Human Resource Services Essay Sample

One of Australian largest companies is Woolworths Limited, which is operating in food retailing industry. Percy Christmas founded Woolworths in the year 1924 and his main purpose was to give everyone an opportunity to purchase good and quality stuff for affordable prices. The company is operating several brands that has gained significant popularity in Australia. Thus, Woolworths is working as a strong family-oriented company that strives to bring value to society, while holding its own ethical values and beliefs. Woolworths is constantly working on improving its strengths, relying on the major strategic objectives that the company possesses. Among those objectives, there are extending the level of the company’s leadership in food and liquor industry and continuously maximizing shareholder value. Thus, internal environment of the company is goal-oriented and success-driven. External environment, in turn, is competitive, but Woolworth is a large company that is operating in the market for many years, which contributes to its stable position with the perspective of future growth (Woolworthslimited.com.au).
Woolworth has almost 200 000 employees in different departments and it offers a wide range of different jobs from the sales assistant to designer, chef, or public relations manager. What is interesting about Woolworth is that even senior leaders once started their career in stores, being regular sales assistants. This highlights the nature of the company’s values and importance of bringing those values through the way (Woolworthslimited.com).
Human resource management is crucial for such company as Woolworths, because it employs thousands of people who come from different backgrounds. The company possesses itself as a great place to work, because it believes that employees lie at the heart of business and they play the major role in the business operations, which is why Woolworths is putting a great emphasis on their employees and want to make their job attractive and positive. As a large company operating in food industry and claiming to provide high quality foods from different brands, and at the same time operating several brands, it is essential for Woolworth to consider hiring process and choose the right people. Precise interviews and development of various interesting and challenging interviews techniques may be favorable for the company, because it can help to attract interesting people who are passionate about their jobs. Moreover, Woolworths strongly encourages diversity at the workplace and it became the first Australian retailer that started to provide paid parental leave. Woolworths even receives Disability Employment Award for the disability recruitment program, which one more time proves that Woolworth stands for diversity and for equal employment opportunities for everyone (Woolworthslimited.com).
Woolworths Limited is a great place to work, and in order to maintain this status and to attract more people, the company should have strong human resource strategies that will increase employees’ commitment and loyalty levels and will reduce turnover rates. Woolworths is constantly working on offering various benefits to its employees and on enhancing employees’ professionalism. Some HR strategies within Woolworth include developing performance-motivated culture that will provide rewards to the employees for contributing to the strategic objectives’ achievement. In addition, the company is constantly working on facilitating employees’ focus on the values based leadership and by providing various incentives it want to increase the commitment to this leadership. Furthermore, Woolworths provides great possibilities for career growth, which is an important human resource strategy as in many cases it helps to have committed and motivated employees (Butler-Van Eeden).
In such a way, employees are integral for Woolworths, because the company’s success, nature, and uniqueness stands on talent and exceptional skills of the workers. Therefore, it is a challenge to keep employees enthusiastic and to attract people who will really bring motivation and strive for excellence. Woolworth is working hard on developing new HR strategies and it is continuously taking care about current employees and their needs and values.

References

Butler-Van Eeden, M. (n.d.). Interview with Matt Keogh - Woolworths Divisional Director for HR. Retrieved April 9, 2015, from http://www.humancapitalreview.org/content/default.asp?Article_ID=930
Quality Brands and Trusted Retailing - Woolworths Limited. (n.d.). Retrieved April 9, 2015, from http://www.woolworthslimited.com.au/