HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE

Human Resource Management Challenge

Human Resource Management Challenge

Introduction

The Globalisation and the fading boundaries have brought several challenges for the Human Resources Managers. U.K. is one of the countries in the world where millions of people migrated and start their livings. These immigrants started working in big companies and started competing with the locals. The work place become diverse and several problems arouse. This problem emerges especially with the multinational corporations where thousands of employees working under same roof with different background. One of the most famous companies 'Marks & Spencer' also encountered with the same problem. The company started giving chance to all people regardless of the race, colour, ethnicity, or religion. They started facing the issue of diversity in the mid of nineteenth century. Marks & Spencer since then started identifying the issues and solving it (Howells, 1981, p.10-15).

“A diverse workforce is a key to the company to anticipate the changing needs of its customers, technological developments, and the demands of suppliers and the transformation of "stakeholders" of the environment; it could be success if managed effectively” (Brown, 2002, p. 43-57)

About the Company

Marks and Spencer plc, also known as M&S, is a world's renowned retailer with its headquarters in Westminster, London. It has more than 1010 stores across above 40 countries and more than 70 stores in UK. M&S is famous for its clothes and food products. It was found in 1884 by Thomas Spencer and Michael Marks in Leeds.

In1998, Marks and Spencer was the first British retailer to acquire pre-tax profit of more than £1 bn. However, after few years M&S faced crisis that lasted for few years. Since 2000 the company Marks & Spencer began rapidly to expand and explore other areas: household products, food, furniture, products for beauty, technology, financial services, etc. In recent years, Marks & Spencer stores act as full-scale shopping centers with huge grocery supermarkets, entertainment venues and cafes. The company has around 76,250 employees.

The company is covering general merchandise sector and food sector. The general merchandise is divided into menswear, women's clothing, home and beauty. All these units have contributed in shaping up company's vision stating that they want to set a standard through which other company should be measured. These units are centralized by the values of Marks and Spencer. These include trust, service, value and innovation.

Diversity at Marks & Spencer

Encourage cultural and demographic diversity in an organization helps to achieve goals of social responsibility. Moreover, cultural diversity provides a competitive advantage to a company. Before that diversity can provide this competitive advantage, the company must be managed to go weaving the fabric of the organization. This contrasts with simply having a program of "cultural diversity" offered periodically by the department of human resources.

Diversity in Marks & Spencer is defined as ““Diversity and Equality management is a voluntary organizational program designed to create greater inclusion of all individuals into informal social network and formal company program.”

Concept of Melting Pot in M&S

The melting pot mentions to the concept ...