TESCO

Tesco



Tesco

Task 1

The human-resource strategy at Tesco's revolves around work simplification, challenging unwritten rules, rolling out core skills to all head-office employees and performance management linked to achieving steering-wheel targets. This highlights the way in which Tesco's business measures are closely linked to performance management (Anonymous 2003).

Tesco ensures that each and every employee has the opportunity to understand his or her individual role in contributing to the Tesco core purpose and values. This requires an innovative induction programme that caters for different cultures, styles of learning and varying commitments to the job. The frontline employees are considered the ultimate reflection of Tesco to its customers, but all employees have a very important role to play in turning core values and customer commitment into reality on a daily basis (Whitelock, N. 2003).

A major Tesco challenge is to ensure that all of its employees, wherever they work, are aware of the role they play and that they can clearly see how their actions affect the “big picture” of the overall business. The training creates a graphical journey through the history of Tesco, its core purpose, values, business goals, financial aims, operations and marketing strategy and its commitment to customers. All employees are receiving more training than before (Whitelock, N. 2003).

A human-resource-led business strategy has helped Tesco to take the lead over its rivals in the fiercely-competitive UK supermarket sector. The strategic policy (Future) started in the company's supermarkets, where its aim was to free up stores employees so they could do more and improve customer service (Anonymous 2003).

Future concentrates on providing a clear way of defining roles, responsibilities and activities. The system guarantees that all employees are responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. A group of 13 key management techniques is used to improve the core skills of the workforce. The techniques include root cause analysis, problem solving, plan-do-review, situational leadership and coaching for high performance (Anonymous 2003).

For the first time, people have been made a core element of strategy. The importance of this strand of the project has been recognised by putting a senior director in charge. Quarterly board meetings always review human resource issues. Tesco now tracks human-resource information as closely as financial results (Anonymous 2003).

Looking ahead, Tesco intends to continue its emphasis on increasing the skills of its workforce. The firm aims to make learning into a truly integrated part of its culture, as an important way of developing organisational flexibility and remaining one step ahead of its rivals (Anonymous 2003).

Recognition of the importance of HR in the UK has increased in recent years; this is a result of competition from overseas economies. In countries for example Japan, Germany and Sweden investment in employee development is higher that the UK. This has led to some organisations reviewing their policies on training introducing continuous investment in their employees (Beardwell, I et al 2004).

There are fundamental differences in the approach to HR. Storey (1987) discussed these as 'hard' and `soft' versions of HRM The 'hard' version places little emphasis on workers' concerns ...