Human Resource Issues Faced by Woolworths' During the Economic Downturn Assignment Sample

• Subject Name : Human Resource Management

Talent Management

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Talent management in economic downturn.

Economic recruitment, selection, and retention.

Challenges faced by Woolworths.

Recommendations.

Conclusion.

Introduction to COVID-19

A Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 ) is a disease that has impacted the worldwide financial system in unparalleled ways. The companies are internationally in front of hard decisions about their employees. The service series in parts 1 and 2 were explored by research institutes and found that the use of reductions for workforces, furloughs, layoffs, and global workforces. In Part 3 of coronavirus, a deeper analysis was done to have a deeper investigation of cost-saving events and their viability for employees outside the nation. Active monitoring is done to know the activities that are rapidly changing the scenarios across the globe and other government initiatives are taken timely. Over the past months, the governments have been introducing initiative to give monetary stop gaps to company so that they keep their workers on their payroll during COVID-19.

The events are given to know from the employers who have faced extreme cost-cutting issues. In many countries such as France Netherlands, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and Japan all are facing issues in retaining the employees. France is the country that has faced fractional being without a job payment of up to 70 % of employees’ gross payment where the employees are facing monetary difficulty as a result of COVID-19. The Netherlands was previously working on a reduction scheme but now it is being replaced by the crisis measure for the conservation of jobs known as "NOW". In Australia, employer can necessitate human resources to take constitutional paid leave at exact times if the compulsion is considered sensible Even if the cases are not positive to date, then also employees are given paid leaves due to the monetary crash of COVID-19 that could be deem rational.

Talent Management in An Economic Downturn

The cost-cutting events are reasonably focusing on existing employees; many workers are looking cautiously at applicant and personnel who have conventional offers of service. Companies who are paying attention in retaining their workers are confident to communicate with the Human Resource team, recruiters, and others who are making hiring decision to make sure the organizations allied on existing hiring practices. Australia is closely monitoring the outbreak of COVID-19. The situation is unfolding so the government of Australia is advising the employees to monitor the most up-to-date information on the government official websites. The COVID-19 is a significant issue that is affecting the public health most by impacting society, economy, education, and employment. It has included the involvement of special measures that are to be done timely to practically deal with emerging issues in society. The individuals who are exposed to COVID-19 infection through close contact are required to act in a way by reducing the further spread of the virus. The challenge has been bought to the personal and professional lives of individuals in the year 2020.

In the business context, the year is likely to test the understanding and attentiveness of all the organizations across the globe. The corporation should be commerce with the intended puzzle of maintains the balance between worker happiness and output and ones that are ahead of the curve are likely to emerge more successful than the others. The best companies have been evolving different methods to attain the mix. Work-life balance is something that industries have quantified for achieving the better than others. Though, the nature of the COVID-19 crisis is arising from crises that are radically different. The fear of this disease is unknown at a personal level. And also it has impacted the clients of the company as4 well as the global community. Whether the organizations are likely to develop and follow the procedures but then also the government has imposed the regulations that the companies have to follow so that they can reflect their quality of ‘sympathy’ and ‘sensitivity’ (Smith & Judd, 2020).

The pace and scale of spread have also proven the companies to act in a swift full manner. Here, in these situations, talent management has become pivotal for the employees to ensure the continuity of business as a large amount as probable. The aptitude management has a good deal wider range beyond the limits of attraction, skilling, retaining, expansion, and inspiration but that with better human nuance by ensure the workers and families that they are secure, occupied, and combined to become the part of creative force. The talent management in hard times has posed a quantity of dichotomies that are centered on randomness. The events in the current case have started suddenly with the widespread of COVID-19. The businesses are working hard to recover their cycles but the talent must be positioned first so that it could be productive and immediate after the widespread phase. This has underlined the talent principles that the organizations have to adopt the latest measures so that they can lead and manage the crisis through posed situations by unforeseen developments.

Economic Recruitment, Selection, and Retention

COVID-19 has shifted the hiring patterns such as businesses are stick to their hire plans or still step up recruitment. The companies that are running e-commerce, logistics, and e-services are requiring the urgent need of employees. The marketplace tendency is changing in a negative way day by day as the COVID-19 state of relationships has taken its toll on the monetary system. The insist of clientele has plunge, left the sell shelves unfilled, and manufacture lines out of substance. The stock markets are plummeting, and the company is in terror and not able to get saver monetary hold up. The companies that were thoughts of expansion are now replaced with business continuity plans or simply by panic (Sohrabi et al., 2020). The industries that have been worse affected during this crisis are travel and tourism and the related sectors. It has frozen their pays and hiring and led to massive layoffs. Some of the businesses have slashed the headcount by sticking to their hiring patterns and even planning for further recruitment. The companies doing e-commerce, e-serve, and logistics are in vital require of manpower to take on their shopping and other activities online to preserve social disaffection.

In some of the sector, there is high growth such as life sciences, skill, and banking. The employers are preparation for hiring behavior for the first quarter as they know that job seekers are open for new-fangled opportunities after the bonus season. Some more future-oriented companies are towards hiring, preparation for an exciting upswing, and a job marketplace that is very different from today's world. The recessing roles have to be built-in that can be filled by agreement workers, prioritizing the most critical roles to employ, rethinking the present talent management strategy that will position them well (Vankadari & Wilce, 2020). The forward-looking organizations are complementary instant crisis management with aptitude strategy that will position them for the prospect. Downturns and upswings in the job market are an unlucky fact of life and financial system, but with this deadly disease, the main challenge in staffing is likely to be how the hiring process will be conducted.

The job interviews have been conducted now through remote ways such as phone or videoconferencing. Companies such as IBM, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and other smaller companies are enough ahead on the curve to adopt video calls as a common form of communication (Wenham, Smith & Morgan, 2020). The platforms like Zoom and Skype are highly used nowadays to total as clients are prioritizing their events to manage the COVID-19 situation. Human Resource professionals are highly involved in organization permanence plans. The decision-makers are at the present willingly available because of travel limitations that have vacant their schedule and speed up the process that could be sustained (Zaman et al., 2020).

Challenges Faced by Woolworths

Woolworths Group is the company that is serving through supermarket stores in Australia. The company runs the biggest grocery store and has now paid more than double to estimate for the shortfall in wages. Woolworth’s supermarket runs over the action that was morally or legally wrong and caused outrage to the general public for employees. This has drawn criticism and from opposition politicians and prompted an investigation by a government agency. The company is caught under the highest-profile in wage scandals across corporate Australia (Palipana, 2020). They focus on the safety of customers, teams, and communities in which they operate. The Human Resource leaders cited the crisis association or trade durableness preparation as the top confront during COVID-19 outbreak. The list of priorities in crisis included lithe labor arrangements and member of staff infrastructure to add to consciousness. Human Resource staff has been adequately taught, ready, and prepared to deal with the challenge posed by the preponderance of people. Most of the researchers said that the eruption has allowed them to efficiently show the significance of Human Resource strategies towards extenuating people's risk (McKibbin & Fernando, 2020). The major challenges faced by Human Resource department included:

1. Commerce permanence plans (67%),
2. Management of supple work preparations (64%),
3. Management of member of staff announcement (56%),
4. Addressing worker concerns on place of work policies (53%),
5. Completion of defensive measures (43%), and
6. Appraisal of current wellbeing policies (25%).

The communication with employees is the major drawback that the company has faced as it provides 90 percent of update concerning the events adopted by the company, issue leadership to itinerant employees by 76 percent. 65 percent of updates from the business leaders are shared through emails and videos. The percentage of sharing trusted and verified links to external sources of information contributes up to 62 percent. 31 percent of health education information is shared through health talks. It provides continuing announcement on Human Resource policies connected to the outbreak up to 61 percent. For the safety of employees, priority measures that were taken included 89 percent of the affected area. The other organizations where the option of work from home was possibly constituted 57 percent of total share (Le et al., 2020). They formed response committees for prompt decision-making around 56 percent.

As the business operations for the company is concerned, Woolworths is said to be the largest retailer in marketing and fresh food selling. But, now due to COVID as explained earlier has faced high turnover and poor execution. The last survey for the corporation was conduct between June 13 and June 21 and found that high turnover rates were restricting the company to implement the plans in strategies. This all led to Woolworth's poor staff morale, disengagement with suppliers, and therefore a loss in opportunities. One more challenge that was faced by the company was complementary an employee’s space to yourself with the staff’s human rights to know when the test is detected positive for the patient (Ahmed et al., 2020). 

Recommendations on Talent Management

The company implemented divides functioning arrangements for specific function and role. The employees have been provided with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) like Masks, family unit hold up like Flexi-work for employees, and worker help program that contribute 40 percent split. The company could also start food sharing coupons e-vouchers with workers to order their lunch at house. Alike to other organization, Woolworths should also at hand workers free vitamin packs to help their workers focus on their physical condition. Emphasis by the company should be laid to tremble up the civilization at Woolworths and get reverse to fundamentals. This will help the company in civilizing on-shelf availability and repair levels in stores. Hence, Woolworths will get better the marketing in-store theatre and better fresh food ease of use and service by finally overcome the troubles in new supermarket. This is the state where leaders and HR teams have to supervise a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. The labors of the corporation should comprise steps to stop the increase of illness. This will require harmonization of healthy business operations if essential employees report to work or once start recurring to the job. Moreover, the temporary morale labors would help the people to find the way the instability and unparalleled times (Markham & Smith, 2020).

The steps could be:

1. Preventing the spread of illness in stores
2. Coordinating business healthy operations
3. Managing COVID-19 positive results
4. Prioritize morale-building efforts
5. Consider the financial and employment needs of staff

Preventing the spread of illness

Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is continuously updating their guidelines on how the plans and response systems the companies should follow. The highlights are:

• Communication of coronavirus seriousness and commitment of the company to abide by the rules.
• Social distancing should be the foremost thing that the company is following.
• Active encouragement to employees so that they could notify their supervisor in a short period and stay at home.
• Education to employees so that the spread of infection could be minimized.
• Implementation of onslaught protocol to reduce the risk of illness from high stroke areas such as PC and mobile phones (Coles et al., 2020).

Coordinating Healthy business operations

It includes collaborative efforts across several departments of the company so that things could run easily as possible during this deadly disease.

• Identification of place of work coordinator, who will speak to the issues of COVID-19.
• Implementation of supple sick leave and hold up strategy and practice.
• Ensure that policy is allied with local, state, and central legislation.

Managing COVID-19 positive results

Management of staff privacy in case they have got infected from the virus and preparing for the return of employees.

• Communications with the staff regarding updates of the impact of COVID-19
• The announcement should equilibrium hopefulness and sympathy with real facts.
• The solitude of the patient's in order should not be leaked.

Prioritizing morale-building efforts

Morale building efforts should be done to improve business productivity and profitability.

• Creating a consistent schedule for meetings and ensuring everyone for being looped in updates.
• Cream of the crop should create check-ins with each lineup associate.

Considering the monetary and employ wants of staff

The self-esteem efforts should include some monetary hold up and leadership for employees (Emanuel et al., 2020).

Conclusion on Talent Management

The companies that have large scale job cuts should think of their survival in the market. Although it seems to center on labor price efficiencies if the revenue take hit, short-term reaction may leave organizations susceptible and commerce continuity is also disrupted. Human Resource leaders of the companies should make sure that whatever adjustment they can make to their approach and policies now, should be done so that they do not face any stifle relating to the prospect enlargement of the organization. The employer balance could be balanced by overlook the present and prospect needs and recruiting for pliability. Staffing is the method that builds new capability and enables intended changes to business models and culture. The current downtime should be considered to shape the talent that is desirable for the company in the long term growth. As an example, if the bank wants to expand virtual capability, they will need to get that in place now before the marketplace comes back and everybody is after the same talent. Secondly, employer need to reconsider what they think is "ideal" candidate. The top character of workers should be looked at in the candidate at all level. The high learning nimbleness and aptitude to work and converse effectively across the digital channel should b urbanized. Hence, this would be useful to both the party as employer and job seeker in manifesting unwillingness to take risk and importance to find constancy.

References for Talent Management

Ahmed, W., Angel, N., Edson, J., Bibby, K., Bivins, A., O'Brien, J. W., & Tscharke, B. (2020). First confirmed detection of SARS-CoV-2 in untreated wastewater in Australia: A proof of concept for the wastewater surveillance of COVID-19 in the community. Science of the Total Environment, 138764.

Coles, C. E., Aristei, C., Bliss, J., Boersma, L., Brunt, A. M., Chatterjee, S., & Mjaaland, I. (2020). International guidelines on radiation therapy for breast cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical Oncology, 32(5), 279-281.

Emanuel, E. J., Persad, G., Upshur, R., Thome, B., Parker, M., Glickman, A., & Phillips, J. P. (2020). Fair allocation of scarce medical resources in the time of Covid-19.

Le, T. T., Andreadakis, Z., Kumar, A., Roman, R. G., Tollefsen, S., Saville, M., & Mayhew, S. (2020). The COVID-19 vaccine development landscape. Nat Rev Drug Discov, 19(5), 305-306.

Markham, F., & Smith, D. (2020). Indigenous Australians and the COVID 19 crisis: Perspectives on public policy.

McKibbin, W. J., & Fernando, R. (2020). The global macroeconomic impacts of COVID-19: Seven scenarios.

Palipana, D. (2020). COVID‐19 and spinal cord injuries: The viewpoint from an emergency department resident with quadriplegia. Emergency Medicine Australasia.

Smith, J. A., & Judd, J. (2020). COVID‐19: Vulnerability and the power of privilege in a pandemic. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 31(2), 158.

Sohrabi, C., Alsafi, Z., O’Neill, N., Khan, M., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., & Agha, R. (2020). World Health Organization declares global emergency: A review of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2020). International Journal of Surgery.

Vankadari, N., & Wilce, J. A. (2020). Emerging COVID-19 coronavirus: glycan shield and structure prediction of spike glycoprotein and its interaction with human CD26. Emerging microbes & infections, 9(1), 601-604.

Wenham, C., Smith, J., & Morgan, R. (2020). COVID-19: the gendered impacts of the outbreak. The Lancet, 395(10227), 846-848.

Zaman, S., MacIsaac, A. I., Jennings, G. L., Schlaich, M., Inglis, S. C., Arnold, R., & Duffy, S. J. (2020). Cardiovascular disease and COVID-19: Australian/New Zealand consensus statement. Med J Aust, 1.

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