Workforce Employment Statistics
The Office for National Statistics has replaced the Annual Employment Survey with the Annual Business Inquiry. The ABI for 2000 estimated a total of 168,100 employees working in Birmingham.
Sainsbury employ 200 – 250 employees a day. Employment changes have dramatically influenced the growth within the online grocery providers, over the past three years; the number of employees has increased significantly.
The table and chart below compares the industrial structure of Birmingham, Wales and Great Britain by broad industrial group as recorded in the Annual Business Inquiry for December 2000.
Unemployment rate in Birmingham
The unemployment rate within Birmingham is 50% less then the general employment rate within the UK. However, this is good news for Sainsbury’s because they have more people to employ within the business.
At Sainsbury they are essentially four key stages involved, in the process of human resources planning.
Stock tacking
Stock tacking asks questions on what the quality of staff available in Sainsbury? It uses the following techniques.
Job analysis – this means gathering information on the availability of all the jobs at Sainsbury.
Skills audit – this is a survey for all existing staff, to see what skills, qualifications and experiences the have.
Performance review- this involves looking at the performance of all employees in order to: identify staff potential and to identify where staff have move training needs.
Forecasting Supply
This asks questions on ‘how many employees will Sainsbury have in the future?’ It there fore means looking at internal external sources of labour.
When Sainsbury looks at the total supply of labour within the company, it is very important to look at the labour turn over.
There are three main ways to calculate employee turnover.
Annual labour turn over index- tells you what percentages of the workforce left in a year.
Stability index- this calculation gives Sainsbury a good idea of how long employees are staying within the organisation.
Sickness- sickness is another influence on the internal supply of labour. If there is a high level of sickness absences, then this affects the supply of labour very badly. If the absence is due to a genuine reason then there is not much you can do in the short term.
Sainsbury has to be aware of sickness absences to maintain a strong workforce. In most cases sickness absences be bogus. If this situation is not tackled then this can cause poor morale amongst the employees who are attending work. The workers will feel that the managers are ‘soft’ for letting people get away with it.
Sickness absences needs monitoring against:
- Performance in the previous year
- Trends in other organisations in the same industrial sector
- National sickness absence figures
Ways of controlling and monitoring against:
- Keeping proper records of sickness for all staff
- A policy of sick visiting by the personnel manager or by the company nurse
- Return to work interviews after one day of absence; this puts pressure on people who regularly have the odd day off ill but do not want the embarrassment of an interview each time
- A clear statement to staff that regular periods of unexplained sickness could lead to a disciplinary procedure or even dismissal
Accident
Sainsbury’s have to keep records on their accident rates within the organisation like all other organisations. Better health and Safety procedures and the use of EU, have reduced the level of accidents at workplaces. A large factor has been the closure of many unsafe, old-fashioned factories, steel work and coalmines.
Succession
This only applies to employees at line manager level and above. Succession planning should include an estimate of what managerial jobs will be available in the future, analyse what skills those jobs will require and to, review the strengths and weaknesses of existing staff. For example the human resources department at Sainsbury to make sure that when someone in the customer service department leaves then they have to train someone else to take over the job.
Local skills shortages
Sainsbury’s and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) have formed a partnership to provide an estimated 15,000 hours of training per week to help tackle Birmingham’s and the UK ‘s IT skills shortage.
The £15 million venture will serve IT qualifications to shoppers by creating three new I.T. Now at Sainsbury's learning centres. Led by the LSC's National Contracts Service and Newbury and Reading Colleges, the new initiative is designed to take business-relevant courses to learners rather than waiting for learners to come to them. Sainsbury need to be aware of these local shortages in order to develop their own training programme to make sure there is a constant supply of trained workers for their company.
Shoppers will be able to combine their weekly shop with IT tuition, which will be available during supermarket opening hours at the in-store IT learning centres. The tuition can be followed at the student's own pace and over 200 courses will be available. All courses will provide industry-recognised training in a variety of programmes from basic word processing to advanced courses in web design and digital cameras.
The concept was first tested at the Sainsbury's Calcot (Reading) store where 3,000people graduated over 22 months. The success of this project, supported by Newbury and Reading Colleges, has led to the project's wider rollout throughout England.
Newbury and Reading Colleges, continuing to work in partnership, will provide support during the roll out and for the co-ordination of activities within the centres.
Competition for employees
Sainsbury has to be well aware of local competitors within the local area who are expanding or looking for more employees. Sainsbury have to ensure that their workers enjoy working at Sainsbury and are motivated in the job so it’s unlikely for them to leave. If the employees at Sainsbury would move to the competitors such as Asda and Tesco then HRM department is responsible to plan to fill the vacancies left. High street supermarkets stores such as Sainsbury have not been very affected through employment changes, because they have been established for several years. Sainsbury supermarket stores are quite large in size, usually employing 200 – 250 employees a day.
Availability of Labour
The amount of labour in a particular area depends on how many people they can employ. Now a days transport allows Sainsbury to recruit from further areas but some provision still needs to be made, e.g. a work bus. If Sainsbury had a little labour availability and they were forced to recruit people from further areas, then the HRM department of Sainsbury will have to organise some type of transport for the workers. If many employees were recruited form one particular area then a bus could be a viable, with a central pick up point.
E3
Recruitment and Selection
Recruitment and selection is one of the most important parts of the HR department at Sainsbury. Equal opportunities legislation governing recruitment and selection processes, those responsible for recruitment and selection need to develop there interviewing skills towards the competence/behavioural approaches to ensure stronger validity of candidates to performance on the job.
When Sainsbury is recruiting a new member into the company, they need to produce a set of documents, which enables them to complete their process efficiently. The first document is a Job specification – a job description explains the mains tasks required in a job role. All organisations have a job description for every job from the cleaner to the assistant manager.
When drawing up a job description the personnel department has a number of alternatives. These are:
The line manager can draw up a description or the existing jobholder or the Human Resources Manager can also interview the jobholder.
The main features of a job description are:
- The job title
- The location of the job
- What the organisation does
- The main purpose of the job
- The tasks required in the job role (in detail)
- The standards that the job holder will require to achieve
- Pay and other benefits
- Promotion prospects
- The person whom the job holder reports
- The person who reports to the job holder
All businesses like Sainsbury have a job description so people who are applying for the job know what is involved in the job and what the pay is and where the location is. The business can use this to measure performance and is an advantage to both the applier and the business.
The other document is a person specification, this document shows what the person needs for the job role.
The best-known method of drawing up person specification is called the seven-point plan originally devised by Alec Rodger. This bases the person specification upon seven separate groups of characteristics:
Physical health and appearance- this includes grooming, looks, dress sense, voice, hearing and eyesight as well as general health matters.
Attainments- this includes educational qualifications such as GCSEs, GNVQs, A levels and degrees and vocational qualifications such as NVQs and job experience.
General intelligence- this is estimated by IQ tests and by assessments of general reasoning ability.
Special aptitudes- what special skills does a person have? These include skills with words, with numbers, with musical instruments, with artistic technique and with mechanical equipment.
Interests- are they intellectual or practical or social or a mixture of them all?
Disposition- this is an assessment of the person’s acceptability by other people, leadership qualities, the person’s emotional stability and self-reliance.
Circumstances- factors such as age whether single or married, whether mobile or not.
Person specification was used to contribute towards the advertisement. This document comes in handy for both business and applier. When the applicant is applying for the job, he/she will know what person qualities the organisation is looking for.
After the job specification and the person specification the HR department will assemble an advert, which takes aspects from both documents in order to attract people for the job.
Sainsbury draw up their own advertisement and then the newspaper types up the final version.
Before writing up an advertisement the employer must determine exactly what is wanted from the job being advertised. When you are writing up an advertisement the following thing must be included:
Job description- what the job requires the person to do.
Type of person- what type of person is required for the job. It’s illegal to specify a particular sex or someone of a particular racial origin, but they are an exception (e.g. you could advertise for a Chinese origin to work at a Chinese restaurant as a Chef).
Pay and conditions- this should state what the pay and conditions are. Eg holidays, hours pension arrangements. Also should state that if it is part time, fulltime, temporary or permanent.
Place of work- this should state the location of the job
How to apply- the advertisement should tell you whether you should apply by telephone, application form or writing to the organisation.
Depth of detail-
Ethics and honesty-
Placing the advertisement-
After the advertisement the company will have to decide between using a CV or an application form as well, each documents has its benefits to each party selling the prospective employee to a new job.
Using the information from the application document, the business will decide what people will get an interview at the company. To get more information of the person that has been chosen for an interview, the company will ask her or she.
At Sainsbury’s when a person has been recommended for a job than they are placed in an introduction programme, this helps them know how the company runs they business day to day and what their exact role will be.
When there is a vacancy to be filled at Sainsbury the HRM department will need to consider who should fill the vacancy and also several factors will be recommended
If the department decides that they want to recruit within the business then this becomes a benefit to the employee because he/she will not need to go through induction training.
If the department decides to recruit outside the business then the business will need to advertise the advert. Where the advert will be placed will need to be considered by the HRM department eg job centre, newspaper or on the Internet ect. Sainsbury mainly has application forms within the local stores for people who want to apply.
After Sainsbury have decided whether to advertise after selecting that the vacancy should be filled externally then the HRM department will need to select their employees. This procedure is done through an interview where the interviewer goes through the application forms to see what people will be good for the job.
When planning an interview, the HRM department at Sainsbury will need to be prepared for what questions they need to ask. Interviewing is the final stage of process and are arranged for all kind of jobs, the interviewer must ask ‘what are my objectives’? What am I looking for? And how will I phrase the questions I am going to ask? In the interview the applicant can also ask questions to the interviewer about the business also about his promotional opportunities, holiday arrangement within the company. When conducting an interview the legal requirements on legislation will need to be considered, such as Sex discrimination, Race discrimination and Disability discrimination Acts. The person giving the interview cannot ask different questions to a disabled person then he/she will to a non- disabled person because that will be discriminating. So to be fair, Sainsbury will need to write out a set of questions to ask all the applicants regarding their sex, race or on their disability.
The recruitment team have to make sure that the applicants who where not successful are not felt discriminated in any kind of way and the applicant who is found successful will need to be informed. Sainsbury have a panel of interviewers who meet the applicant together so the interviewer uses their opinions the selection procedure.
E4- TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT.
They are two types of training methods they are on the job training and of the job training also there is induction training.
On the job training is when the employees train at their work place. For many people they enjoy the direct link with their job and can see more clearly how relevant the training is to the performance of the job.
Off the job training is when you attend courses at a college or mat a local training centre away form the work place. This type training is important to an employee’s career development as well as being an integral part of a training programme.
Sainsbury prefer to use on the job training because it is more suitable for their workplace and you can see how their working progress is at work. It also increases the number of productivity.
Induction training is for new employees to the organisation. The successful job applicant at Sainsbury is provided with some sort of induction training. This is very useful programme for both, business and employee.
When you are training you could gain non-transferable skills or transferable skills. Non-transferable skills are extremely specific to the job held area a little use in any other job. Transferable skills can be used in a wide variety of other jobs later on. People with transferable skills are more useful to employees because they are quicker at learning and cheap to train.
Training is important to all business because it keeps the staff up dated and increases motivation and efficiency also gives a good customer service.
E5 PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
As I said before Sainsbury usually gives an induction training when some one new comes to the job. Then after the induction training Sainsbury appraisals the staff to see if they made most of their training and whether they should be promoted.
Performance management is the systematic process of monitoring the results of activities; collecting and analyzing performance information to track progress toward planning results
Sainsbury agree that employees are their most important assets and need to be treated fairly. The good performance of employee’s management s has an effect on the organization's success, in terms of profitability.
Sainsbury give out financial rewords to most people who complete the training programme. Training is designed to keep employees motivated and is convinced to complete their training by rewarding them with financial gain.
Motivation comprises of the need for employees and controls their action. Using motivation techniques can improve productivity and customer service. Also employee satisfaction leads to good service that leads to customer satisfaction.
Maslows- Hierarchy of needs
This theory is based on meeting staff needs with in the workplace and suggests that meeting their needs can lead to be fill are: -
Self- fulfilment- researching your full potential
Self-esteem needs- status and recognition, achievement and independence
Social needs- love, friendship, a sense of belonging part of a team
Safety needs- protection against danger, fair treatment, job security
Physiological needs- food, rest and shelter
Mc Gregor- Theory x and theory y
They are two types of main types of managers. Theory x managers tend to have the point of view that the average dislikes and will try to avoid it. Therefore the managers must control direct and punish them to get them to work towards business objectives.
Theory y suggests that the ordinary person does not dislike work; it all depends on the conditions in which the work takes place. If people are committed to objectives, they will be motivated towards achieving them the biggest motivation factor is the personal satisfaction of completing the job.
Tailors- principles of scientific management
Managers assumed that people were alike and that their motivations were relatively simple. It suggests that, their managers could program workers actions. Taylor believed that monetary rewards were an important motivating factor. Higher rates of pay could encourage increased output.
Hertzberg’s- two-factory theory
This theory identifies a range of dissatisfiers and satisfiers
Dissatisfiers
- Low pay
- Poor working conditions
- Poor relationships between employees
- Unfair management
- Lack of growth and development
He suggests that these types of factors could lead to poor level of output and increase sickness levels. He identifies that the following factors would motivate employees.
Satisfiers
- Recognition of effort and performance
- The nature of the job
- Sense of achievement
- Opportunity for promotion.
E6 TRAINING
Sainsbury has a comprehensive range of training and development programmes available to employees. These cover both technical competency and skills training and are linked to performance management and carer development structures. SSL offers ranges of programmes leading to a national vocational qualification (NVQ) to its employees, including retail operations, administration, and customer service and craft bakery, all at level 2. Structured training programmes include the retail scheme (RTS), an NVQ programme and new deal. About 2 percent of the employees on training programmes are funded through government training scheme. Including RTS trainees, NVQ trainees aged between 18 and 24, and new deal clients.
Sainsbury works with the national training partnership (NTP) to obtain government funding for trainees across the country. There are 25 training and enterprise councils (TECs) involved in funding trainees through this arrangement. They are 56 government-funded trainees working towards NVQ level 2 in retailing at the time of inspection. A further four trainees were working towards an NVQ in administration at level 2 and four trainees were working towards NVQ in bakery. There are seven New Deal clients. Sainsbury has a contract5 with the employment service under the large organisation element of New Deal.
The national training organisation predicts that there will be a huge growth in the number of employment opportunities available in the sector until the year 2006.
The training programme will last two years and offers a number of placements. After 18 months you can self-select for a 6-month place in an area based on your experience over the past year and a half. If trainees want to complete their functional programme then all graduates benefit from a best in class 2-year training and development offer which enables them to build and develop their personal and management skills.