas of recruitment are considered to be recruitment process description, external recruitment, internal recruitment, recruitment agencies management, recruitment sources management, recruitment outsourcing as well as recruitment software.

The main areas of staffing are job design and job descriptions, common staffing principals and rules, organizational planning and design, job vacancies management as well as talent gap analysis (Kramar 2014).

The challenges that will be faced by the human resource management in the future are mentioned as under,

1. To retain and reward talented candidates – Almost 59% seasoned HR professionals are having the belief that in the near future, the major challenge will be to do the retention of talent and candidates that are performing well. In addition, it will be getting increasingly worse for recognizing as well as rewarding the actual performers as there is a rapid growth regarding the competitiveness of the market and that requires more collective endeavours for establishing loyalty among the staffs (Armstrong 2014).
2. To develop future leaders – The increasing rate of staff turnover is giving recruiters a really challenging time with the implementation of practices for enhancing the aspect of staff engagement and making them stay for longer period within the company. There is a major concern with the HR managers towards the building of future organizational leaders (Kehoe 2013).
3. To have a clear and transparent culture for work and open leadership – Most of the organizations are failing in the process of establishing a clear and transparent cultural aspect relating to work communication or open leadership that somewhere is affecting the morale of the staffs and their dedication related to work (Shields 2015).
4. To have career advancement scopes in respect of staffs – According to a study, around 26% professionals have given the indication that this aspect is regarded as a challenge for the human resource management in the future due to the rising rate of attrition in the companies.

Conclusion

To conclude it can be stated that there is the requirement for the application of various concepts regarding human resource management in respect of human resource planning, job analysis and design, skills training, recruitment as well as strategic plan relating to business. A detailed description of the strategy formulation process regarding Woolworths have been provided, the strategy implementation process as well as the function of the strategic human resource manager in this process has been described, the role of human resource management within the company has been described as well. Moreover, the human resource manager’s role within the company for the creation of the competitive organization of the future has been discussed as well. Woolworths is controlling distinct data assets for driving new insights as well as competitive advantages not available to the other retailers. Therefore, this will be driving the focus of the organization towards the customers by making every decision all through the business commencing from customer insights, utilizing data regarding their actual requirements as well as behavioural aspects to a certain extent than surveys and recognized behavioural aspects. The investment of the company regarding the customer offer will be funded with the assistance of a significant as well as incessant concentration regarding the management of expenditure in its non-customer facing functional aspects

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