Evaluation of the future direction of Tesco

Executive summary

This paper drafts a plan providing a future direction of Tesco. The draft plan evaluates the possible leadership practises to be followed over a short term period of 3 years. It also focusses on the employee motivation and performance factors of Tesco Company and prepares an action plan for the various challenges to be faced over these years. It also provides an estimated timeframe in which the planned actions are to be executed for incorporating effective leadership and ethical practices.

Introduction

The multinational corporations are growing their operations all over the world and are achieving better results. They are finding better ways to integrate their sources and use optimum resources to best of the results. The companies are focussing on improving their employee potential and also improve their performance, thereby improving their productivity. This paper gives a future evaluation of one such organisation in the retail chain segment which has made significant position for itself since its incorporation.

Tesco Plc. was founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen in London and now is the biggest retail chain supermarket in the United Kingdom (UK). It has expanded its operations all over the world. This report drafts a 3 year plan of Tesco Plc and foresights the possible mission and vision of the organisation, in line with the current scenario. It also gives a new dimension in evaluating the possible leadership styles to be adopted in the organisation and developing an effective leadership climate. The employees and colleagues of the company are to be motivated and empowered in a better way to achieve better productivity. Tesco may also face some of the challenges and in order to overcome this, a three year action plan matrix is prepared and the key issues are evaluated to turn them into opportunities for the company.

Draft 3 year plan for Tesco

An action plan is made so that one can identify the actions needed by the management to accomplish the desired goals and objectives set by the organisation. This paper describes a future actions to be taken by the management of Tesco Company so that it can improve its leadership styles and leadership culture in the organisation. It shall help in building and maintaining ethical business practises.

Vision and mission of the organisation

The vision and mission statements act as a foundation stone for the structural build-up of the organisation. The current vision and mission of Tesco lay its importance on providing better shopping experience to its customer and shoppers. However, this draft explains the 3 year planned vision and mission of the company. The vision and mission statements is to provide direction for more leaders to take initiative in delivering a healthy and more interactive customer experience, both within stores and outside stores. The organisation should practise effective leadership skills in order to conduct an ethical business deliverables. Tesco aims to empower its leaders and employees to be updated and motivated with latest information and conduct ethical business practises.

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Leadership climate

The leadership climate effects the operations and performance of the company. There are various types of leadership skills which are practised in the current work environment. Tesco will adopt a free work culture creating enough room for the individual employees to gain ample learning while performing their designated work. The existing leaders motivate the employees to achieve better results through performance. They follow a mix of Affiliative, Coaching and Authoritative styles of Leadership to ensure that the followers or the sub-ordinates employees develop their competencies. Better competencies by the employees will yield better results and better productivity. Employees can manage the customers more effectively and can thereby provide better customer satisfaction for the shoppers. The leaders have to develop better revenue generation sources for the company and will have to apply skills according to that climate (Hay Group, 2010).

Affiliative leadership skills create harmony among the employees and solve individual problems through proper care and support from the leaders. The employees are also provided with an expert opinion or guided by a senior in case of need. Coaching style of leadership encourages the individual to accomplish the said tasks through motivation. The leaders listen to the employees and understands their problem and manages situation by driving them back to the path of their individual progress. The leader helps the individual to identify their own strengths and weakness and guides like a teacher to focus on their strengths and overcome their weaknesses. The authoritative style of leadership is focussed on the possible outcomes and results in a given set of problems and issues. Sometimes it is necessary for the Tesco leaders to practise this style of leadership to give a definite direction to its team for achieving the set targets and goals (Hay Group, 2010).

The performance of the employee depends on many factors and a positive working environment is one of them. A positive working environment will yield clarity to the thought processes of the employees and would help to increase the desire to learn more and apply the learnings to the actual scenario.

Process of Motivating and Empowering Employees

Tesco is currently employing more than 476,000 employees all around the world (Tesco Plc, 2017). It is important for the company to have sufficient employee benefit programs to keep its employees productive. Tesco has very interactive leadership climate, as discussed before, and it provides great scope for the employees to grow and excel in their skills. The company has to adopt a series of employee policies in its workplace to ensure that its employees continue to motivate and empower themselves to give the best customer experience. It has to implement motivational factors like flexible work timings, competitive salaries, various discounts and added benefits for its own staff and employees, and discounted gym benefits. Tesco will have to ensure that better work-life balance is created for its employees.

The process of motivating and empowering the employees involves a series of steps to be followed (Andish, et al., 2013).

1. The first step is to show determination and commitment in leadership practises followed by the management. It shall include active involvement in the different activities conducted for motivating employees
2. Allow employee participation in decision making process of the management.
3. Provide adequate training and development for the employees and the staff. The management should consider it as an investment.
4. Creating a team and assigning responsibilities
5. Encouraging employee participation through sharing of information
6. Providing support and removing unnecessary regulatory compliance

By applying these steps and introducing motivational factors at the relevant steps, Tesco will show positive results.

Future challenges for leaders

The world is changing at a fast pace and it is important to be updated with the technological changes of the world. It is thus a challenge for the organisation to invest in high-end technologies for creating a better shopping experience for the customers. The leaders have to learn the best application of the technology and update it to the employees. The company is having a large workforce and this process of updating needs time. Thus it is a challenging task for the leaders to upgrade its workforce and its team and be adaptable with the changing world.

The social and cultural differences can create hindrances in the achievement of the stated mission and vision. Tesco hires employees all around the world and constitutes a mix of different cultures. There can be social and cultural barriers among the employees with respect to language, the accent of speaking English and the way of presenting the idea because of their different cultural and environmental upbringing. This can be one of the major backlogs for developing the effective working atmosphere for the leaders of the organisation.

The company has suffered huge loss in terms of brand image in 2014 when it was found that the company has overstated its profits and gave misleading numbers to project a better position of the business (Felsted, 2016). This has created a negative impact in the minds of the employees and other business colleagues. Also, this has lowered down the morale of the customers for they did not want to be a part of a ‘misleading’ company. Tesco is trying to recover itself with a customer – centric approach by providing better service. However, this ‘misleading’ information has created a ‘negative branding’ of the company and its business has impacted greatly. As a result, the leaders now face a big challenge to revive the lost trust factor among its employees and its customers.

Apart from the major challenges mentioned above, the productivity of the employees should be noted to ensure that they perform in a consistent manner. Sometimes, repetitive work methods may result in fall in the performance of the employee. The employee satisfaction factor is important to understand as it improves the consistency of the performance. Hence, this is also a challenge for the management which needs to be addressed in the next few years.

Action Plan Matrix

The ‘Action Plan Matrix’ is an important tool for the management for it helps in identifying the appropriate roadmap to face and overcome the issues and challenges with respect to the management. It helps the management and the decision making team to take decisions on each and every issues, separately, and check with the degree of completion of the solutions proposed (in the matrix) to be completed in the estimated timeframe. It acts as an important organisational strategy and solves the problem in detail. The issues can be tracked with the help of the timeframe provided in the matrix.

Tesco is a big organisation and faces many challenges in the coming years as proposed in the draft. Thus, an ‘Action Plan Matrix’ is prepared below on the basis of a few existing models and theories –

Table 1: Action Plan Matrix of Tesco Plc

(Source: Author’s creation)

Conclusion

In order to conclude, it can be said that the draft plan prepared above gives a detailed insight on the Tesco Plc’s leadership culture and climate to be followed by the company in a coming few years. The business activities shall be centred on the customer and the employees of the organisation. Special emphasis should be provided at the leadership styles to be conducted over the years. The leader will have to engage employees and staff in developing each individual skills by applying a mix of affiliative, conducive and authoritative leadership styles. It is through these leadership initiatives that the employees will be motivated and empowered to take decisions for the betterment of the company. Tesco may face many challenges in the course of implementing challenging roles in the coming years for which an action plan is prepared considering ethical business practises. Thus, this draft is prepared for a 3 year timeframe with an expectation of positive result in terms of leadership and employee performance.