Managing and Leading People
The report critically evaluates the flexible working practices approach applied by 'Asda Stores Limited' (hereinafter - Asda) to ensure work life balance of its employees. The analysis refers to the quotation expressed by director of BT's employment policy, Caroline Walters, "We believe very strongly that if we are going to have a successful business we have to select from the widest talent pool possible. Our ability to offer everything from working at home to adoptive leave means we can access truly diverse skills". In particular, the report aims to match the abovementioned quotation with the HR practices applied by Asda management, including current issues, problems and further recommendations.
Background of the issue
Over the last two decades, the issue of managing and leading people has gained an unprecedented importance on the HRM agenda. Since the early 90s, the HRM paradigm has significantly shifted towards diversity, and thus managerial flexibility has become an indispensable part of human resource management, which subsequently made organizational leaders and managers reconsider the conventional human resource applications applied at workplace (Kaizenlog, 2006).
Considering the challenges of booming globalization, work-related issues have become a subject to numerous shifts, and therefore the process of management and leadership within organization requires permanent improvements to keep up with the present-day realities. In particular, the successful performance of diverse workforce environments mostly relies on HR departments' ability to manage employees of different backgrounds, languages, cultures, views and orientations. To constantly comply with the competitive conditions of the contemporary marketplace, the workforce is becoming more and more diverse while expanding the boundaries of global business to unseen volumes. Multiculturalism is now an integral component of most business environments involving international companies that lead global competition. Thus, intellect and talent are not the only challenges faced by CEOs while managing diverse human resources (Montes, 2006). Annually, international corporations spend million-dollar budgets to effectively train their mangers and employees to ensure that work conditions are suitable to the needs of their most valued asset, i.e. workforce hired to attain the very best results.
HRM practices assume the most effective use of human capital to enhance organizational performance. The staffing functions of any organization include, though are not limited to: recruitment, human resources planning, training, performance appraisal, managing personal records, benefits and compensation, controlling absenteeism, safety of working conditions etc. In addition to this, HR managers' duties yet require appropriate knowledge and skills to effectively manage and motivate diverse employees, whose range of needs continuously increases. Therefore, the successfulness of HR management within any organization largely ensures the success of overall organizational performance and level of goal achievement.
HR policies comprise an integrated part of strategic business planning to reinforce overall organizational performance. This enables an organization to use human resources as an invaluable source of competitive advantage. In the course of interaction between an organization and workforce, HR managers perform the role of mediators who manage and lead the latter to attain 'mutual commitment' (Walton, 1985). Organizational (managerial) paradigm is applied within the business context to shape the strategic planning of HR managers to optimally co-ordinates collective activity, and match workforce expectations with organizational capacities. The application of best management practices enable leaders too use their skills, knowledge and competence in a way that employees completely fulfil their responsibilities while meeting corporate objectives, improve collective performance, and promote effective communication between all staff members to address current challenges both on individual and organizational level. At that, best practices are widely used to develop and implement fair and unbiased managerial approaches with the consistent consideration of the adopted policies, plans, objectives, and processes.
In the past, HR managers' duties, among others, emphasized on setting right motivators to encourage the staff enhance productivity in accordance with the established standards. The goal-oriented approach based on relevant motivators was based on numerous motivational theories, as well as empirical HR applications. For instance, HR managers largely relied on Douglas McGregor (1960) management theories emphasizing on the control model of management. Further theories forwarded by Maslow, Herzberg, Bakke, Hawthorne, Fayol, Barnard, and Argyris mainly focused on the social conditions related to working environment, including hierarchy of needs, subordination, job satisfaction and job motivation, correlation between professional achievement and working conditions etc. Later on, in mid- 90s, HRM theorists and practitioners such as: Delaney and Huselid, Arthur, Dyer and Reeves, Ichniowski etc researched the correlation of organizational performance and high commitment of HRM policies as a vital prerequisite of winning competition over rivals (Johnson, 2006).
At present, strategic leadership approaches to lead and manage people require wider scope of conceptual thinking and practical implications, considering socio-cultural, background, and behavioural differences within diverse environments. Therefore, innovative HRM trends are applied to enable workforce enjoy equal opportunities at their workplaces. Innovations include the synergy of best managerial practices widely applied in present and in the past, vast application of cutting-edge technologies to optimize overall interaction between HR departments and employees, and enhancement of training programs designated for managers and employees to enhance positive performance climate with organization. Based on fundamental studies of management the contemporary organizations continually experiment with empirical implementation of new approaches to advance decision-making and problem-solving practices, further creativity and width of ones perception, and promote human capacity and potential throughout various stages of career ladder (Flynn, Sammartino, and Nicholas, 2002).
To achieve such outcomes, HR departments hiring multicultural personnel widely implement diversity management training programs. In such a way, organizations achieve better group cohesiveness and mutual understanding among the diverse workforce. Furthermore, training practices enable organizations to better motivate management and employees towards the desired culture of diversity compatible with the contemporary challenges. HR managers and their subordinates learn how to value individual differences by developing cross-cultural understanding and confronting the existing stereotypes (Nemetz and Christensen, 1996). In many instances, diversity training programs comprise an indispensable part of an organizations' diversity management strategy, however diversity training is still not one-size-fit-it-all solution (Cox and Blake, 1991).
This indicates that in addition to training incentives developed by organizations and their HR departments, the ability to lead and manage people requires strategic comprehension of leadership. To achieve this, leaders (either CEOs or HR department managers) permanently monitor highly modernized human management practices and standards influenced by diversity and continually changing working conditions. Therefore, most HR managers attempt to apply situational leadership to the realities of specific work-related situations as well as to the individual/collective demands of their employees. Situational leadership synergises authoritarian, participative and delegative leadership styles depending on the particular circumstances faced by HR managers. Overall, people-oriented leadership styles make HR manager's approaches both flexible and transparent enabling the latter to significantly enhance overall organizational performance (Rhoades, 2006).
Working practices approach adopted by Asda
As such, employment in retail industry requires people-oriented approach with the emphasis on leading effective communication, coping with customer concerns, inspiring flexibility, developing positive attitude, and improving ones knowledge and skills (Anonymous, 2005). In addition, retailers most often seek employees with high degree of stamina, leadership skills, and individual capacity to deal with customers from all walks of life.
The UK's second largest supermarket chain after Tesco, Asda has gained a competitive advantage over its main rivals Waitrose, Safeway, Morrisons, and Netto by having implemented effective HR management policies that are considered as distinguished within the entire industry (IGD, 2006). In 2008, The Sunday Times acclaimed the Asda as one of the '10 best companies to work with', proving that the company is largely emphasizing on its corporate values that promote corporate performance perfection, optimal customer service, diversity, equality of opportunities, and overall respect. Currently, Asda employs more than 150,000 employees, which number necessitates the company to apply distinctive HR policies to gain maximum effect from the performed operations (Asda, 2008).
Asda managed to create the appropriate conditions wherein employees are encouraged with the additional opportunities of self-improvement. At that, every team member is wellaware of corporate strategies and processes, as well as how to assume responsibility, achieve work-related goals, and face new challenges (Asda, 2008). Asda's HR policies are aimed to set realistic expectations for employees, provide each of them with objective feedbacks, train and coach them in compliance with the retail industry's standards and requirements, promote joint decision-making procedures, and determine short-term and long-term goals (McConnell, 2006). Every Asda's employee faces a variety of career choices since the company has long ago developed people-oriented and service based options to encourage the growth of corporate competence and loyalty by promoting best working practices, including benefit packages and self-developed rewards. Competitive salary and other applicable bonuses encourage employees to remain a part of Asda's team. After half-year of service, for example, each employee is entitled to the status of Asda's shareholder in accordance with Asda's Share Plans. Furthermore, the so-called 'Sharesave Plan' enables employees to plan personal savings and receive tax-free bonuses to buy discount Wal-Mart shares (Asda, 2008).
Over the years of business activity Asda has developed own management scheme that enables to better manage business operations and human resources. The so-called 'huddles' are applied by the company to operate its daily activities by ensuring everyone's awareness about everyday performance and key corporate priorities. In the course of regular monthly meetings known as 'Late Lunches', the company's executive management informs the staff about the most recent updates on the corporate agenda. The abovementioned innovations enable Asda's managers to poll the staff by asking them about strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities high on the corporate agenda to improve the overall performance of the company. The development and implementation of such transparent interpersonal approaches apparently raise everyone's confidence in terms of open and unprejudiced interaction among various units of the company. Since Asda's HR managers appropriately understand their employees' needs and motivations, they are able to optimally unlock the entire potential of their human resources. Most importantly, Asda management has long adopted its unique HR philosophy by perceiving HR management as one of the major constituents of the company's corporate strategy that promotes respect to human needs and individual requirements, enablement of sufficient workplace conditions, and permanent promotion of career development incentives. To make the HR management processes as transparent as possible, Asda's managers arrange 'coffee chats' on daily basis to assess current developments, detect problems, and set further priorities relevant to the company's current operations. At that, Asda's personnel gains better understanding of current developments within the company by offering relevant solutions through the process of collective decision-making. One another approach called 'Coaching by Walking Around' is the way Asda's HR managers use interpersonal chats to foster employees' mutual respect and responsibility. In an open minded manner HR managers attempt to point out current failures and reward ones successes.
Asda ensures work life balance of its employees by encouraging friendly and accountable working environment that assumes an individual approach to every team member. The company's management access genuinely diverse skills among the employees throughout highly motivational workplace environment that ensures high level of individual and team performance on all levels. In the framework of Asda's HR policy, managers consider individual performance and motivation, main causes of errors, the efficiency of interpersonal collaboration among colleagues, and overall corporate loyalty. According to Zneimer (2004), the assessment of individual performance in each particular case enables the company to get its employees better involved within overall goal-setting process. Asda is not exception from the rule for its HR managers permanently match internal working conditions with the right motivators while establishing positive goal-oriented atmosphere.
Permanently attempting to access genuinely diverse skills among its workforce, Asda considers new incentives compliable with individual and professional factors. In the course of determination of right directions, Asda managers improve customer service by training staff to ensure full compliance with customer needs and their satisfaction. These are not entirely internal corporate goals of Asda; conversely, innovative approaches make the company largely contributive to the enhancement of overall retail market effectiveness (Nottage, 2005)
In particular, Asda ensures work life balance of its employees by setting both internal and external rewards to its employees. To this end, the variety of encouraging initiatives are applied by the company to motivate the workforce, including maternity, parental, childcare and adoptive leaves, personal commitment hours, emergency family leaves, study leaves, shift swaps alternatives with co-workers, other unpaid leaves on special circumstances or/and occasions. Considering this, over the years of successful managerial applications, Asda's employees have become self-motivated to a large extent. This circumstance has significantly simplified managerial functions of the company's HR departments, since employees fully understand the retail industry preferences (Paton, 2005). Positive internal environment enables individual approach, which is rather important considering the total amount of Asda's personnel. Asda's HR policy tends to treat each employee as individual, rather than technical performer, which largely contributes to the company's vision of the contemporary diverse business environment.
Recommendations
The entire scope of managerial data available in open sources makes it evident that the today's business environment requires permanent reconsideration of work-related insights. To win the competitive advantage on the global marketplace HR managers may not be guided by the conventional managerial standards any longer. To apply organization's staff as an organization's most valuable asset, HR managers should establish internal 'microenvironments' wherein employees are treated as individuals and enjoy e sense of corporate responsibility. The development of such approach requires the smart synergy of all the managerial and work-related issues highlighted in the previous sections of this report while leading and managing people.
Workplace complexity is dictated by the ongoing diversity challenges, making HR managers treat each employee individually and from the perspective of ones knowledge and experience. Multicultural business environments make today's HR leaders think both globally and strategically while coping with such issues as right motivators, rewards and punishments, encouragements and cutbacks. At that, HRM strategies should make managers accountable to ensure the sufficiency of personnel policies and alignment of competitive strategy, In turn, personnel should comply with the set policies that govern working activities. The HRM paradigm should be therefore perceived as the set of management decisions and actions affecting the relationships between the organization and its human resources (Beer et al., 1984). On the one hand, HR managers should be accountable for the implementation of effective leadership approaches considering the circumstances. At that, situational leadership is regarded as the most effective approach to manage people within highly diverse environments. On the other hand, however, employees as the followers should be able to think independently, develop active commitment to organizational goals, undertake responsibilities in full scope, fully realize corporate goals; put forward innovative ideas and consider creative approaches, as well as remain active and productive participants within the process of corporate goal-oriented performance. As is evident, HR management is a two-side process and every participant should play an active part to ensure overall success.
The approach offered by Caroline Walters is weighed and understandable, though the management of a new company should widely consider the managerial practices applied by the existing companies in the industry as well as to overview the success stories of such companies as Asda, highlighted in due report. In due context the recommendations are as follows: first, the management should develop an encouraging internal environment, wherein managers care about the employees concerns, and the latter express loyalty and respect towards their co-workers and corporate values overall; second, HR managers should establish such motivations that would enable the staff to think of further professional growth rather the shift to a company with better working conditions and/or rewards; thirds, bonuses and rewards should be set on fair and objective basis grounded on non-discriminatory principles; fourth, HR managers should select from the variety of the applicable leadership styles to effectively solve work-related problems; fifth, constant analysis of fundamental theories and outstanding case studies is rather important for the new company's HR management to be able to comply the existing experience with the internal circumstance within the organization; sixth, the notion of diverse workforce management and training does not concern only multimillion global corporations; conversely, the issues of multiculturalism concern all competitive structures aiming to win competitive advantage within the conditions of global business environment; seventh, managerial processes will flow more smoothly whenever HR managers are able to develop and implement open-minded and transparent approaches towards their staff; eights, to ensure work life balance of its employees, a company's HR managers should efficiently combine people-oriented approaches with the strategic tasks set by an organization, and find the golden mean where these two coincide.
Conclusions
Altogether, HRM practices assume the ongoing process of improvement in any organization striving to access genuinely diverse skills. The cotemporary highly diverse business environments are largely predetermined by the calls of globalization and innovative requirements to various industries. This is to stress that managerial practices widely applied to the standards of the retail industry, for instance, may not be applicable in production, wholesale, IT etc. Initially, working realities predetermine those particular working conditions wherein HR managers and their employees will be bound to. Thorough consideration and weighing of all pros and cons of the abovementioned conditions should become the primary task of every HR manager aiming to build and maintain highly effective team of workers in compliance with the contemporary standards of managing and leading people.
Some issue outlined within the context of this report were global since there is no operating organization, whatever its scope of business activity, that acts in vacuum. Therefore, global challenges such as diversity, and all the relate issues were discussed in detail to show that business environment cannot be guided entirely by fundamental managerial theories and approaches. On the other hand, the particular case study of Asda was used to show the contemporary HR applications in practice. Asda's case is an example of success story indicating that large multinational retailer is currently sustaining high competitive positions mainly owing to the implementation of right managerial approaches towards the company's human resources.
Overall, the report showed that, as never before, human capital demands diligent and careful attitude to remain loyal to a company for long. Otherwise, HR managers are fully aware that the contemporary marketplace is full of alternative job offers, and therefore are much interested to maintain the teams of loyal and reliable employees under their guidance and supervision.
