TRAINING AND RECRUITMENT AT TESCO

Training and recruitment at Tesco

Training and recruitment at Tesco

Introduction

Tesco is one of Europe's leading food retailers, having enjoyed a period of tremendous growth during the 1980s. Now well established within the UK with over 440 stores, we have acquired Catteau in France and more recently bought a stake in Global, based in Hungary. In 1993, total sales hit £9 billion with profits at £435 million before tax. Tesco has nearly ten million customers per week served by a workforce of 360,000 in the Retail, Head Office and Distribution divisions.

In the UK, Tesco stores range from small local Tesco Express sites to large Tesco Extras and superstores. Around 86% of all sales are from the UK.

Tesco also operates in 12 countries outside the UK, including China, Japan and Turkey. The company has recently opened stores in the United States. This international expansion is part of Tesco's strategy to diversify and grow the business. In its non-UK operations Tesco builds on the strengths it has developed as market leader in the UK supermarket sector. However, it also caters for local needs. In Thailand, for example, customers are used to shopping in 'wet markets' where the produce is not packaged. Tesco uses this approach in its Bangkok store rather than offering pre-packaged goods as it would in UK stores. Tesco needs people across a wide range of both store-based and non-store jobs:

In stores, it needs checkout staff, stock handlers, supervisors as well as many specialists, such as pharmacists and bakers.

Its distribution depots require people skilled in stock management and logistics.

Head office provides the infrastructure to run Tesco efficiently. Roles here include human resources, legal services, property management, marketing, accounting and information technology.

Tesco aims to ensure all roles work together to drive its business objectives. It needs to ensure it has the right number of people in the right jobs at the right time. To do this, it has a structured process for recruitment and selection to attract applicants for both managerial and operational roles.

Background of the Company

In the early 1990s it was clear that the human resource strategies which had successfully seen Tesco through its growth period in the 1980s needed refocusing on the new and different challenges which the company faced. Issues such as:

Meeting increasing customer expectations on service, in a high-cost-conscious sector.

Balancing the demands of applying technology to reduce labour costs with those of staff wanting jobs with content.

Securing and retaining quality staff, in a low-paid sector, while facing up to demographic changes.

Challenging existing, successful management systems, styles and hierarchies in favour of reduced control and disciplines.

But our traditional approach to training and development had only gone so far in developing these almost-too-obvious points and were limiting our chances of progress because:

Performance was mainly focused on input (i.e. the number of training days) rather than the difference the training had made to business goals.

There was an emphasis on knowledge-based training rather than practical skills acquisition.

Development was usually defined by what training courses were ...