The John Lewis Argumentative

The John Lewis Partnership is one of the UK’s top ten retail businesses with 26 John Lewis department stores and 183 Waitrose supermarkets. It retails clothes, home furniture, electrical items, sports and leisure (art and craft, cameras). John Lewis is in the partnership with Waitrose and sell food.

The partnerships they have with suppliers from around the world help them to offer customers over 350,000 product lines in John Lewis, from fashion and furnishings to household goods, and around 18,000 high quality food products in Waitrose. Through their network of suppliers around the world, John Lewis aims to bring customers the best fashion, furnishings and household goods at competitive prices, from Scottish wool and Sheffield steel to Italian leather, American Maplewood and electronics from the Far East. Their buyers work with more than 4,000 suppliers in over 80 countries to find them. They own one production unit in the north of England – Herbert Parkinson, which produces John Lewis’s own-brand duvets, pillows, furnishing fabrics and provides our made-to-measure curtain service. Waitrose and John Lewis head office is situated in London Victoria where they order all the stock and store it in an Essex warehouse. They deliver all the stock to the different John Lewis department stores and then after all that the stock goes into the storage room, from their employees put all of that stock onto different shelves.

John Lewis ownership

John Lewis is a Partnership, have the chance to become larger than partnership business organizations. All 69,000 permanent staff as the Partners who own 27 John Lewis department stores, 198 Waitrose supermarkets. They all have equal share in the business and they all the equal bonuses from the company profit.

John Lewis has their own unique ownership structure: it was a structure established via two trusts. There are no employees who own shares in John Lewis Partnership; John Lewis ownership is wholly in trust, with profit distributed to their employees and partner when they do investment. A ‘Partners’ Counsellor’ acts as ‘guardian’ of the company’s constitution and co-ownership, with a Registrar in each of the main operating units.

What is John Lewis organizational structure?

The governance system of the Partnership was created by their founder, John Spedan Lewis and is set out in the Company’s Constitution. Their structure gives their management the freedom to be entrepreneurial and competitive in the way they run the business for long-term success, while giving the company’s owners, the Partners, the rights and responsibilities of ownership through active involvement in the business.

What is its key business goal?

Their purpose is ‘the happiness of all our members, through their worthwhile, satisfying employment in a successful business’, with success measured on our ability to sustain and enhance our position both as an outstanding retailer and as a thriving example of employee ownership.

Their strategy is based on three interdependent objectives – Partners (employees), customers, profit – which together will make a successful business:

* Their partners should gain personal satisfaction by being members of a co-owned enterprise in which they have worthwhile, secure and fulfilling employment and confidence in the way the Partnership conducts its business.

* The Partnership should recruit and retain loyal customers through their continued trust and confidence in their reputation for value, choice, service and honesty and for behaving as good citizens.

* The Partnership should make sufficient profit to sustain their commercial vitality and distinctive character, allow continued development and distribute a share of profits each year consistent with Partners’ reasonable expectations.

What makes the Partnership different from any other retailer?

The Partnership Spirit defines what is truly important to the John Lewis Partnership. Ensuring the happiness of Partners is at the centre of everything we do.

* Building a sustainable business through profit and growth

* Serving their customers to the very best of our ability

* Caring about their communities and their environment.

(b) how the selected organisation manages its existing human resources to include:

How the teams/departments within the organisation operate and work together?

Human resource works with finance to determine the salaries and wages of the employee’s and also any increase in salary and bonuses. This helps the business to pay the right amount of wages or salaries. Human resource also interacts with marketing to verify the adverts for recruitment. This helps for marketing to concentrate more on their work instead of finding new recruits and with good team-building skills John Lewis employers unite employees around a common goal and generate greater productivity. The department’s team members in John Lewis not only share expectations for accomplishing group tasks, but trust and support one another and respect one another’s individual difference.

Monitoring of employees both informal and formal

To coordinating a team is likely to mean that John Lewis should knows what employees should be doing to work towards their targets. It is important for john Lewis to monitor the team’s performance to make sure that they are actually making progress. One formal way John Lewis measure performance of employees by monitoring how closely the targets have been met. This involves measuring sales figure, seeing how much the team has spent or even considering the number the number of customer complaints during a give time of period.

Staffing to meet changing business demands

John Lewis need more staff in busy period like Christmas. They recruit more staff for temporary period. In resection time John Lewis stopped recruiting more staff. From last few months they get rid of many employees because of the new technology in shop for example, customers can pay by them self on self operating till , they don’t have to go on till and pay their. So john Lewis has reduced their staff.

Outsourcing operations and its advantages

Outsourcing is when you contract out a business function to a third party over a substantial period of time. This third-party organization takes control of the function and becomes responsible for its success

Outsourcing allows you to concentrate on what you do best, save money, be more flexible and manage growth effectively. It also allows your business to gain access to outside expertise and technologies.

John Lewis has partnership with logic Group which is the outsourcing operation. The authentication of online customers has been outsourced to Logic Group Managed Services, cardholders are authenticated using the Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code programmers’. The Advantage of this outsourcing operation is 28% of John Lewis Direct customers using it in the first week of operation.

The critical resources needed to operate effectively

John Lewis make sure that individual employee are managed within the organization. John Lewis use all the resources effectively within teams to meets its targets that are set. The resources John Lewis need skills for example Team working skills which will help them to work as a team, good communication skills will help employees to keep good communication within the team, experience (this will help experienced employees to more effectively and will also save money for John Lewis to train new employees) and even financial resources that help the team to achieve what its need to. John Lewis mangers appoint teams leader with in different department to look after team members on day-to-day basis and provide them with all resources. John Lewis also provides training resources to improve employee’s performance and team performance which will help them to get their target.

The incentives used for staff to achieve targets

There is a wide range of incentive schemes used by John Lewis because incentive schemes will help John Lewis to recruit and retain valuable staff, reward performance and productivity. It also helps them to get the best out of their employees. To make their employees achieve their targets John Lewis provides a wide range of incentive schemes, each with different costs. They include financial and non-financial schemes:

Financial incentives

* profit-related and share option schemes

* Annual bonuses

* Pension

* Paid holidays

* commission

Non-financial and non-pay incentives include:

* formal recognition/awards

* vouchers

* Clubs and Societies

* Ticket subsidies

* Education subsidies

* extra holidays

* gifts

* company cars

(a) Describe the main physical and technological resources that are involved in the running of your selected business. This should cover the following areas:

Buildings, facilities, materials and waste

John Lewis is situated on Kingston High Street which is the core shopping area of Kingston which helps John Lewis customers to find the stores easily. The Store from the outside looks impressive; the window displays are always well designed and modern to keep up with the times. The John Lewis logo is proudly displayed and which make it a unique store. Inside the store continues to shine with its impressive collection of goods that range from TV’s to spoons. All areas are well labeled and all the areas have their unique look and design

There are both escalators and lifts available and access for the disabled is very easy. The aisles are wide enough to accommodate for large numbers of people which is a plus, some stores do not think of this in their designs and allow to much space for their products to be displayed, forgetting people actually have to get to the products in the first place.

There is a caf� on the top floor of the store which provides small tasty snacks and drinks to refresh you as you ready yourself for another 3 hour walk around the rest of the store. There is adequate seating and the furniture and caf� area is well maintained.

They also provide different facilities for customers and employees like disable parking, toilets, entrance, heating, elevators, fire exits etc. John Lewis tries to recycle it waste like paper and clothes. They tries to reduce the materials and try to be more environmentally friendly.

Plant, machinery and equipment

Equipments are essential for John Lewis to operate smoothly. They try to provide different equipments to its employees to maintain the shop for example for example MS Visio Network Equipment, this technical systems helps individuals and teams more effectively. Visio diagrams make a message more concise, help people remember main points, and transcend cultural and technical barriers. John Lewis use this system in their human resources department. John Lewis used most advanced computers to make work easy and fast for their employees. They use some CCTV as equipment to maintain shop security which is maintained by the technician every day.

Security, insurance and emergency provision

John Lewis follows The Health and Safety at Work Act. They have drawn up polices and provisions for should happen in event of an emergency for example they provided emergency fire exits for employees and customers, they have also trained employees and provide them with clear instruction with emergency procedures. John Lewis employers have a duty of care towards every customers or visitor who comes in the shop. John Lewis building has partnership with “greenbee” insurance company. This insurance company provides john Lewis building and its employees with protection. This will help john Lewis to pay its employee family in case accident death, bloody injury. John Lewis employs full-time security staff to look after the store when it’s closed. The security patrol the building, sometimes using dogs to help them, them also CCTV cameras and alarms which are linked to police station.

Intellectual property, software licenses, copyrights and patents

John Lewis have the right to own ideas and have rights to concerning what happens to these ideas, including how often they are used, what they are associated

* Protecting experience gained in the organization

Task 3

The final section of your booklet needs to assess how managing human, physical and technological resources effectively can improve the overall performance of your selected organisation. For example, this might be reflected in increased profits, higher sales levels and lower staff turnover rates. Include in your booklet information that assesses how the effective management of human, physical and technological resources can improve the performance of your selected organisation.

This task addresses M1

Human resources

Human resource is an integral part of John Lewis. Great stress is laid on implementing an effective human resource system in John Lewis. There are lots of departments in John Lewis that makes use of human resource to setup strategic planning and means to process official’s assignments. Managing human resources department will improve the overall performance of John Lewis for example;

* John Lewis try to manage its human resource at its best level because the system comprises of highly dedicated professionals who have the ability to devise new plan and implement marketing strategies that would bring more business and capital to the John Lewis group.

* Managing human resource provides assistances in recruiting best staff and in training employee which will improve the customers service of John Lewis.

* Managing human resource department will develop the systematic plan according to which they will hire the best staff and help to build a good professional work team and will also give John Lewis lower staff turnover.

* Managing human resource will actively participate in John Lewis business and marketing decision and may improve John Lewis performance.

* Managing Human resource will help John Lewis to deals with the long-term management of the business. This department evaluates the future scope of John Lewis and devises strategies which would be profitable to John Lewis in the longer run and bring in stability to John Lewis and provide it an established medium to stand on in the future.

Monitoring and managing staff

John Lewis main strategy to manage staff is to retain staff because this has benefits for John Lewis. Continuity and stability become part of John Lewis culture, and they try to make staff feel that they belong to them and take pride in the business. They try maintained the skills and competencies to often increased productivity. They also use other ways to manage staff:

* John Lewis consults regularly with staff about general morale and feelings of satisfaction because they want their employees to tell about how they feel about the work and workplace. This makes employee’s performance better because regular consult will them to make their voice hear to managers and directors.

* John Lewis makes contingency plans to cover and replace leavers, including succession planning, so as to minimise disruption – review these plans regularly.

* John Lewis makes contingency plans to induct and train new staff and evaluate these regularly. The evaluation help trainers to improve the training so employees can provide best customers service.

Coordinating a team is likely to mean that john Lewis knows what employees should be doing to work towards their targets, for John Lewis it is also important to monitor the employees’ performance to make sure that they are actually making progress. They are many ways John Lewis monitor their employees:

* John Lewis record staff activities by CCTV camera which help john Lewis to check the quality of customer service their employees are delivering to customers. This method also helps employees to improve their customer service and make themselves to improve their performance.

* John Lewis keep recordings of telephone calls to check their employees are helping customer properly and giving right information to customers. This also helps the managers to improve their employees performance by checking the recording of telephones , if employee is not communicating properly so manager can train him more and improve his/her performance.

* John Lewis search staff, their personal space and work areas so John Lewis to check if any staff member have any inappropriate gear or stuff in their personal space and ensure that their staff is safe. This method help employees to work safely and which improve the performance of employees.

* John Lewis open staff emails or listen to voicemails regularly to check they are only doing work not other thing in office. This method help John Lewis discover any fraudulent or any illegal activities carried out by their employees. This also improve performance of other employees by making them aware of the law and other rules in the workplace.

Physical resources

These are the resources that the John Lewis needs to manage in order to carry our activities and it includes things like the buildings, facilities, plant and machinery. Managing physical recourses will help john Lewis to improve its performance for example:

* If John Lewis manages building it will help them to create a good impression on their customers. It will also play an important role in the image of a John Lewis and can make potential customers want to work with John Lewis.

* It is also important for john Lewis to manages its facilities properly because if john Lewis good parking facilities and easy access to store for disable people more disable people will come to shop there. If john Lewis provide with good and fast elevators in their stores it will help attract more families so they can come and shop with their babies trolleys. This will result in high reputation and more profit for john Lewis.

* Managing waste is one of the important parts of john Lewis. They try to create a good image in market and recycle its waste. John Lewis use 30,000 tons of waste for packaging of its products. In 2008 john Lewis recycle 50% of its waste. They also try to sell some waste to other companies from which they make more profit. The continuously try to manages its waste and reduce it to low as they can. This saves John Lewis a lot of money and gives them more profit.

* John Lewis manage the highest levels of building security so its employees can work there safely and customers can shop their safely. It will also create a safe environment for everyone in store. This will result in more customers in store and more profit. It will also create a good image of john Lewis.

* All John Lewis building and its products are managed by “greenbee” insurance company. It provides john Lewis building and its products with good protection against vandalism, fire, flood etc. John Lewis also provides insurance to its employees in case of accident or injury. This makes employee work freely with less concern and more people will try to work with John Lewis.

Technological resources

Technological resources are more than just equipment resources for John Lewis. At John Lewis these are owned like physical recourses, have to be managed in the same way this wills improve the company performance for example:

* John Lewis needs to manage the ideas of people and their staff. This will give John Lewis right to own the ideas of people. Which they can use for their benefits. This can help join Lewis to make more profit through a new idea and no other organization can use it again.

* John Lewis needs to manage to keep people who come across lots of different issues to with the job and have good experience. This will cut the cost for John Lewis to recruit new staff and train them. It will also save time for the John Lewis.

Overall I think managing human, physical and technological resources department will help John Lewis to get best out staff and from customers. It will result in less staff turnover. Human resource also helps John Lewis to make good public relations and built a proper referral system which will result in that other organization can do business with john Lewis with a trust and John will have more capital and profit.

References:

http://ucsfhr.ucsf.edu/index.php/pubs/hrguidearticle/chapter-14-team-building/

http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/offline-shopping-misc/john-lewis/1107797/

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?type=RESOURCES&itemId=1074461555