GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT

COURSE NAME:

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

INDEX Executive Summary .. 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 7 7 8 8 9 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 15-19

1. Introduction... i. Company Operations. ii. Human Resource Department Hierarchy.. iii. Mission Statement and Company Values. 2. Competitive Advantage 3. Concerns of Demand & Supply... i. More Similar Offers in Market. ii. Shortage of Qualified People iii. Better Work Lifestyle... iv. Macro Environmental Factors.. 4. Impact on Business Objectives i. Under Staffed Inefficiency ii. Low Morale.. iii. Over worked & Absenteeism... iv. High Turnover.. v. Less Qualfied Managers.. vi. Bad Customer Perception 5. Corrective Measures Recommendations i. Forecasting Internal And External Candidate.. Recommendations ii. Collaboration Within All Retailers.. Recommendations ... iii. Compensation and Benefit... Recommendations.... iv. Training And Development. Recommendations 6. Conclusions.. References & Appendix. Appendix.

Executive Summary
This assignment is a learning experience as well as addressing the benefits and concerns around the organizations HRM. TLC Stores PLC is a multinational retail company growing with its retail business around the world and now in Malaysia. Its main business objective is to use sufficient and the best available knowledgeable employees achieving utmost results for customer satisfaction. Therefore, it is highlighted the companys Competitive Advantage to show the strong foundation which has brought TLC far so much in multinational countries and one of it is Malaysia.

On the other side, this assignment looks at the main concern of the HRD, which is the Demand and Supply of human capital.

The knowledge and skills of the workforce are crucial and difficult to change quickly, so it is important to plan ahead to identify the skills required to deliver business plans (demand) compared with those that are currently available (supply), to find out where potential skill gaps may lie and how these might be filled.(Chris Bottomley, NatWest)

Nevertheless, corrective measures are taken by the HRD to overcome the problem. But sometimes these corrective measure works and sometimes it doesnt. Here personal recommendations are stated and how it may change and improve the organizations human capital to be the aspiring assets of the company for mutual benefit.

1. Introduction

i.

Company Operations

TLC Stores PLC is a multinational company growing with its retail business around the world. It is currently operating in ten countries in Asia and Europe.TLC operates more than 900 stores around the world, employs more than a quarter of a million people and is a market leader in most the countries. In Malaysia, TLC started non-retail operations in year 2001 and a series of hypermarkets started to open this year.

ii.

Human Resource Department Hierarchy

The structure of HRD in TLC is one that of Retail business. Whereby, the HRD and the function of HR in the HQ control the recruitment and selection, training and development and compensation and benefits of the human capital in the HQ. It also monitors and acts as consultants to the HR managers in the retail stores. These function serves as a support function to the HR department and the entire human capital in the retail stores all over Malaysia. (Refer Appendix 1)

iii.

Mission Statement and Company Values

Its main business objective is to use sufficient and the best available knowledgeable employees to expand its business all over Malaysia in the most economical yet effective and efficient way. Also to achieved highest level of monetary benefits for the business and staff and achieve customer satisfaction.

We thought to believe and live within our values and core purpose of our business. Our Core Values; No one tries harder of customers Treat people how we like to be treated All retail team, one team

Our Core Purpose; Our core purpose is the reason why we are here. We want to create value for our customers so they come back again and again to shop with us. To create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty. Every Little Helps

2. Competitive Advantage

TLC being in the retail business for more the 30 years, has a strong foundation to market itself in the employment perspective. Every time there is an advertisement, a huge number of aspiring candidates apply for the available position. The quantity is not the concern, but its the qualitative concern. The TLC organization has its foundation built on the Mc Kinseys 7 S model (Kotler, 2000) - hard skills, whereby the Structure is of a flat hierarchy, the Systems are properly placed with the touch of years of retail experience and the business Strategies are properly planned and implemented.

Having said that, it is also essential to believe that in any business or organization, irrespective of its size or type, has its benefits (competitiveness) and concerns (incompetence). Even though the benefits are highlighted, the emphasis is actually on the incompetence, which has brought concerns in our organizations and has no room for ignorance as organizations are maneuvering towards the congruence amongst the HRD and the entire business to meet the organizations objectives.

3. Concerns of Demand & Supply As mentioned in the previous paragraph, TLCs competitiveness are the hard skills but the main concern is the availability of soft skills i.e the human capital. As that, every store that opens has a demand of about 400 staff, which comprises from general workers, associates, managers and senior level management. This demand has raised concerns in the HRD whereby they are not able to meet the demand. In order for the company to fulfill its mission, we need to ensure there are adequate resources to work towards that

mission. As quality of results are relevant, the quantity of resources, (not just resources, but knowledgeable resources) are required to obtain the quality results. HRD is facing challenges in sourcing skillful and strategically fitted people. Attempts are made to explore every angle to meet organization targets and objectives.

Nevertheless, several factors causing the failure to meet the demand and supply are identified in the next paragraphs. Recommendations and solutions are laid as well, and the steps taken by our HRD to overcome this problem in our company. Also outlined, are the occurrence of other issues entailed by this incompetence and how they relate to one another.

i.

More Similar Offers in Market

TLC being in the Retail business has a lot of competition not only in the business per say but also faces challenges in the recruitment function. More and more hypermarkets are opening today and this has caused not only shortage of workers but also lack of people interested in this kind of job. Our competitors are banging on strong competitive offers to attract potential candidates to be employed and offering better compensation benefits as well. TLC, no doubt is a household name for retail business in other countries like Europe and Asia, but in Malaysia, it is still in an infant stage. Thus, causing slight drawback and caused us to strive harder to convince the market and attract the people.

ii.

Shortage of Qualified People

On the other hand, there are also insufficiencies of qualified people in this area of expertise. For example, there are not many specialized courses available in the market to advance or qualify oneself in the knowledge of Retail business. The only professional course available is in inventory control or logistics. We need more people qualified in careers like local marketing (indoor), or expertise in Retail business. This is causing HR managers to customize the training for these areas. Employees trained upon recruitment and there is very little exposure from within the company. It would be better if the staff is

knowledgeable and been exposed to this kind of environment before joining the company.

iii.

Better Work Lifestyle

Majority of employee market is focusing on careers related to IT or Electronic. The entire business today is all about Customer and Customer Oriented Business. People are more interested in e-shopping, thus, the market is maneuvering towards e-business related jobs. Education market is much more advanced and more people graduate from higher learning institutions and would prefer to hold a more challenging job e.g managerial positions. The future that been predicted had arrived, that is, the employee economy of the Next Society, where people look for more glamorous working lifestyle. Jobs that allows individual to earn more in less time consumed. To be more precise, work smart. They would rather work as an associate in an IT or web based company than working as an associate in a Hypermarket environment.

iv.

Macro Environmental Factors

Namely; Political, Economical, Social and Technological factors do play an important influence to TLCs demand and supply inconsistency. As the headings above relate to some of the PEST factors, I would like to stress on the political and Government Issue as well. For example, government policies and legislations have pressured the HR managers to seek no alternative workforce from other countries. Stringent roles put before them and strict compliance to government policies expected of them. Lets take the latest government policy that allow employer to only employ foreign workers who are able to speak either English or Bahasa Malaysia. This narrows down the ability to employ only educated workers and again there will be no room to employ cheap labour from other poorer and third world countries. Another issue is of fulfilling the quota of multi racial employees according to the State Demographic ratios whereby; it is sometimes difficult to fulfill the quota to balance the numbers and also taking into account there should be no discrimination of races and gender. (Refer Appendix 2)

4. Impact on Business Objectives Under Staffed Inefficiency

i.

The concern of having understaffed departments is creating inefficiency in the business units. Each business unit or department has its own targets and goal to achieve, which is deviating and targets not met. For example the inefficiency of issuing daily reports in the inventory department is causing bottleneck and report are only issued later after a day or two. These reports become obsolete by then and the respective department managers not able to make decisions on planning for the next day.

ii.

Low Morale

Lack of staff has raised doubts in the minds of employees that the management is bad and not sensitive towards the inefficiency of the staff and staff unable to show best results even if they are capable. Take the above example in previous paragraph. Also this feeling is causing the staff to believe that there is no worry that the management will fire the staff, as it is, the management is not able to accommodate the vacancies. Staff is unable to take leave and always have to replace another absent staff as TLC runs on shift work and minimum numbers of staff have to be present for duty. This forces the department managers to stay back and perform the subordinates duty. Ultimately, the staffs sense of worth decreases and again a good reason to leave for better more satisfied job.

iii.

Over worked & Absenteeism

Any person that works needs a time to rest or take a day off. Event the Employment Act 1967 allows 45 hours of labour in a week and not more than that. Unfortunately, due to lack of manpower, employees most of the time has to work two shifts to cover absenteeism. As TLC is a retail business, the operating hours are from 6 am to 11.30 pm. This means an employee has to work three shifts alternately. Employees claim for

overtime if he/she needs to cover the next shift. This in turn increases the overheads and medical expenses of the individual because over worked employee would rather go for a medical leave than applying for normal leave as it would be difficult to get approval and on the other hand, it is a paid leave.

iv.

High Turnover

As mentioned in the earlier paragraph that there are similar offers in the market by our competitors, this has indirectly also caused high turnover in our company. Moreover, loosing an experienced employee is like loosing a won battle. This means the competitor has a competitive advantage, and managed to attract the employee by offering better compensation benefits. High turnover would mean shortage of workers and loss in productivity. However, It is difficult to number the percentage (%) of concern as we have 20 different departments and each department has its employees from different experience background.
(Refer Appendix 3)

For example, the receiving department will have

employees from inventory and warehousing experience, whereas, the Bakery department will have employees who bake. So as you can see, if we look at the turnover, some departments may even have more than adequate staff and some may have under supply. But again the concern also arise from the over staffed as we may expect newly employed employee to leave after some time but he/ she doesnt. And also they are not transferable as for example, they make only know how to bake not drive a forklift in the warehouse or even be a butcher!

v.

Less Qualified Managers

The inadequacy of staff at all levels has opened the opportunity for less qualified staff to be promoted as Senior Associates and Department Managers. Not because its due recognition but in some cases its to give opportunity to the ones who are still there and also a tactic for staff retention. These employees may not be qualified but do have some experience which can be developed. But again, naturally, they may not have leadership

qualities and management capabilities. Subsequently, the standards of communication between the Strategic level and operation level diminish.

vi.

Bad Customer Perception

The concerns of inadequate employees do not just end at organization level. It further creates bad perception in the eye of customer as they observe emptiness in sales floor. The public would be more happy and satisfied to see adequate TLC staff working at any time of the operation hours. Emptiness also reveals unsuccessful business, which may not be the case, but it does perceive that way. Customers will stop coming as they feel that the atmosphere is not conducive. 5. Corrective Measures Recommendations Certainly, TLCs Recruitment and Selection Manager is taking the corrective measures to overcome this problem and also other problems derived from the shortfall of supply of human capital in the organization from time to time.

i.

Forecasting Internal And External Candidate

Our HRD is taking advantage of all opportunities exposed in the market of employment and pool of potential candidate. We believe that the best way to preserve an honest and loyal employee is to mould the employee from the beginning and expose him/her to positive thinking and good attitude development. The HRD is doing this by tying up with cutlery schools, bakery schools, as well as with hotel management colleges. The HRD team often organizes open interview booths to encourage these students to register with TLC before they finish their studies. This process helps to generate leads and selected candidate will be granted a job once he/she graduates. However, TLC also implement succession-planning program and encourage internal promotion for future management executives, which is also quoted;

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 Most firms use succession planning to refer to the process of deciding how to fill the companys most important executive jobs (Dessler, 2000)

Dessler, 2000, also mentioned that this process could be by determining current qualified employee or know your employees skills and qualification. If it is not obvious, managers normally refer to qualification inventories

Recommendations

A self selection method will allow the HRD to put forward the minimal requirements needed from the prospective fresh graduates before coming forward to apply for the job. For example, the candidate must be willing to work in wet area for long hours, working under shift work, fast learner and work under pressure. This is a good self-selection question for the candidate as well as for the HRD for careful and accurate choice for genuine and determined candidate. On the other hand, right aptitude candidate can be determined by some simple aptitude test. The candidates qualifications, experience and interest must match the required criteria by department head. Also, an open performance appraisal quarterly in a year should be performed and this will to certain extent diagnose whether the respective staff will stay or leave the company soon due to better offer or unhappiness in job.

ii.

Collaboration Within All Retailers

This is something new that TLC is proposing to other retailers in the market. As stated earlier in this assignment, our values, all retailer, one team is referred. Presently, there is a lot of Pinching of staff from one hypermarket to another. Obviously, it is not benefiting any one of the organizations at the end. It is the employee that benefits from this kind of employment.

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Nevertheless, in Desslers book it is stated aggressive recruiting is therefore often the name of the game. Poaching workers is fair game, reads one HR newsletter headline. (Dessler, 2000)

We are working towards better working relationship with other retailers. Retailing must create sense of loyalty amongst retailers. Here the Internal Rivalry that is mentioned by Michael Porter in his 5 forces model (Kotler, 2000) is believed to exist. And collaboration amongst the retailers would be the answer to avoid Internal Rivalry.

Recommendations

HRD should do a SWOT analysis of comparison and market offerings for jobs of the same type of industry and create a competitive edge for attracting potential loyal employees.
(Refer Appendix 4)

for my own illustration of a simple HRMs strategic planning

process. This competitor study will encourage our company to offer better incentives and benefits to ensure we are ahead of other competitors in market. Also Formulating a SHRM function around the role of recruitment and selection is essential. Our HRD very much practice the congruence between the business mission, the business units and the HRD to attain the utmost strategic fit for the job.

iii.

Compensation and Benefit

The HRD has several compensation and benefit plans for the employees. Strategic rewards has been designed like, values award, where an employee from any level is awarded with the values award card by another colleague who feels that he/she deserves it. It can derive from any good job done by an employee and is spotted by another. It can be from servicing or handling a customer to doing his/ her job more than expected results. These value cards are accumulated for a period of time and then awarded with a trophy or gift by the CEO of TLC PLC in UK.

Recommendation

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No doubt this is a good start and never experience seeing our competitors doing so. It interest can definitely fade away if not controlled and is not consistent. These rewards must not be abused and the value of it should be preserved. It would be better if a mix of such rewards is implemented and this will keep employees at their toes to keep up with the rewards and aim towards achieving it. Lets take as simple case of absenteeism. Interesting rewards system like implementing Bonus Points for Non-Absenteeism, Punctuality, no medical expenses, no medical leave and so on, on monthly basis. All these categories will carry different quantity of bonus points and it will be accumulated for 1 financial year and rewards could be translated to monetary benefit for shopping at TLC itself.

iv.

Training And Development

TLC encourages fresh graduates to undergo Management Trainee to prepare them for future promotions. Furthermore, TLC is equipped with full set of training packages for all levels of staff. One of which is, Job rotation It should be tailored to the needs, interests, and capabilities of the individual trainee, and not be a standard sequence that all trainees take. How fast the person is learning should determine the length of time the trainee stays in a job. And the manager to whom the person reports need training to assess and mentor the person in a competent way. (Dessler, 2000)

No doubt this effort is remarkable but the problem lies in the area of insufficient time to develop them. Most of the trainees are feeling the pinch of being under trained and this is putting pressure on their responsibilities and result expected. Ultimately, the quality of Senior Associates drop and this can lead employees with minimal interest or indecisive to resign. But in the long run, as the government is restricting the expansion of retail outlets,

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the process of opening new stores has slowed down. This is an advantage to the HRD and training the fresh graduates would be more effective.

Recommendations

As mentioned in earlier in this assignment that most managers are less qualified and have communication and leadership deficiency. They must be given training on communication skill and these trainings must include test or simple exam. This will encourage healthy and genuine learning process and not just train for the sake of training and fulfilling quota for the year. There should be more interesting workshops based training and not theater style training session. Here positive participation in training and passing their tests can earn them Bonus Points.

6. Conclusion

It is though concluded that one action is a multiplication of another cause or in short Chain Reaction pattern. No doubt, we are able to identify the markets influencing factors on recruitment and selection, the reasons for shortfall in the Supply and Demand and the factors influencing the human capital in our organization, it is difficult to identify the workable tool in a short period to correct the root problem of this case. What went wrong in our HRM, the strategic planning and the overall functions of the HRD? Here, it would only be wise to say that it is our competitive advantage that we are able to identify the issues around us but in order to take corrective measures, it has to start from internally educating the employees before carefully again recruiting and selecting. Taking in concern the recommendations presented in this assignment. New objectives should be targeted and policies to change to welcome the new strategic plan in recruiting and retaining the right human capital in our organization. Only than can we be able to justify the Demand with Supply.

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References
Chris Bottomley, NatWest, People Management 9/7/98 Dessler, 2000, HRM, 9th edition, Chapter 4, page 90 Dessler, 2000, HRM, 9th edition, Chapter 4, page 93 Dessler, 2000, HRM, 9th edition, Chapter 4, page 97 Dessler, 2000, HRM, 9th edition, Chapter 7, page 205 Kotler, 2000, Millenium Edition, Chapter 8, pg 218 fig. 8.1 Kotler, 2000, Millenium Edition, Chapter 3, pg 83, Fig. 3.8

Appendix
Appendix 1 ..................................................... Appendix 2 a .................................................. Appendix 2 b .................................................. Appendix 3 ..................................................... Appendix 4 ..................................................... Organization Chart (HRD) Demographic Ratios by State Demographic Ratios by State Summary of Recruitment Activity Analysis Of Competitor Process Chart

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