Situational analysis of Woolworths Group’s HRM strategies

The paper mainly reflects on the human resource management system that is utilized by the Woolworths group which is one of the major Australian company. According to Nankervis et al. (2016), Woolworths uses PeopleSoft full offering of the human resource management system that helps in managing the organizational effectiveness, commitment of the employees, occupation safety as well as helps in providing proper customer service.

In this report, a proper overview of the company is provided with strategic objectives. The report also undertakes situational analysis on the human resource strategies by providing proper justification. Moreover, the paper also provides a proper discussion about the fit that exists between the HRM and the strategy of the company. In addition to this, the paper also provides several recommendations that reflect on the steps that help in improving the human resource management system.

Woolworths group is one of the largest supermarket chains in Australia that was founded in the year 1924. The company operates through 995 stores across Australia. The organization works with various Australian growers as well as farmers for making sure that the customers have the best products. The organization is mainly specialized in selling various types of groceries but they are also involved in selling magazines, beauty products, household products as well as other types of stationary items. Presently, Woolworths is operating in around 1000 stores across Australia in which 976 are supermarkets and the remaining 19 are convenience stores that generally carries the same logo (Albrecht et al. 2015). The strategic objectives of the organization are listed below:

• To build growth platforms for the future of the organization
• To create proper differentiation in the business of Woolworths
• Redesigning the E2 operating model of the organization

 Situational analysis helps in collecting a number of methods that are used by the managers for analyzing the external as well as the internal environment in order to understand the capabilities of the organization. In order to analyze the human resource management strategies of Woolworth group, SWOT analysis is mainly done (Stone et al. 2015). The SWOT analysis mainly stands for strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Strengths: The strength of Woolworth’s group are considered as internal factors that helps in enabling the HR strategy as well as the functionality of the organization (Wiegmann and Shappell 2017).  It is found that the HR department of the organization performs functions like recruitment, selection, development, and retention as well as performance management in an excellent way. Additionally, the HRM system helps in empowering business decision making.

Weaknesses: There are a number of weaknesses of the Human resource management system that is used by Woolworths that is mainly created by the internal factors like budget constraints (Abdullah and Zulkifli 2015). One of the major weakness of the HRM system of Woolworths is that they need to update their recent hardware system for adapting to the technology.

Evaluation of HRM strategies with HR theories and models

Opportunities: One of the most important external factors is that the human resource management system helps in providing the opportunities for the growth of the workforce due to the enhanced demand of the “Woolworths” products as well as services. Moreover, the HRM system of the organization helps in making proper business decisions that further enhances the opportunities of the organization.

Threats: Threats are considered as the external factors that help in creating a negative impact on the company and on the HR department of the organization (Shen and Benson 2016). It is found that as Woolworths uses the PeopleSoft full offering of HRM system, and therefore in many cases the employees of the organization faces problem in adapting to the new technology which creates issue.

 The human resource strategies that are used by Woolworths are considered as the plans that help in implementing various types of functions within the human resource department of an entire organization (Shappell et al. 2017). The human strategies are mainly divided into three different key areas which are mainly elaborated below with proper theories of the human resource management system.

Talent: According to the configurational theory of HRM, it is found that if the HRM system will be utilized for achieving the corporate objectives then the HR system would be helpful in providing better performance (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). Talent helps in representing the human capital of the organization and it is generally considered to be very much crucial for the success of the business organizations and for achieving the corporate objectives.  

Leadership: According to a behavioural science model of HRM, the leadership characteristics of an individual is reflected from the work that is done and in order to become a leader, it is necessary to direct the human resource department properly (Crowley and Bourke 2017). As per the theory the HRM department of the organization helps in playing a great role in the organizational leadership as the HRM department helps in selecting the best executive. In order to hire an executive effective, the Human resource managers need to remain active in context to advisory capacity while engaging with other leaders in giving their input (Runhaar 2017).

Performance culture:  As per the matching model, it is found that some types of rewards must be given to the employees on the result of appraisal (Lazazzara, Galanaki and Papalexandris 2016). By using this theory, the HRM system of the organization has developed proper performance metrics, performance evaluations as well as schemes for rewarding the employees of the organization or high performance as well as creativity so that they can accomplish the objectives of the project.

Fit between HRM and company strategy

According to Marler and Parry (2016), fit between HRM strategy and company strategy mainly reflects the integration of the decision about people with the various outcomes of the organization. For achieving the fit between the HRM strategy and the strategy of the company it is necessary for the organization to determine the strategic goals of the organization, workforce requirements, and formulation of different types of HRM-based policies and activities. In addition to this, detailed development of HRM scorecard measure is generally required for the business.

As per the behavioural perspective, it is necessary to match the strategy of the company with the HRM policies as well as practices as it will be helpful in eliciting a particular number of employee’s behaviour as well as an attitude for fostering the success of the organization. On the other hand, it is opined by Kerzner and Kerzner (2017) that it is quite necessary for the HRM system to get fit within the broader concept of the entire firm such as the workforce, external environment, organizational strategy, technology of production and more. Moreover, it is reflected that in order to achieve superior performance of the organization, distinct link presence between the HRM strategies as well as within strategy of the organization must be there (Shen and Benson 2016). 

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the entire report that the HRM system that is used by Woolworths is helping the organization in managing the people as well as business resources. In this report, SWOT analysis is conducted that helps in reflecting the strengths, weaknesses, threats as well as opportunities that the HRM system of Woolworths provides. As per the SWOT analysis, the HR department of the organization performs functions like recruitment, selection, development, and retention as well as performance management in an excellent way which is one of the biggest strength. Moreover, the paper also evaluates the various strategies of HRM with different HRM model or theories. In addition to this, discussion of the fit between the HRM and the strategy of the company is done. The paper also provides a number of recommendations that help n improving the existing HRM system of the organization.

The recommendations that are required to be followed by Woolworths in order to improve the HRM system of the organization are generally elaborated below:

Checking updates: It is quite necessary for the organization to focus on the new updates properly in order to make sure that the changes or updates that are done within the HRM system will be adopted by the employees of the organization or not.

Recommendations for improving the existing HRM system

Finding alternative of hardware update: As Woolworths uses PeopleSoft for managing the HRM practices of the organization and therefore the organization needs to update their hardware system from time to time. Therefore, it is quite necessary for the organization to find some alternative method.

In the draft part, I got feedback according to which I need to focus more on the situational analysis of HRM strategies, evaluation of the HRM strategies with different HR theories and model. I have made the changes as per the feedback and evaluated situational analysis effectively. I have also focussed on the HRM theories and properly relate them to the practices of HRM. Moreover, proper steps of HRM are evaluated for relating the HRM strategies with the strategies of the company.

References

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