Motivational Strategies at Tesco

Modern business considers human resource as the best resource for the organization. Human resource is the only medium, which can project and represent the organization with its culture and products or services to the customers. Hence, modern management endorses the idea to motivate human resource of the organization in different ways. Human resource is the part of internal stakeholders of the organization irrespective of its hierarchical level. In his work, The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker has concluded that business organization is created and managed by people. It is not managed by different external forces. The external forces are explored and utilized by the management of the organization for the business. (Drucker, 2007)

To extract best utility from its human resource, different organization has different approaches, which ultimately leads to motivation of the employees in different hierarchical level. In this article, we will discuss this aspect of international human resource management with the example of a United Kingdom based   MNC super market organization named Tesco.

Tesco is one of biggest super market multi-national company based at UK. The company was established in 1919 by Jack Cohen. The company has legal status of Plc. The organization has large global appearance over Europe and Asia with the existing employee strength of 4, 68,000. This organization is reckoned as the largest private sector employer in Britain. (histories, 2017)

To be such proud employer, Tesco has to ensure that employees should deliver maximum output for the organization. For this purpose, they use to practice motivational strategy for their employees, which are consisting of work-life balance policy and excellent award program to recognize their efforts. (study, 2013)

 

The Mayo effect endorses the role of internal and external factors as motivating factors for an employee to develop his performance. Internal factors may be exemplified as new skill to learn. External factors may be exemplified as sales targets and respective incentive generated from that achievement. Elton Mayo, the theorist of 1930 had emphasized on the promoting factors for motivation to employees. Those factors are:

• Better level of effective communication
• Sound teamwork
• Mentality to show interest in other colleagues
• Ensuring involvement in others for decision making
• Assurance of others’ betterment
• Ensuring the nature of work as interesting and non-recurring.

These assumptions had been retrieved from the research undertaken by Mayo with the workforce of the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric Company of Chicago and the said work is named as Hawthorne theory. The observations revealed that factor of boredom and re-occurrence led to reduced level of motivation. It was also inferred that motivation could be improved through the environment to make the employees feeling important, with the provisions of level of freedom and acknowledgement of their social needs. (Dininni, 2017) 

The Mayo Effect and Tesco

It is observed that Tesco follows the Mayo theory in their activities to motivate their employees. The same may be found in the course of individual interaction of employees with managers, through proper format of appraisal or through the internal communication system of the company. Routine activities are followed by Tesco like daily Team Meeting to discuss the strategy as per objective of the organization with the update of the work process with daily happening. The provision of Value Awards follows this process. This award can be handed over by the staff member to thee eligible candidate in the form of saying ‘thank you’ to celebrate accomplishment. The other way of motivation is extended through different type of training resulting to subsequent scopes of development. This training program is not only a routine feature, but the same are extended to cultivate leadership ability of the employees ensuring growth within the organization.

Tesco has the practice to offer planning to build strategic career for the employees. This practice helps employees to ‘achieve the extraordinary’ level of accomplishment. In the year 2009, Tesco has introduced 3,000 managers, of whom 80% were selected internally through achievement against targets.  The company has a regular practice of discussing annual career with each employee; at the same time, the company puts emphasis on the issue of developing the person as a whole with the implementation of system of 360 degree feedback. This instrument is reckoned as personal development instrument and it ensures provision of the section of people with whom the person is attached for working. This system facilitates the self-assessment process of the employees to recognize their strength and weaknesses along with their attitude and deliverance within the work place from the view of the others who work with them. This program is considered as ‘To Take People with you’. Main objective of this program is ‘To Gain the Hearts and Minds of Others’ with the emphasis to develop individuals to get the coveted results effectively.

The company has a program named Personal Development Plan, which is based on the assessment of 360 degree with other instruments. This program is followed by all employees of Tesco. This program is instrumental in delivering worth feedback by the managers to the employees. This program also helps employees to identify opportunities ensuring continuous process of personal enhancement. This is a self promotional program to encourage self evaluation for the employees and finds the needs and utilities of training process. Along with that, this program also enables employees individually to own up accountability for self development. The outcome of this effort ensures commitment of employees with the team building and to extend help to others with the common objective to attain the goal for improving business for the customers.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Tesco

The Engineer Frederick Taylor had published one of the latest models of motivational theories in 1911. As per his research, basic reason for working of individual is to earn money. This research has also highlighted that due to the reason of earning more money, the output level increases leaving behind lesser scopes for employees’ motivation and personal development. (Caramela, 2018)

The employee reward system of Tesco resembles to some extent with Taylor’s Theory. The financial reward system of employees of Tesco is always a motivating factor, although there are other pre-dominant factors, which are motivating employees on both their working and personal lives. In fact Tesco has thought far beyond this theory. In addition to pay increase, the company supports different lifestyles of employees individually through concerned and targeted facilities.   The factors considered for this purpose are the wish to serve people, improvement of individual skills to enhance his working position through promotion. All these are non-financial factors, which drive them to perform beyond their ability to prove their capacities.

It is a routine phenomenon for Tesco to invite their employees to participate in a survey to justify staff satisfaction. This program extends opportunity for the employees to project their views on all relevant aspects of their jobs. This survey program is able to help the management of Tesco with its results to ensure the offerings to the staffs are right to keep them constantly motivated. Some significant benefits under this program include:

• Break of life-style which offers off-work for 4 to 12 weeks with the guarantee to get job back at the end of break
• Break in career which offers to the employees from six months to five years off from work with the guarantee to return and get back the job.
• Pension scheme with transparently defined benefits for long term.

As per arguments of Abraham Maslow, human beings are driven by motivating factors based on five basic needs. These needs have formed a pyramid, which demonstrates these specific needs and called this as ‘hierarchy of needs’. The pyramid is self explanatory. The bottom line need drives a person for food and shelter, which motivates people to work. Next is security and safety need, which can be ensured through decent job condition. Social need is generated from the inherent character of human being as social inhabitant. Self esteem need is the criterion, which can be fulfilled by escalation of employment status through promotion. Last of all is self fulfillment, which is placed on the top of the pyramid. This need can be met through the recognition of innovativeness, challenges and threats and self interest. Maslow also reiterated that achievement of one level forces the individual to go to the next level. (Mcleod, 2017)

Frederick Herzberg had developed the Two-Factor Theory of motivation in 1959 through his research. His research endorsed the consideration of two factors as true satisfiers for human being regarding his job. The two factors are fulfillment factors and hygiene factors, which make people motivated in their workplace to perform efficiently.

As an eminent employer, Tesco fixes its aims to crate motivational factors for the employees. They are reasonably concerned about the hygiene factor with due attention to this issue. The company also provides enabling factors to motivate employees with empowerment through timely and transparent communication for ensuring delegation of authority, prudent hierarchical structure and decision making power for the employees. The discussion platform of annual pay hike gives access to the employees to take part, which depicts the recognition style of work of Tesco.

Conclusion

It is evident from the motivation effort by Tesco, that they are real worth employer, who has the culture of recognition to deliverance of employees. Moreover, the company has right direction of focusing on the significant factors, which can have the ability to extract best results from the employees through creation of proper environment. This approach is applicable for domestic and overseas employees, as well. Being a century old organization, the company is flexible with its approach to the employees, which makes them the biggest employer of Great Britain in private sector. 

References

Caramela, S., 2018. Management Theory of Frederick Taylor. [Online] Available at: https://www.business.com/articles/management-theory-of-frederick-taylor/ [Accessed 17 March 2018].

Dininni, J., 2017. Management Theory of Elton Mayo. [Online] Available at: https://www.business.com/articles/management-theory-of-elton-mayo/ [Accessed 17 March 2018].

Drucker, P., 2007. The Practice of Management. Burlington, M A, U S A: Elseviere Ltd.

histories, C., 2017. Tesco Plc. [Online] Available at: https://www.company-histories.com/Tesco-plc-Company-History.html [Accessed 16 March 2018].

Mcleod, S., 2017. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. [Online] Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html [Accessed 17 March 2018].

study, T.T.-B.C., 2013. Motivational theory in practice at Tesco. [Online] Available at: https://is.muni.cz/el/1451/podzim2013/np2330/tesco_15_full.pdf [Accessed 18 March 2018].