A Multinational Retail Giant

Introduction

Tesco Plc. is one of the multinational groceries that are having headquarters in Hertfordshire of England. The company is ranked to be the ninth-largest retailer all over the world in terms of revenue. The company is a leader in the retail sector of the United Kingdom having shops in seven different countries across Europe and Asia. The business of Tesco includes Tesco Poland, Tesco Lotus, Tesco Malaysia, Tesco Bank, and many others. The company is having a total operating profit of £286 million in Asia as per the 2019 report of Tesco. Tesco is having a high employee percentage with a total of 4, 50,000 employees working all over the world. The total market share of Tesco in the year 2019 is about 27% in the United Kingdom. The share price for the company is about 234.79p. According to the 2018-2019 financial report the total annual revenue for the company Tesco is about 52 million British pounds. The company Tesco has recruited over 160 different champions across the business of the United Kingdom so that every staff or employee of Tesco of any role can be able to learn digital skills. If you require expert assistance in business dissertation help, we are here in place to support you with top-notch services tailored according to your requirements.

Tesco employs people from a wide range of backgrounds and they evaluate the performance of every staff to ensure that they will be able to learn different skills. Tesco offers both on-job training as well as off-job training to staff in which the on-job training includes mentoring more experienced members from the group of staff to act as an adviser. The training and development of Tesco also include The employee's personal development plan of Tesco includes the list of activity plans, a learning log to record the entire process of training and Plan-Do review checklist to monitor plans. Thus the report will analyze and discuss the learning and development strategy for the company Tesco using different factors and methods.

Discussion

Learning and Development strategy of Tesco

The training and development of Tesco include Skill-based training, Problem-solving training, and human relations training. The team leadership workshop that is organized at Tesco helps the manager to understand the requirements of each employee with a solid conceptual understanding of leadership. The training in Tesco is basically divided into two major parts that are on-job training and off-job training. The On-Job training method includes different methods like mentoring, shadowing, coaching, and job rotation. The off-Job training of Tesco includes the workshops, seminars as well as the external courses for the staff on communication, team building, and many others. There are various learning theories that have been used in the training and development approach of Tesco but the primary focus is on constructivist, experiential, and situational theory. The company Tesco offers long term development strategy for each of its employees through workshops, learning logs seminars, and many others. The company Tesco also had boosted management training with an extra £3 million investment in the year 2008. The supermarket giant revealed that it is one of the largest investments in the retail sector for senior-team development. The company Tesco offers the opportunity to every staff to gain knowledge by signing up to face-to-face workshops and also enrolling them in different e-learning process and if they missed it then they might get the free access to that of videos and article related to the e-learning which can be used in future too (Awadari and Kanwal, 2019).

The company also uses a 360-degree appraisal method which denotes that the stakeholder monitors the performance of staff and gives feedback according to it which will help in future development. The primary motive behind this learning and development strategy of Tesco is to increase sales as well as customer services as if every employee is able to evaluate skills correctly then the customer can make a long relationship with customers (Wood et al. 2016). The company also wants to improve the job satisfaction of employees and reduce the turnover rate and for that making gradual improvements in learning and development strategy. Tesco provides effective Line manager training and in the year 2018-19 a total of 17,156 managers had received the opportunity of leadership training from the company.

The training basically had covered the list of skills like effective communication, stress management, development of the team, and many others. The company tracks the performance of each employee also after every stage of training using the learning-questionnaire which the trainee needs to fill ad thus trainer gets aware of how much the employee is engaged with the development phase. With an aim to enhance the skills of each employee in Tesco, the company offered 1,265 apprenticeships in the year 2019 which includes from level 2 retail apprenticeship till level 4 high education-level apprenticeship. The company had also introduced LGV-driver apprenticeship in 2017 which was succeeded as 145 participants had participated in 2019 and thus it is expanded to six more centers of distribution across England. The company in order to enhance skills of each employee had introduced software developer apprenticeship which is in collaboration with the Makers Academy that is one of the leading companies that provides training on software development (tescoplc.com, 2020). [Referred to Appendix 2]

Reason for Learning and development followed in Tesco

The primary aim for introducing the current learning and development program which was mentioned in the business is to improve productivity as if the skills of employees get improved then they can achieve the target easily. The major issues now that are occurring in Tesco are competitive pressures, marketing, and also brand reputation. The employee of Tesco works in different roles like the Department manager who leads the customer-Assistant team that is responsible for assisting the customers or preparing the product which will be delivered to the customer. It also includes warehouse employees and Logistics staff who are responsible for the storage and distribution of products from the store (Vu, 2016). Thus the company in order to increase knowledge and also to increase job satisfaction for every employee included some of the improved strategies in the learning and development section. The opening of some of the new stores in different locations means that the company had to meet with all the demands of customers and also ensures that they must get satisfied with their behavior and way of business. Thus in order to improve the technical and communicative skills of in-store and non-store staff the company had introduced advanced planning in the learning and development approach of the company (businesscasestudies.co.uk, 2020).

As the company had opened many stores all over the world thus their goal behind this learning and development strategy of staff is to ensure that they can give tough competition to the competitors in the retail sector with more databases of loyal customers and also better sales percentage. The company wants to improve the services that are offered to customers like the staff must be trained in such a manner that they can able to handle any customer and also reply to any query without any failure (Haleem and Jehangir, 2017). The learning and development strategy that is been followed will help the company Tesco to increase the innovation in the products as well as marketing strategies that are used by it. The learning and development strategy that is followed by the Tesco to include software development apprenticeship can help the employee to learn the latest technology which they can use in the website of the company to make it more attractive. [Referred to Appendix 1]

Implication for L&D method

The company Tesco needs to improve the economic as well as a social relation with the customers and for that they implemented enhanced learning and development strategy. The Pestle analysis for the company Tesco is defined as below

Political: The government of the United Kingdom encouraged retailers to employ people mostly from the students and middle-aged categories. Tesco employs the students and disabled people also with low rates of pay. As because of the high turnover rate these people are the most desired because of high trustworthiness. Thus in order to keep these people the company Tesco has to improve and add more features in the existing learning and development strategy. The company added extra resources for the disabled person as they might face difficulties in the normal learning process.

Economical: The economic factor has a direct relationship with the buying behavior of the customer. The customer always thinks a lot about spending money on the business at the time of recession. Thus the company whose employees are capable and able to handle any customers properly can only survive at the time of economic crisis can only win. The sales and marketing team face the most critical issues in getting leads at the time of recession as they might be unable to approach people. Thus improved training on how to communicate at the time of recession or financial crisis by the experts can only help the company Tesco to compete.

Social: The population of the United Kingdom has older people than young and they do not prefer to go out shopping. Thus the customer assistant or marketing team who visits to promote the products has to manage and interact with them by visiting them. It is also found that older people always demand polite and soft interaction and hence the customer service staff or marketing and sales team of Tesco has to get trained for that through useful learning and development strategy (Filimonau and Gherbin, 2017). If the marketing staff through improved learning and development strategy can able communicate properly then it might increase the customer percentage and at results the sales of company. Even the trend is changing in market and thus the proper learning on attributes and how to target right people can be learned through training and development courses.

Technological: With the advancement in technology if the staff does not know how to promote the services and also how to add enhanced features in business. Else it can have negative impact on business as 70% of the population of United Kingdom that is used to be active on internet and use it for online shopping. The learning courses or coaching on how to promote services more effectively on internet and also what unique content can be used to win against the competitors in the market can be useful for the company Tesco to get competitive advantage. The course in digital marketing is also included in Learning and development approach of Tesco so that every employee can sale properly.

Legal: The legal factors include the way in which the business or company like Tesco operates abiding different code of conducts by government. Thus the staff might be able to work in legal manner by getting proper training and getting aware of different code of conducts.

Environmental: The company through involvement of sustainable business topic or course in learning and development strategy can takes proper initiative of reducing carbon emission and staff or trainee can be able to work following green policy by reducing waste and following recycle approach (tesco.com, 2020).

L&D training Gaps in Tesco

The training need analysis is the process or an approach that is used to identify the gaps that exists in training that are provided by the employer as compared to actual training needs by an individual. It is used to check whether all the training that is provided by any company is helpful to the staffs or not in achieving the effective results for the business. Tesco uses learning questionnaire with number of multiple choice questions related to what have been taught in training. It is evaluated after every stage of training to check the engagement of staff or trainee related to skills that are taught by trainers. However there are some of the limitation or gaps that occurs as an obstacle in the learning and development process of Tesco and it is summarized as below

In order to check that whether all the staffs had attended the training or not, Tesco authority provides the registered PIN to each employee which is unique for each of them. Then the employees are called and they need to input the four digits PIN that is provided and then answer the question-series related to training. But this method of learning and development that is followed in Tesco is challenging as most of the employee forget PIN that was provided. Thus it become difficult for the employer Tesco to identify who had attended training and whether they were able to pass the assessment that proofs them to be skilful or ready for the job or not.

The paper-based training materials that was sent to each of the in-store pharmacies of Tesco so that they can understand which products or medicine can be useful for the list of given symptoms that are mentioned in paper. It is found that in most of the cases the staff gets forgotten that what paper they received which will be useful in educating them about new products. Thus it results in failure of learning or knowledge transfer in in-store pharmacy employee and also the retention gets poorly affected (skillset.co.uk, 2020).

The sales percentage, feedbacks from customer and performance appraisal can be the factor which needs to be used to check which department had not progress even after getting sufficient training. The performance appraisal calculation can be helpful for the management of Tesco in order to check that which individual of respective department is not able to utilize the training that is provided or having gaps in using the learning and development approach. The lesser will be the performance appraisal calculation of the month, the more gaps exist in getting sufficient learning. The management can also compare the targets for each individual after training and compared it with before training value of sales and they can easily identify whether any gaps occurred in learning process of Tesco or not.

The company Tesco uses experiential theory in which learning involves from the range of experiences. The theory is used because it will allow the staff in become capable of applying knowledge immediately and it also enables real time coaching and feedback. Tesco hire some experts as a trainer and they transfer their knowledge manually or through system to the staffs. Like for example in-store pharmacy department staff gets manual description of each new product like whom to give and what symptoms they must have for it to ensure correct work. This method however considered to be not so impactful for Tesco in-store pharmacy department as they are incapable to recover manual documents at a right time and thus they seems unable to work effectively and also losing a PIN makes management unaware on whether the staffs are capable to do job or not.

Evaluation

Tesco purpose for evaluating the training program is to guide the human resource management in improving different training-programs. The human resource management of Tesco is result-oriented and applies the Kirkpatrick Hierarchical model for the evaluation of different training programs. Through this model the company Tesco collects information like learning and change in behavior of trainees and with the help of it produces results considering factors like rate of learning and how individual able to learn new skills. [Referred to Appendix 3]

Recommendation

The company Tesco especially in pharmacy sector needs to replace paper based training materials with that of SkillSet designed e-learning modules. It is found that most of the staff who is working in pharmacy sector had no experience of e-learning and they also had basic PC skills. Thus the e-learning content needs to be in such a manner that is easy to navigate and use. The materials related to training that can be provided to the pharmacy staff must be user friendly and staff actually wants to apply it for the knowledge. There are many competitors like Walmart needs to include process-oriented program design for the training of supply chain management.

Conclusion

Tesco is one of the known retail sector having total of 4, 50,000 employees working all over the world. The enhancement in learning and development strategy can be useful in increasing the customer satisfaction and also improving the sales performance of company Tesco. It is needed by the HRM department to evaluate the learning and development strategy properly to get beneficial results.

Reference List

Journals

Awadari, A.C. and Kanwal, S., 2019. Employee participation in organizational change: A case of Tesco PLC. International Journal of Financial, Accounting, and Management, 1(2), pp.91-99.

Filimonau, V. and Gherbin, A., 2017. An exploratory study of food waste management practices in the UK grocery retail sector. Journal of Cleaner Production, 167, pp.1184-1194.

Haleem, F. and Jehangir, M., 2017. Strategic Management Practices by Morrison PLC, UK. Analysis, Lessons and Implications. Middle East Journal of Business, 55(4182), pp.1-7.

Vu, M., 2016. IS THE BALANCED SCORECARD USEFUL IN A COMPETITIVE INDUSTRY?: Using Tesco PLC as a case study in the UK grocery retail industry.

Wood, S., Coe, N.M. and Wrigley, N., 2016. Multi-scalar localization and capability transference: exploring embeddedness in the Asian retail expansion of Tesco. Regional Studies, 50(3), pp.475-495.