Workforce Management

Question: What is Workforce? Explain. Answer: Introduction Workforce is considered as a major resource of an organisation that acts as a backbone of a company. Talent development programme plays an essential role in enhancing the skills, knowledge and capability of the workforce to promote development of business (Lavallee, 2006). Tesco PLC is one of the leading retail businesses in the United Kingdom with more than 500,000 employees across the globe. Due to a large diversified workforce, there is a need of proper talent development programme that can be helpful for the employees to improve their knowledge and skills to handle customers and carry on the operation of the company. Talent development programmes are the training and mentoring facilities provided by the organisation to its employees to improve their capabilities and performance. Being a retail trading organisation, Tesco needs to implement Leadership Development Programme for its regional customer service heads to handle different issues. The Sales Development Programme is needed for the team leaders and sales representatives to provide product knowledge and build leadership. Tesco also need trainee development programme for all employees to improve their knowledge over the business areas (Knight, 2009). Hence, it can be seen that Talent Development Programme is need for all employees and especially for the new recruitments to provide them knowledge about the business. TDPs must be conducted at an interval of every quarter to have a better workforce. In case of new recruitment, it must be carried on for first six months. Coaching and Mentoring Coaching and mentoring are techniques to develop the skills and knowledge of the employees through one to one discussion. It helps to improve the performance of the employees. Coaching and mentoring can be differentiated in terms of the practices that are used interchangeably to carry on the Talent Development Programme in an organisation. Coaching is an organisation targets to improve the performance of employees by focusing on specific goals and skills of the individuals. It develops new skills and knowledge among the employees. In case of mentoring, it is used to establish a good relationship with the employees by questioning, clarifying, listening and reframing the problems faced by the individuals (Jones, Armour and Potrac, 2012). Both of the techniques are used interchangeably to improve the performance of the employees and the organisation. Hence, the potential benefit of coaching and mentoring is a strong workforce capable of accepting different challenges at workplace. Evaluation of different models of coaching and mentoring The GROW model can provide significant structure so that new learners can experienced clear and better directive approach in coaching and mentoring system. The GROW model includes four apparent stages such as goals, reality, options and wrap up. In this sort of model, establishing goal and objective have to be set up first. On basis of the goals, reality checks have been analysed to generate options to be followed for better coaching and mentoring. At the final stage, an action must be concluded to wrap up the programme. Suitability Justification: In order to determine the suitability of the model in TESCO programme, identification of key resources will be important. Being a large business organisation, such model must not be appropriate for the programme as the model can be suitably applied to a smaller group of people. EXACT model of coaching and mentoring presents the fundamental principles of coaching that presents a clear understanding of the coaching goals. It is important to have Exciting, Assessable, Challenging and Time framed goals of Talent Development Programmes. Suitability Justification: EXACT model has been segmented in four different stages that include assembling and challenging goals. Therefore, such model will be effective for the coaching and mentoring programme of TESCO. The Achieve Coaching Model is another significant model to be considered in coaching and mentoring. The circular process has formed a chain circle including assessing current situation, creative brainstorming, identifying goals, option initiation, evaluating options, developing plan of action, and encouraging momentum. Such instrumental model can motivate the behaviour and skills of a coach or mentor. Suitability Justification: The Achieve coaching model has significantly included a circular process such as assessing current situation, creative brainstorming, identifying goals, option initiation, evaluating options, developing plan of action, and encouraging momentum. The sections will be inspiring The OSKAR Coaching framework is also significant for coaching and mentoring. The framework works on five stages such as outcome, scaling, know-how phase, affirm and action and review of the programme. The initial two steps are required to set up the objective of meeting or coaching session to solve any issue (Dinos and Palmer, 2015). Scaling phase has been used to measure the scale of achieving the identified levels. The know-how phase is focused on knowledge resources, characteristics and qualification of coaches and mentors to achieve success. Affirm and action describes the behaviours, skills and actions to be confirmed in the training and meetings. Finally, a review of both the positives and negatives has to be recorded. Suitability Justification: Apparently, the OSKAR Coaching framework may be also included in the coaching and mentoring programme of TESCO to motivate the large scale employees. The stages of the mentoring model will evaluate the best out of the employees so that the productivity and level of performance can be improved (Parylo, Zepeda and Bengtson, 2012). Factors impacting on the success of coaching and mentoring In the meantime, some critical factors can be identified as impacting aspects of the success of coaching and mentoring. First of all, business priorities have decided how coaching and mentoring must be promoted within a group or team members. Apart from that, organisational culture is another essential factor to determine the success of coaching. By fostering effective learning and development environment, perfect coaching facilities can be provided. Furthermore, perception is a significantly important factor in coaching (Parylo, Zepeda and Bengtson, 2012). By identifying the necessity of coaching to a particular team can make life easy for coaches and mentors. Hence, the perception has been considered to be an effective factor. At the same time, the degree of sponsorship and purpose of coaching can dictate terms on whether coaching facilities will be successful or not. By providing all necessary support from the top level can be truly helpful for a successful coaching session. Skills required of coaches and mentors In coaching and mentoring some fundamental skills are crucial to becoming an expertise and successful personality in the field. To identify the issues and challenges of a team, coaches must have listening skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, feedback skills, questioning skills and most importantly motivating skills. The academic qualification and knowledge will not be enough to encourage the learners. Therefore, a coach must present unique style and learning tactics in front of the learners (Brockbank and McGill, 2006). In order to become successful, 5Rs of lifelong learning is mandatory for coaches or mentors such as readiness, resourcefulness, resilience, responsibility, and reflectiveness. The readiness to learn is so much essential to understand new issues and challenges. Resourcefulness signifies creativity in learning the process and understanding how to apply methods. Resilience forces a coach not to give up in any situation or a person. On the other hand, responsibility determines the learning ownership of a trainer or mentor (Rao, 2014). Finally, reflectiveness encourages improvement and practises the best knowledge facilities to become a successful mentor or coach. Evidently, to ensure fair and equal access across the coaching and mentoring programmes, some regulations must be initiated. The regulations must promote equal access to each of the human resource participating in the training programmes. Furthermore, the ethical checklist of the business organisation must be considered at the coaching and mentoring programme in order to establish ethics to mentoring (Brockbank and McGill, 2006). The employees must take freely participation so that the rate of the success of the programme will be high. Moreover, the concerned authority must govern the programme to ensure fair and equal access across the coaching and mentoring programmes. Support needs of Coaches and mentors There is a significant form of support to be offered such as one to one meetings, social media blogs, formal and informal e-mail groups, action learning activities and group meetings so that coaches and mentors level of performance can be increased (Brockbank and McGill, 2012). By establishing support needs of coaches and mentors, expertise knowledge and skills can be permanently exchanged to improvise the level of competence among the coaches. Facilities such as action learning activities and group meetings can be effectively utilised to share the fundamental issues and challenges of coaches (Dougan, 2013). In a coaching network, there are some basic learning issues as well as real problems to be tackled. However, professional learning facilities and supervision can inspire the performance of coaching staffs undoubtedly. Mechanism to support coaches and mentors Different mechanism can be used by Tesco management to support the coaches and mentors. The mechanisms to support coaches and mentors are discussed herein below: Group Supervision: Group supervision can be carried through one on one meeting, training classes, group discussions and after day meetings (Leong and Mak, 2013). Email/Social network groups: Email, social networking groups, blogs and online modules can be used to train employees. Share Information: Sharing information at workplace, training class, and internet media through emails and social networking sites can be used to improve the knowledge of the employees. Action learning Sets: Action learning sets are used to provide employees on the job training, develop solution to their daily problems, work on real issues and learn from their experiences. Justification of the mechanism to support coaches and mentors After considering all factors, it can be seen that the learning action sets and group supervision are the most effective mechanism to support the coaches and mentors in the TDP (Gilbert and Rosinski, 2008). Both of these mechanisms are suggested because, Tesco mainly provides the TDP for the new recruitments who need to know about the business and culture of the organisation. Both of these mechanisms can be used throughout the year and they comply with all ethical and professional practise of CIPD Code of professional practices (Megginson, Clutterbuck and Megginson, 2009). Furthermore, both of these mechanisms promote dissemination and sharing of learning. Along with that, the mechanism ensures equal and fair access to mentors and coaches to support provision. Including these mechanisms, it is important for TESCO to see to follow the principles of Wheel of Good Practice. The management must ensure that the mechanisms are used according to the wheel of good practice to ensure effective outcomes from the TDP. A diagram has been given below to present wheel of good practice. It is important for TESCO to see that all these good practices are carried on while using the mechanism of training and development programs. The TDP must take place regularly and focus on the need of clients, organisation and coach. Along with that, the mechanisms provide continuous professional development to the coach and assure quality of coaching provisions. It is believed that both of these mechanisms will provide support to the coach and generate organisational learning. Furthermore, the mechanism ensures balanced individual, group or peer supervision. Finally, the chosen mechanisms manage ethical and confidential boundaries that make them suitable for the organisation. Evaluation By comparing three different evaluation models, it can be seen that Kirkpatrick focuses on behavioural changes and not on achieving the objectives of training programme. In case of CIRO model, it focuses on achieving the objectives of training programme, but not on the behavioural changes (Wise and Jacobo, 2010). Finally, in case of RAM evaluation model, it can be seen that it checks the relevance of coaching with the context of business, examines the alignment of the mechanism and measures the final results and ROI of the TDP. Hence, RAM evaluation model is the most useful technique to measure the success of the TDP. Conclusion The facilities and skills offered to the coaches and mentors can eventually help the team members to perform in a better way. Hence, proper monitoring of mentoring facilities and systems is highly essential. Moreover, the art of coaching is one of the unique things to be understood. Every individual coaching staff has own methods and tactics to improve the skills and performance of others. Hence, professional practices and individual development can be identified as very effective in coaching and mentoring. References Brockbank, A. and McGill, I. (2006).Facilitating reflective learning through mentoring coaching. London: Kogan Page. Brockbank, A. and McGill, I. (2012).Facilitating reflective learning. London: Kogan Page. Carmel, R. and Paul, M. (2015). Mentoring and coaching in academia: Reflections on a mentoring/coaching relationship.Policy Futures in Education, 13(4), pp.479-491. 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