Employee Engagement Within Working Area | Marks and Spencer

Organization overview: Marks and Spencer is top multinational company that operates in retail sector and also provide different goods and products to their customer by selling high quality of products and goods. Currently the company operates at more than 600 countries with more than 900 stores at global level. Thus, it reflect that it has brand image with global presence. Moreover, Marks and Spencer also have more than 80 thousands employees who helps the firm to attain the defined goals. In addition to this, in 2019, company's operating income is 6 million pound and its net income is around 37 million pound. Therefore, it clearly reflects that it provides high quality of products and have effective team who also help the company to meet the demand and needs of customers.

On the other side, company also have issues related to employee engagement because the company is deal at international level and that is why, it is not easy for the firm to keep engaging all the employees. But still firm provide many benefits in order to keep their employees satisfied.

Aim

The aim of this report is “To describe the importance and challenges of employee engagement within working area: A case study on Marks and Spencer”

Employee engagement is the concept in which the company maintain relationship between an organization and its employees. Such that engagement is consider one of the most important HR variable for quoted firm because it helps the firm to deliver the superior performance ad well as gain high competitive advantage as well (Graban, 2018). Moreover, through employee engagement, company may perform better work and easily attain the defined aim and objectives as well. In the same way, Marks and Spencer also uses different techniques in order to manage the work and maintain positive relationship between employees as well company. 

For instance, HR Manager of Marks and Spencer did not easily translate the feedback into actionable insight and as a result, it generates negative results. Overall, it affect the employee engagement as well. On the other side, due to lack of communication, company also faces issue and it is also considered the issue of an employee engagement (Bailey and et.al., 2017). On the other side, company may also face issue when it did not comply with all rules and regulations so that it creates negative environment in which employees did not easily become happy. As a result, it leads to employee disengagement, and they start give up or leave the firm as well.

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Legal regulations.

There are different laws and regulations that should be complied by Marks and Spencer in order to engage employees within a working area. Some of them are as mention below:

Health and safety Act, 1974:  This law is mainly used to prevent employees in the working area. Such that the law state that employers are responsible for ensuring that all employees are safe and protected from dangers at working area (Mann and Harter, 2016). In the same way, Marks and Spencer should also comply with this law in order to provide healthy and safe environment to their employees and as a result, it increases employee engagement. Moreover, company should also provide effective tools and techniques to their employees while performing any danger task so that it creates positive impression upon them.

Equality Act, 2010: This law protect employees from discrimination at the working area. This act mainly replace anti-discrimination law and also makes the law easy to understand and strengthening the protection is some situations. This law should also be complied by Marks and Spencer, under which HR did not discriminate people on the basis of gender, race and caste because it creates negative impact upon the existing employees and as a result, it leads to affect them as well (Ruck, Welch and Menara, 2017). Moreover, manager of Marks and Spencer should not discriminate employees whether they are men or women while assigning duties and task. It is so because it helps to create positive working environment and develop good relationship between employees and company.

Employment Act, 2007:  This act define all roles and responsibilities of the employees in which they provide basic conditions of an employment in order to regulate the working area. Under this law, company provides minimum wages to their employees in order to maintain the employee engagement (Albrecht and et.al., 2015). Further, this act also state that if any employee perform extra duty except their official duty hours. In that situation, employers are liable to pay extra and also pay additional amount in order to engage them within positive working environment in Marks and Spencer.

Therefore, this law clearly state that in order to have employee engagement, make sure that company comply with all laws and regulations so that it will not affect the overall working environment in opposite way (Al Mehrzi and Singh, 2016). Moreover, it is also analyzed that engaging employees within the working area will provide better results and also involve all the employees in decision-making process so that they also bring innovative ideas that further helps to generate better outcomes. In this way, company keep engage employees within the working area.

Benefits for that organization to deal with an issue.

The term employee engagement is defined as the extent up to which the workers of the company feels passionate regarding their jobs and puts efforts for improving the quality of the work. The term employee engagement is different from employee satisfaction.

There are various benefits for the organization for dealing with the issue of employee engagement. One of the major advantage of employee engagement is that it will help Marks and Spencer to reduce the cost. According to different authors the disengaged employees are slowly draining the life out of the business. Further, in UK the disengagement of workers is costing the companies approximately 340 billion pounds per annum due to loss of productivity (Rao, 2017). Employee disengagement can easily reduce the return on investment on salaries. Further, company should focus on improving the level of engagement of employees in the organization because this will help to improve the level of profitability of the company.

Moreover, increase in employee engagement helps to increase the revenue of company. This is due to the reason that engaged workers are emotionally committed towards the business that will help to improve the performance of company at least by 30 %. Further, the workers also want to that business perform well, and they also perform to the best to succeed (Stone and et.al, 2015).

Focussing on the issue of employee engagement will also help company to improve the level of productivity of the workers. Therefore, firm should implement personalized and effective feedback and process of communication that will allow employees to raise any issues they are facing in a non judgmental setting in the organization. Further, management of Marks and Spencer should provide adequate level of training to the workers that will help to involve workers in the company. As a result it will also help the business to provide excellent customer service to the clients. Employee engagement is an important factor for the success of the business (Advantages of employee engagement, 2017).

When workers are engaged and feel satisfied at their work in that case, there is more possibility that they will produce good quality of work performance and this will offer various benefits for the firm as well as for the employees as well. Further, focusing on the issue of employee engagement will help to retain skilled and talented staff members in the organization.

Cost-

The amount of funds company is required to invest for implementing strategies for improving employee engagement is as follows -

Expenses	Amount (£)
Salary and wages	800
Raw material	700
Equipment for training and development	500
Total	2000

Recommendations -

Marks and Spencer should adopt different methods for improving the level of employee engagement in the organization. These are described below -

One of the most important factor that helps to improve employee engagement in the business is that management should provide appropriate tools to the workers for performing the task in right manner. Therefore, the management of company should ensure that appropriate tools are supplied to the staff members because if right tools are available they can easily perform their duties in effective and efficient manner. This will resulted in improvement in job satisfaction level of the employees. As a result, the company can easily retain loyal employees in the organization.

Moreover, the management of Marks and Spencer should focus on providing proper training and development to the workers that are working in the firm. Creating the culture of continuous training and development will help to improve the skills and knowledge of the workers. It will also help to communicate that company values their employees and also make efforts to fulfill their needs and requirements and believes in the potential of workers. Moreover, Marks and Spencer should implement the procedure for providing coaching and mentoring to the employees. This will help to improve motivation level of the staff members (Karanges and et.al, 2015).

It has been recommended that management of the organization should listen to the grievances of the workers and their problems they are facing while working in the organization. The firm should implement the procedure of handling grievances. In this way, workers will feel that company value their employees and listen to their problems. This will help to improve motivation, job satisfaction level of the employees. As a result, company can easily retain their workers for a long period.

Prioritization -

The prioritization of the above strategies for improving employee engagement on the basis of the importance is as follows -

1) First priority is given to training and development strategy. The organization should provide training to all the employees working in the firm once in a week. This will help to improve the existing level of skills of the workers. As a result, it helps to improve employee engagement.

2) Second priority is given to tools that management should provide right tools and equipment to the workers for performing the task in effective way. This will help to improve efficiency of staff, and they will work in the company for a long period (Mone and London, 2018).

3) Third priority is given to the procedure of grievance handling.

CONCLUSION

The above Report has outlined that there are various laws related with employee engagement such as equality law, health and safety law. Firm should comply these laws as this will help to improve the level of engagement of workers in the company. Further, the Report has described that Marks and Spencer should adopt different methods for improving employee engagement such as providing right tools, conducting effective training programmes etc. Moreover, the Report has explained that training and development is one of the major approach that helps firm to improve engagement of workers in the organization.

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