Concept of working with and leading people

Tesco was found in 1919 when Jack Cohen started selling surplus groceries from a stall in the East End of London. Mr Cohen made a profit out of selling £4 was £1 on his first day.

In 1924 Mr Cohen bought a shipment of tea from a Mr T E Stockwell. Tesco was formed with the initials and letter from the name of Mr T E Stockwell and Mr Cohen. In the year of 1929 Mr Cohen opened a flagship Tesco in Burnt Oak, North London.

Tesco Started to rise in 1930s when Mr Cohen built its warehouse and headquarters in North London and in 1932 Tesco became a Private Limited Company. Further on Tesco stores Ltd started to float on the stock exchange with share price of 25pence.

Meaning of Recruitment, Selection and Retention:

Recruitment is the process that starts from the point when an organization receives an application for the post. Recruitment may be internal or external as per the needs and requirements. The advantages of internal recruitment considered that saving can be made, as they know the business and the job very well and hence they need shorter period of training. It is like extra money to all staff to work harder within organization which is basically called Incentives, Perks and Bonus etc.

External recruitment helps to pull wider range of talent and provides the opportunity to bring new experience and ideas to the business. It is very costly and expensive way of recruitment as full training needs to provide to the new recruiter.

There are number of stages, which can be define and set out the nature of particular jobs for recruitment purpose. Selection then consists of the processes involved in choosing the right applicants to fill the post.

Recruitment, selection and retention procedures for Tesco:

For any company it is important to have right staff or people to run the business in the competitive world to be ahead. Tesco make sure that every experience of its customer are valuable and great which need to have right customer service staff.

Tesco’s core purpose is to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty.

Values:

Our success depends on people: the people who shop with us and the people who work with us.

The way we work

The way we work is how we deliver Every Little Helps to make Tesco place to shop and work in. We use simple processes so that shopping is better for customers, Simpler for staff and Cheaper for Tesco.

Tesco recruitment and Selection process:

Tesco is the biggest private sector employer in the UK. The company has more than 360,000 employees worldwide. 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 operates in 12 countries outside the UK, including China, Japan and Turkey. It has recently operates in USA as well. Tesco’s strategy includes diversifying and growing the business by international expansion.

In its non -UK operations Tesco builds on the strengths it has developed as market leader in the UK supermarket sector. Tesco uses the approach as per the needs of the market such as in Thailand and Bangkok where the foods are not pre packaged as it would be in UK.

Tesco needs people across a wide range of both store based and non store jobs:

In stores, it needs checkout staff, stock handlers, supervisor 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, accounting, and marketing property management and information technology.

Tesco’s business objectives aim to ensure all work together towards achieving its objectives. It needs to ensure is has 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.

Workforce planning:

Workforce planning is the process of analysis an organization’s likely future needs and requirement for people in terms of numbers, skills and locations. It helps an organization to recognise how those needs can be met through recruitment and training. It is very vital for a company like Tesco to plan ahead. As there is a competitive market and Tesco needs to grow in this market. It requires recruiting right people on a regular basis for both the food and non food parts of the business.

Position become available because:

New stores are open in the UK and International market as well which requires recruiting new people for the new position.

Jobs are created when someone retire or resign or get promotion to other positions within Tesco.

New jobs can be created as the company changes its processes and technology.

Tesco uses a workforce planning table to establish the likely demand for new staff. This includes both managerial and non managerial position.

For example in 2009/2010, the workforce planning suggested to have 3000 new managers for its business growth.

The planning process runs through each year from the last week in February. There are quarterly reviews in May, August and November, so Tesco can adjust staffing levels and recruit where necessary. It allows to have sufficient time and flexible to meet the demands for staff and allows the company to meet its strategic objectives.

Tesco generally seeks to fulfil its vacancies internally than going to externally as it believes to motivate it current staff. It practises what it calls ‘talent planning’. An individual can apply for higher position through annual appraisal scheme. Employees identify roles in which they would like to develop their careers with Tesco. Managers set out technical skills, competencies and behaviours necessary for the roles, kind of training to be given, so that a person can be ready to take the applied role. This helps Tesco to achieve its business objectives and employees to achieve their personal and career objectives.

A very important element in workforce planning is to have clear job descriptions and person specifications.

Steps 01:

Job Description:

Job title

To whom the job holder is responsible

For whom the job holder is responsible

Job description of roles and responsibilities

A person specification set out the skills, characteristics and attributes that a person need to do a particular job

Together with the job descriptions and person specifications provide the basis for job advertisements. This helps job applicants and a post holder to know what is expected of them. They should:

It contains enough information to attract suitable people

It helps to select right applicant with right skills to be called for interview

Set targets and standard for job performance

Job descriptions and person specifications show how a job holder fit into Tesco business. They help Tesco to recruit the right people. They provide a benchmark for each job in terms of responsibilities and skills.

Attracting and Recruitment:

Recruitment involves attracting the right standard of applicants to apply for vacancies. Tesco advertises in different ways depending on the job available.

Internal Recruitment:

Tesco first looks at internal talent plan to fill a vacancy. Internal recruitment process list all current employees who are looking for a move, either horizontally or vertically growth. Tesco advertises the post internally on the intranet for two weeks. It helps to motivate the current employees to grow internally stronger and shape their career growth.

External Recruitment:

For external recruitment, Tesco advertises job vacancies via Tesco website or through vacancies board in stores. Managerial positions are made online.

The right applicants are invited for an interview followed by attendance at an assessment centre for final stage of the selection process.

People interested in store based jobs with Tesco can approach stores with CV or register through job centre plus. The store then prepares a waiting list of people applying in this way and calls them in as jobs become available.

Pharmacist and bakers

Tesco uses the external sources of advertisement which is:

Through offline media and its website

Advertising through magazines such as The Appointment Journal or on Google

Through radio and television

Tesco will seek the most cost-effective way of attracting its right applicants. As we know that advertising through television, radio or some magazines are really expensive however at times it becomes really important for any companies to advertise the right job to the right people so that they can learn more about the job. Tesco uses the easy way to advertise its job vacancies and has a simple application process. When any applicants browses the Tesco’s website it becomes easy for them to find which jobs are available like local jobs, management jobs and head office positions. Tesco’s website also has the online applications for candidates to apply their application forms directly.

Selection:

Now comes the real difficult time to choose the right candidates from the applicants who have applied for the vacancy, whilst keeping in mind the employments laws and regulations. Screening is the most important part of selection process. This makes it easier to understand that the selected candidates are the right fit for job requirements.

In the first stage of screening, Tesco selectors will carefully look at each applicant’s Curriculum Vitae (CV). The CV summarises the applicant personal details, education and job history to date. A well written and positive CV helps Tesco to analyse whether an applicant matches the person specification for the job. Most of the company also provides a ‘job type match’ tool on its careers web page. This tool helps the people who are interested in working with Tesco and can see where they fit before applying for the job.

There are several stages in this process which Tesco uses to select the external management candidates.

As the candidate passes the screening stage attends an assessment centre. The assessment centre is taken place in store and run by the managers. They help to provide regularity in the selection process. Applicants are given various tasks, including problem solving or team-working activities. This involves the problems they might have to deal with at work.

As the candidate passes the assessment centre they are put for an interview. When interview takes place the Line managers for the job on offer takes part in it to make sure the right candidate fits the job requirements.

Task 2

Build Winning teams:

Identify the mix of knowledge, skills and experience necessary for its teams to fulfil their functions within the organization:

Team management flourishes in a supportive environment in which the manager effectively delegates and the team members effectively communicate in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. It’s a commonsense approval of letting people improve their performance by improving they use.

Mix knowledge, skills and experience necessary for the teams:

It is not easy to form a successful team. Belonging to a team is a result of feeling part of something much bigger than you. It has lot to with the understanding of the mission or objectives of your organization.

Though you work for specific function or you belong to different department, even then you are unified with other organization member to accomplish the overall objectives. In order to have a effective team following criteria are important:

Unity in and respect for the primary task.

Ideas and opinions needs to be expressed i.e are open communications.

Mutual trust is revealed in actions.

There is always a support by the presence of care, concern and active help.

It is an active process that involves the personal contributions of all members equally.

Selective use of the teams, leaders and trainers are required to know which groups are good to use for certain tasks, group effectiveness differs by project.

Leadership is to manage and integrate all characteristics into the norm for team behaviour.

Team relationships and building rapport:

Individual in a team create a collaborative effort to achieve common goals and may need to give up individual autonomy in order to attain those goals and may need to give up individual in order to attain those goals.

Each individual in a team has talents and abilities that can contribute to a solid work relationship which is needed to be productive in the job. As a team, members have to identify who excel in technical expertise, who are keen in decision making. It is important to identify skills which will help to perform team effectively. This is otherwise known as team synergy through coordinated effort of performing these abilities. Differences in skills and talents are common. Sharing these skills can help to build solid work relationship among team members.

For a relationship to become healthy, one has to learn to appreciate each other’s talents. Being recognized by fellow for the effort contributed for the team is heart-warming and rewarding.

Encouraging team members to develop roles during team assignment:

It is important to treat everyone in the team equally and encouraging them to participate in every process of the given assignment. Being mutually understanding towards each other which further requires being dependent on each other.

Every individual should be encouraged to develop a level of trust for each other in order to believe reliable to each other. In order to make every one involve in the process of assignment, it is important to entrust work to another team member. There can be meeting every now and then to build the confidence of the team member in regards to task given.

Self disclosure is a good strategy to involve every member in the process of the given task which can help to establish trust with each other. In order to build trust, the team can hold trust building talks during meeting every now and then. It is important to share a little about you to your teammates will give them to chance to know you as a person. Inject humour and some fun to be comfortable with each other.

Task 3

There is a tuff competition in the market where it is important to have a great leader in the company to lead the objective / goals to accomplish. As Tesco is a market leader in UK and international market. Hence, it is important to have right Leaders with right leadership theory. Tesco has adopted Transactional theory to run the company.

Transactional Leadership Theory/ Management Leadership Theory:

According to Gill Robinson Hickman (2010) Transactional Leadership Theory is defined as “It takes place when one person takes the initiative in making contact with other for the purpose of an exchange of valued things.”

Assumption:

Mostly People are motivated by reward and punishment.

Social systems work best with a clear chain of command.

When people have agreed to do a job, a part of the deal is that they cede all authority to their manager.

The prime purpose of a subordinate is to what their manager tells them to do.

Style:

The transactional leader works through creating clear structures whereby it is clear what is required of their subordinates, and the rewards that they get for following orders. Punishments are not always mentioned, but they are also well understood and formal systems of discipline are usually in place.

When the transactional leader allocated work to a subordinate, they are considered to be fully responsible for it, whether or not they have the resources or capability to carry it out. When things go wrong, then the subordinate is considered to be personally at fault, and is punished for the failure.

Transactional leadership is based in contingency, in that reward or punishment is contingent upon performance.

Despite of much limitation, transactional leadership is still a popular approach with many mangers. Indeed, it is very much towards the management end of the scale when it is leadership vs. Management spectrum.

Leadership style:

According to Joseph Clarence Rost (1991) defines Leadership as “Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.”

Leaders do not have subordinates- at least not when they are leading. Many organizational leaders do have subordinates, but only because they are also managers. When they lead is to have followers and following is always a voluntary activity.

Best leader is the when who inspire and do not tell what to do to their subordinate. You have to appeal to them, showing how following them lead to their hearts’ desire. They must want to follow you and perhaps walk into danger and situations that they would not normally consider risking.

Leaders with the strong charisma find it easier to attract people to their cause. As a part of their persuasion they typically promise transformational benefits, such that their followers will not just receive extrinsic rewards but will somehow become better people.

Although many leaders have a charismatic style of some extent, this does not require a loud personality. They are very effective at creating the loyalty that great leaders engender.

This leader are good to people but that does not mean they are friendly with them. They often maintain and retain a degree of separation and aloofness.

They are very achievement focused then paying to much attention to tasks.

Members are always enthusing others to work towards their vision.

They are always pursuing their vision; they consider it natural to encounter problems and hurdles that must be overcome along the way.

In Tesco organization often the leaders/managers tries have the combination of leadership style which would best suit the success of the organization.

Combination of Transactional and Transformation Leadership Style helps to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization.

Vision, goals and values that are effectively communicated to the subordinates / team members is very important. Communication between the leader and the team, and within the team, is vital if success is to be achieved. Everybody likes to feel involved, that they feel involved, that they have a part to play and nurturing this is a skilful and often time-consuming task.

Goals need to be achievable within the time task. Expectations of your team need to be realistic, practical and flexible. It is very important to communicate vision, goals and values to colleagues.

The way an effective leader recognises the values of delegating task to colleagues, once again this reinforces their involvement and common purpose. However, support is often necessary so you will need to ensure that appropriate forms of supports are both available and accessible.

All colleagues may not share the passion that a leader may have for the project but this does not mean that they should not be involved. It is therefore important to keep in mind their responsibilities and personalities so that you can maximise the efforts of your teams.

It is important to enthuse and motivate its colleagues to achieve objectives they are as follows:

By involving them, many employees want to be involved in the ongoing development and progress of their company.

Communicate. It is important to communicate to their employees or colleagues by email, memos, telephone and meeting.

Celebrate individual and team performance. It is important to recognising the individual efforts and appraising their performances.

Set challenging goals. It is important to set challenging goals that drive all the colleagues to work hard to accomplish them.

Give them the tools to succeed. No team will stay motivated if they do not have a right tools required to do their job. This includes equipment, internal support, inventory, marketing materials and etc.

Believe in your people. The majority of people want to well-very few individuals approach a job with the intent of messing up.

Task 4

Performance monitoring and assessment

Objective setting techniques is used to set specific objective for enterprise performance or as they are related to some specific activity or initiative. An objective can be defined as a specific result that is desirable to achieve, within a specified time period. Goals differ than objectives; a goal is specific target to be reached.

Purpose:

The purpose of objective setting is to determine key achievement results, desired by an enterprise or other group in support of its support vision and mission, to determine key achievement results for a change project to measure progress and to evaluate accomplishment and to facilitate goal setting.

Benefits:

The benefit of objective setting is that common objectives facilitates consensus and provide a focus for taking action. Objectives also provide a way to measure progress. The wider the participation in setting the objectives, greater is the commitment and motivation to achieve them.

Tesco has always adopted a technique and process which is best suitable to achieve the objective and ultimately achieving the targets.

The best technique is SMART objectives:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Time Based.

Every technique used in objective setting should follow the basic needs and requirement.

Tesco needs to manage the performance of its employees effectively if it is to remain as the UK’s leading retailer and maintain a competitive edge. This means that there must be an effective management control exercised at both individual and organisational level. A range of processes and techniques are placed within all Tesco stores and in the Tesco offices, which allow individual employees to know how well they are doing, and for managers to be able to monitor how well their subordinates are performing. Tesco’s managers exercise control at an individual and organisational level through: Planning by setting objectives and targets. Maintaining performance standards are important. Rectifying mistakes and taking action. The process described above contributes to management by…..

The objective of using performance monitoring techniques as a key element in the management of projects is to:

Regularly assess the achievement of or the potential for achieving technical, financial, and economic goals of the project.

Provide the management of the EA, the borrower and the Bank with an effective means of measuring the progress of a project, its components, and the adequacy and timeliness of the provision and use of funds.

Determine the form and nature of corrective actions necessary to achieve goals monitored by performance indicators.

Importance of monitoring performance:

All successful organisations have to monitor their performance in order to keep their data updated or to increase their performance level in the market. To have an improvement in performance the management needs to have proper information about the current performance. In order to analyse the performance the management needs to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) which will help the management to monitor progress.

There are three areas of activity within every professional firm that are critical to success and KPIs needs to be established in each of them:

Measures relating to business development and financial performance

The view of clients about the range and delivery and provision of professional services firm services

Views of personnel about all aspects of their relationship within the professional firms

Tesco is successful because they are been agreeing and identifying all this KPIs and considering how best to measure them.

Tesco is so successful because they have using the most important factor that is delegation contingency factors where it is very essential management skills. A good delegation help to save time, develops the people, grooms a successor and motivate the people. There are some delegation contingency factors which need to be taken under consideration in order to be successful in the market and they are:

Size of the organisation

Importance of the decision and duty

Culture of the organisation

Complication of the task

Qualities of employee

Tesco has always strived hard to motivate its colleagues and the best way to do is giving them responsibility, by making them feel that they are important part of the organization. Hence, Tesco has always strived to delegate its responsibility.

Any job is assigned to its colleague through proper delegating technique or process:

Understand the Task:

It is important to understand the task so that you can clearly communicate the task to the person undertaking the task. It is important to understand the barriers and resources which are required to complete the task.

Find the right person:

It is very important to find the right person who is motivated enough to undertake the task with the right skills and knowledge. It is important to communicate the expectations of the task, so as to determine the ownership of the task which he/she will fully responsible success of it.

Communicate the task:

Take the time to clearly to communicate the task. Expectation from the task has to clearly communicate. It is important to communicate the ownership clearly to the delegated person.

Provide resources, remove barriers:

It is important to give all resources and remove all barriers in order to succeed in the task. To provide the success of the task, it is important to provide all the resources, technology, people or time for successful completion of the task.

Guarantee Understanding:

Delegator has to make sure that the person who has delegated with the task has understood everything completely.

Encourage Success:

It is important to make the person delegated realise that you have full confidence in them and hence the task has been given to them with full resources and technology.

Follow up, Reward:

To follow up is important which would decide whether the success of the task.

Proper delegation helps to succeed in the task given which in return motivate its colleagues.

Tesco has always tried to improve its performance and hence it has adopted the MBO ( Management By Objective ) is a process in which managers / employees set objectives for the employee, periodically evaluate the performance, and reward according to the result.

It mainly focuses on the attention on what has to accomplish (goals) rather than how it has to be achieved. They are classified into Corporate Objective, Functional Objective and Individual Objective.

An objective must be SMART as shown in the below diagram:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Time specific

SMARTer Objective for _________________

By ____/_____/___ , __ _____________________________________________________ will have

___________________________ [WHEN] _____________________________________________________________

[WHO/WHAT, include a number that you can measure]

________________________________________________________________________,

[HOW, WHY (remember to specify results

Diagram 1: http://www.rapidbi.com/created/WriteSMARTobjectives.html

This diagram below will show us the factors which are affecting the performance:

Diagram 2: http://userwebs.cth.com.au/~gcutts/Management/19a_factors.htm

Ability:

Ability, skills and knowledge which are used for performing to the highest level is the important key factor affecting performance

Effort:

The amount of manual or mental energy that a person is ready to spend on a job to reach a certain a level of performance. Incentive and motivation could affect the level of performance of an individual.

Motivation:

Motivated people can have an affect their performance. Motivated people can achieve 80-90% ability level whereas de motivated can achieve only 20-30% of the ability.

Equity and Expectation:

It is important to treat and reward equally avoiding any discrimination which would ground any in abilities or de motivate.

Task or role and perception:

It is important to know where one is heading or the direction towards which an individual. Standard and job description must be known and understood.

Environmental factors:

Other factors which could affect the performance such as time constraints, lack of resources or obsolete equipment, information overload or conflicting priorities.

Co-operation from the other staff or department, policies and supervision exercised.