Strategic Human Resource Management Assessment Answer

Introduction

Strategic human resource management is regarded as the procedure of managing the human capital that associates the workforce with the core strategies, objectives and goals of the company. It constitutes the approach to people management and progress that support long-term performance objectives with the entire framework (Ozkeser 2019). The issues faced by SHRM are changing substantially in relation to trade service and management constraints and relations with employees. Within the upcoming decade, it is assumed to recognize the extreme change in the policies. Therefore, it is the accurate time for HRM to undertake a substantial role in dealing with HR-based issues by making particular efficiencies to improve these characters into their central traits. It can now be observed that HRM is needed to accommodate personnel into virtual work sites as well as grow paths to manage business culture and employee alignment (Stone et al. 2020). The main purpose of the report is to analyze current SHRM issues faced by Woolworths and propose the best strategies to resolve such issues.

Background of Organization

Woolworths is the leading supermarket retain chain in Australia which is well-known for its huge presence and monopolistic influence in the Australian retail sector. It is a public company carrying out its extensive operations in New Zealand and Australia (Woolworths 2023). Mostly, the corporation is well-known for vending grocery items but they also trade stationery stuffs, pet and baby materials, beauty and health products, magazines and DVDs in over 995 locations. Presently, the corporation operates about 1000 stores all across Australia where it has 9 convenience stores and 976 supermarkets that have the same logo. The total figure of employees working within the company is over 115000. The corporation has a robust organizational structure and is highly committed to adding value to the teams and communities and depicts the same objectives in its central values (Edmans 2021).

Current SHRM Policies

Workplace Health and Safety

Workplace health issues are identified as evolving issues for the HR managers in Woolworths. The physical separation, smaller personnel and sanitization necessitated additional funds in order to fulfil the Australian government's criteria of health and safety. To evade the closure of the corporation, HR managers were forced to work with half of the human capital and upkeep health and safety benchmarks at the same time (Willis 2022). The battle against commercial repercussions of COVID-19 has placed pressure on HRM to protect the safety of their workers. The managers at Woolworths find safety and health as complex tasks. It is because the workforce involved in the company is exposed to a wide range of health risks, including trips, falls, fire, violence, equipment handling and electricity (Dissanayake 2021). On the other hand, personnel confront hurdles in formulating the safety vision as well as imposing and enforcing answerability to address the issues of occupational health and safety in the retail sector.

Talent Retention and Development

The shortage of skills and efficient developmental programs undertaken by HRM, lead to the increasing ratio of employee turnover. Woolworths struggle to offer essential business training, technology training and a large array of skill sets (Wheeler 2019). It is vital to make sure to have adequate access to training to confirm that job tasks are executed in the right way, leading to satisfaction of employees. Staff dissatisfaction may have a substantial effect on their readiness to work, directing to greater employee turnover. Poor learning and development prospects act as the major causes of people feeling unmotivated at the workplace. Due to such performance differences, Woolworths is having a tough time retaining skilled workers (Lancaster 20191). On other hand, it has been found that while few employees have been granted the option of working from home, it becomes tough for HR to arrange for such employees that work virtually to support their mental well-being. Moreover, the retail sector including Woolworths Group has not received any remuneration from the government to retain and train the staff during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Proposed Strategies

Managing stress and improving workplace health and well-being

Employees intend to have a main role in the culture of the corporation. Healthier personnel functioning under controllable extents of stress will be better-off and more optimistic, assisting them to maintain a vigorous, healthy workplace culture that is encouraging towards productivity and creativity. Moreover, stress is regarded as one of the foremost causes of nonappearance in the workplace. Not just the less tension in the workplace result in lesser mental wellbeing days, but it will also decrease the sum of sick days off taken by personnel because of weakened immune systems as an outcome of excessive stress.

Studies indicate that having slight discretion over how work gets finished is linked not just with ineffective mental well-being but also with greater rates of heart disease. The combination of greater work demands and lower control over the job substantially raises the dangers of death and diseases from cardiac causes. Even comparatively smaller changes in worker independency can make a distinction in employee health. HR at Woolworths must offer workers higher choices or control over their working schedules (Kent et al. 2021). This will help Woolworths in ensuring their mental well-being. Several retail organizations nowadays use ‘just in time’ sort of schedule to stab to match the workforce towards changing demand. But erratic, changeable schedules make it hard for frontline workers to accomplish their family duties and individual lives. Study indicates that a wide array of negative outcomes occur for workers who have such a form of erratic work pattern – including ineffective quality of sleep and higher emotional distress. In contrast to this, the research at Gap found that higher schedule stability can be an advantage to both employees and Woolworths. Rising scheduling stability for the workforce led to a 7% increase in the median sales of stores and a 5% rise in the productivity of labour (Kesavan et al. 2022).

Offering employees the opportunities to participate in workplace improvements can be a competent approach towards fostering their health and wellness. The workers who are asked to involve in the structured procedure of determining and addressing the issues in their workplace unveiled declined rates of exhaustion and raises in job satisfaction. Several workers at Woolworths also act as caregivers for elderly parents or children and they advantage from superintendents that are more kind of the challenges they aspect in trying to balance their personal and work lives. HRM must plan for training programs of managers at different departments to raise family-supportive conduct, with capable findings for work-life stability and health (Rodriguez-Sanchez et al. 2020).

Strategic workforce planning and talent management

Strategic workforce preparation and talent administration is a powerful approach towards engaging, building and retaining staff members. Talent management is the SHRM procedure framed to gain and hold qualified and talented workers. The objective of talent supervision is to maintain workers involved and inspired so that they act in an optimum way (Diamantidis and Chatzoglou 2019). This consists of proper onboarding procedures ensuring that new hires feel greeted and completely recognize their new roles. Also, it is substantial at Woolworths to assure that all present workers feel appreciated and are provided with adequate tools and sustenance to develop their career growth within the corporation.

Strategic workforce planning is termed as the plan to establish a robust staff for both the long term and short term. It looks at the present workforce, analytics and industry movements to plan for forthcoming demands. It not just involves planning out for new labour requirements, but also lay emphasis on supporting present employees and progressing aids to help fulfil the business objectives, and projected changes and maintain a high stride with the competition.

Strategic workforce planning undertakes a statistical tactic towards designing the flawless team. It grounds its verdicts on business analytics and trends and emphasizes signing the best-qualified talent to finish future and present tasks (Tien et al. 2021). Though it does thrive for good rates of employee preservation, it is usually envisioned for building the crew of personnel to fill current and upcoming requirements. Talent management is cast off basically for the retention of employees. It is intended at establishing morale inside Woolworths to ensure that the workforce is involved, satisfied and stay inspired so that they will endure to shape the skill sets and advantages in their workplace.

When both the proposed strategies are paired together, it will create an vital workforce that is not just creative, but sustainable and constantly reaching to accomplish more via personal and corporate improvement.

Recommendations

In today's world of uncertainty and fast change, HR is always under raised pressure to confirm that the company has the essential workers to support the shifting of the business goals of the company. Strategic workforce planning, and talent management, will allow the HR of Woolworths to determine talent requirements linked to the future goals of Woolworths and frame a strategy to confirm that Woolworths has the accurate mix of technology, personnel and engagement models to accomplish those objectives. Competent talent management and strategic workforce planning are key towards the long-term success of Woolworths (Klikauer 2022). By having an adequate understanding of their future and current workforce requirements and investing in the progress of their employees, the company can create an engaged, strong and efficient workforce that is well-equipped to fulfil the challenges of the continuously altering business environment.

It is suggested that HRM at Woolworths must undertake the following recommendations for successful workforce planning and talent management –

• Align the workforce planning with the business objectives – It is vital to begin by aligning the workforce planning efforts with the overall business objectives of Woolworths (Rees and Leatherbarrow 2021). It will aid in ensuring that one is focused on the right areas and that the plans are particularly aligned with the direction the corporation is heading.
• Perform a workforce analysis – To recognize the current and future workforce requirements, it is necessary to perform a deep analysis of the current workforce. It must include the evaluation of skills, experience and knowledge of employees along with potential gaps and shortages.
• Develop talent management approach – HR at Woolworths must formulate employee development programs, implement performance management systems and offer them competitive pay and benefits packages (Gacheru 2022). By keeping track of key metrics like employee productivity, turnover and engagement, one can acquire valuable insights into the effectiveness of talent management efforts and undertake necessary adjustments.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that Woolworths is a leading company in the retail industry in Australia that has huge number of personnel the major drive of which is catering for consumers wide across the globe. The major aim of this research depicts the present HRM of Woolworths Group. While going via the paper, it has been found that two main HRM-related problems of the corporation that is concerned with workplace health and safety and other one is concerned with talent development and retention. Two strategies have been proposed to mitigate these HRM issues and the recommendations have been positioned to implement those strategies. Competent collaboration and communication are critical towards the success of any strategic workforce planning and talent management measures. HR at Woolworths must ensure to engage all pertinent stakeholders in the planning procedure and make sure that there is constant communication and transparency throughout the complete process. Business managers are under huge burden to hit short-term marks and emphasize abrupt staffing requirements. HR leaders must connect with the business leaders at Woolworths to recognize the strategic purposes and establish a corporate case for investment in a tactical labor force plan. They must leverage the data to exemplify how strategic staff planning can lessen such burdens and set leaders up for upcoming success.

References

Diamantidis, A.D. and Chatzoglou, P., 2019. Factors affecting employee performance: an empirical approach. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 68(1), pp.171-193.

Dissanayake, D., 2021. Battle with Covid-19: the best recommendations for business professionals. Annals of Human Resource Management Research, 1(1), pp.1-14.

Edmans, A., 2021. Grow the pie: How great companies deliver both purpose and profit–updated and revised. Cambridge University Press.

Gacheru, A.M., 2022. Influence of Multinational Corporations’ Trans-nationality on Human Resource Development in the Global South: the Case of Diageo’s East African Breweries in Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, University of Nairobi).

Kent, P., McCormack, R. and Zunker, T., 2021. Employee disclosures in the grocery industry before the COVID‐19 pandemic. Accounting & Finance, 61(3), pp.4833-4858.

Kesavan, S., Lambert, S.J., Williams, J.C. and Pendem, P.K., 2022. Doing Well by Doing Good: Improving Retail Store Performance with Responsible Scheduling Practices at the Gap, Inc. Management Science, 68(11), pp.7818-7836.

Klikauer, T., 2022. A Global Guide to Human Resource Management: Managing Across Stakeholders. Routledge.

Lancaster, A., 2019. Driving performance through learning: develop employees through effective workplace learning. Kogan Page Publishers.

Ozkeser, B., 2019. Impact of training on employee motivation in human resources management. Procedia Computer Science, 158, pp.802-810.

Rees, G. and Leatherbarrow, C., 2021. The added value debate. In Strategic Human Resource Management: An International Perspective (pp. 101-134). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Rodríguez-Sánchez, J.L., González-Torres, T., Montero-Navarro, A. and Gallego-Losada, R., 2020. Investing time and resources for work–life balance: The effect on talent retention. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(6), p.1920.

Stone, R.J., Cox, A. and Gavin, M., 2020. Human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.

Tien, N.H., Jose, R.J.S., Ullah, S.E. and Sadiq, M., 2021. Development of human resource management activities in Vietnamese private companies. Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education (TURCOMAT), 12(14), pp.4391-4401.

Wheeler, S., 2019. Digital learning in organizations: Help your workforce capitalize on technology. Kogan Page Publishers.

Willis, T., 2022. How Do High-Risk Small Business Frontline Workers Learn from Everyday Work to Increase Risk Awareness and Prevent Workplace Accidents?

Woolworths. 2023. About us. [Online]. Available at: https://woolworthsgroup.com.au/au/en/about-us.html [Accessed on: 16^th April 2023].

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