The company’s vision and involvement of key personnel in its achievement
| Sainsbury’s |
|---|
| Human Resource Planning |
| An Overview of The HR Policies of Sainsbury’s |
Contents
An Introduction to the Company 3
The Role of Key HR functions at Sainsbury’s 4
Work-Life Balance Measurements at Sainsbury’s 8
The Company’s Vision and Involvement of Key Personnel in its Achievement 9
An Introduction to the Company
The Role of Key HR functions at Sainsbury’s
A quick glance at the Sainsbury’s website will give anyone a fair idea about the company’s strategies regarding its employees and its reputation as one of the industry’s best employers. Sainsbury’s represents itself as a great place to work on its website. Like every good company in this world, Sainsbury’s values its employees as the most valuable assets of the organization and look forward to channelize their youthful exuberance, energy and talent to achieve their objective of being the best at what they do.
Company is a great exponent of diversity and looks for the service of any hardworking talent irrespective of the cast, class, creed and ethnicity. Sainsbury’s has a glorious history of inducting people into their premise from all walks of life. They never differentiate among the people on the grounds of sexual orientation, religion or belief, gender reassignment, maternity or paternity, working patterns, political affiliations, membership of a trade union and real or suspected living with HIV/AIDS. Company believes that diversity brings a lot of positivity with it. As Sainsbury’s notices, diversity helps them cope up with new challenges posed by consumers’ ever changing preferences. In order to support this view of theirs, the company has launched a program named ‘Diversity Confidence’ that requires the manager authorized with this program to gather customers and employees’ feedback on key aspects of diversity (UK Essays 2013).
Recruitment & Selection Process at Sainsbury’s
b) Enthusiasm
c) Commitment
One would argue that why this report is too much focused on the recruitment policy and diversity measurement of Sainsbury’s. Well the reason for that concern is that mainly HR policies revolve around the induction and welfare of the employees and all the other issues such as performance management, training and development, HR planning, succession planning, HRD, compensation just complement the two primary concerns. Unless and until an employee gets recruited in the firm, no HR policy would come into the existence. In this way, so much emphasis is laid out by Sainsbury’s on recruitment and welfare mechanisms.
Strategic HRM & Sainsbury’s
Like every other major firm in the world, the company has renamed its personnel department to HR department and this department has a director at its helm. The Director of Human Resources supervises all the activities related to the personnel of the organization. He ensures that Sainsbury’s has right amount of talent with right skills at the right point of time. The HR department of Sainsbury’s always assumes a proactive role for only then, a healthy environment for learning and development gets created within the organization’s premises. Strategic HR, an intra-organizational department makes sure that strong values get generated within the organization with a point black approach towards organic learning. The concept of Strategic HRM has gained a lot of prominence with the HR management team of Sainsbury’s as it aligns the organizational practices with the stipulated goals and objectives of the organization and thus exerts a lot of positive impact on organizational performance (Patel 2003). One more key objective of the strategic HRM is to assimilate the individual’s aspirations with that of organization. In that way, when an individual does something even selfishly (for his development), he unintentionally contributes to the development of the organization. So ultimately what happens is that both the organization as well as the individual grows with the overall development of the organization.
Dave Ulrich’s Model & Sainsbury’s Strategic HR Practices
Health & Safety Policies at Sainsbury’s
In addition to this book-keeping responsibility, HR department with the help of an external trainer imparts the required training to the employees of the supermarket. Sainsbury’s HR department has appointed a safety committee that is chaired by the CEO and Chief Health & Safety Officer of Sainsbury’s. In order to implement the plans set by these top officials, HR department has recruited several health and safety officers. HR department arranges for their training also. Customers too are a part of these health and safety initiatives. Here are some of the ways they get involved in this scenario (Kernel n.d.):
a) Helping the disabled customers by providing them access to wheelchairs, lifts and helpers
f) Smoking, drinking and eating are strictly prohibited in all the supermarkets of Sainsbury’s
Work-Life Balance Measurements at Sainsbury’s
In addition to all these measures introduced by the company, the company has also maintained for flexi work-hours in its rule book. Since the majority of the company’s workforce is made of by women and around two-third the entire workforce works part-time for the company, it becomes imperative for the company to provide them with suitable working hours and shifts so that they can address their family concerns and other duties. The two most popular working shifts in Sainsbury’s are 10 pm-6 am (the night shift) and 8 am-3 pm (the early morning shift). The second shift allows the working parents (employees of the firm) to pick their children in the afternoon. Working around school time gives these working parents a chance to save on ‘childcare’ services. A lot of baby-sitting and childcare circles have come into the existence since this policy of flexi work-hours has been introduced and an understanding has been developed among the employees who become instantaneously ready to fill for the outgoing employee. The most important fact here is this that employees themselves have suggested this novel idea to Sainsbury’s management (Working Mum 2013).
The Company’s Vision and Involvement of Key Personnel in its Achievement
References
Shuck, B. & Herd, A. M., 2012, Employee Engagement and Leadership: Exploring the Convergence of Two Frameworks and Implications for Leadership Development in HRD, Human Resource Development Review, Vol. 11, Issue no. 10, pp. 156-181
Foot, M. & Hook, C., 1999, Introducing Human Resource Management, 2nd ed., Pearson Education Limited, UK
