2018

People, culture and

contemporary
leadership
Woolworth

Student Name

11/25/2018
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 1

Executive summary
This report highlights the information about the human resource practices of Woolworth
Company, which deals in retail sector in Australia. This report mainly focuses on how the
organisation by using different techniques improvises the performances of the employees
working in Woolworth. Moreover, certain aspect like building trust, working with honest and
flexibility were the initiatives made to enhance the working culture within the organisation.
Furthermore, what all Woolworth do for its employee engagement and make them retain in
an organisation for a longer period. Likewise, they focus on the best practices compliance
system, according to the international social compliance program, more rewards and much
more efforts are made to retain them. Lastly, based on certain theories and analysis certain
recommendations were taken into consideration in order to enhance the overall performance
of organisation as well as their employees.
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 2

Contents
Executive summary........................................................................................................ 1

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 3

2. Performance- related initiatives ................................................................................. 3

3. Culture- related initiative ........................................................................................... 4

4. Engagement- related initiative ................................................................................... 5

5. Recommendations ...................................................................................................... 6

6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 6

7. References .................................................................................................................. 7
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 3

1. Introduction
A company for its success always plays a major role in its human resource practices.
Similarly, Woolworth one of the foremost brands in trade sector in Australia with thousands
of their workers performs human resource management practices, to improve overall
performances of the organisation as well as managing the staff performance and their
engagement. Not only this, other related benefits are also provided to them in order to retain
them for the future. Similarly, Woolworth responsibilities towards its employees is to satisfy
their training needs, skills analysis and essential competencies needs to be improved though
training programmes which initiates them more towards success (Woolworths group, 2018a).

2. Performance- related initiatives

Q1.The Company engages their employees by enhancing the employee participation and
increase job satisfaction. By proper training and development programmes, Woolworth tries
to enhance the better performance of their employees. High performance at Woolworth is
encouraged by rewarding extraordinary performances of employees, which provides
additional contribution to the business. On spot awards are given by managers to winners,
which means that the champions feels appreciated by their colleagues. Such token of
appreciation inspires the rest of the workforces to work hard and attain the same outcome in
the near future.

The annual chief executive reward highlights the desire of working of an employee as
individual as well as in-group. High performers are awarded, advancement through providing
career development chances for working teams. The employees are benefited by various
benefits such as concessions, retirement funding, healthcare plans and benefits, training,
scholarships, and paternal leave, which help company for employee retention. Other than this,
employees’ health and their wellbeing initiative are always proved effective tool to drive
motivation of the employees and helps in improving the relationship between the
organisational behaviour and its employees.

The present scenario of the relationship of employees and the organisation is healthy enough
and to make it even more successful certain policies for an effective initiative are made to
handle grievances and conflicts. With the assistances of employees relation policies
Woolworth successfully enhances the productivity of every employee. Therefore, human
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 4

resource management provides great help to Woolworth by maintaining healthy relationship

and enhancing overall performances and productivity of the organisation.

However, Woolworth uses training programmes and various motivation techniques are
applied in order to perform well in the organisation. This not only improvises the individuals’
performances but also the overall performances of an organisation. By giving health benefits,
discounts, retirement funding, healthcare plans and benefits which also assist Woolworth in
maintaining more employee retaining than usual.

3. Culture- related initiative

Q2. Woolworth organisation culture states that they have very down to earth culture and they
love to celebrate family- friendly values. Every aspect of their business is to satisfy their
customers by making their lives simpler, easier and better. Woolworth take care of their
clienteles, team members, manufactures, producers or anyone and everyone who walks
through doors. A culture build on trust, transparency, openness and honesty, which are
among the members and the partners who are governed with some simple ideas, which are
collaborated and fairness among the working style of the organisation (Mitchell, 2017).

Woolworth also focuses on freedom to speak; they keep a check over the workings of the
employees within the organisation and allow them for the same if there any issues regarding
any problem, they are free to discuss and openly can keep their point to any problem. In this
the Woolworth culture demonstrates that in 2012, it was the first Australian company who
introduces the third party compliant line, which helps them to handle graviences and
complaint and also deals in issues raised by vendors (Low, 2016).

Over past years, Mr.Bandducci has stated that Woolworth having arrogant and inward-
looking culture, and due to this company having a massive loss at the store. However, by
building a “listening” culture, this was launched as a new tool (Heitzman, 2017). In every
meeting they majorly focuses on customers and talk about the direct correlation between the
customers feedback. In addition, over a time Woolworth due to its fine culture, consumers
rate them on high metrics such as values, stock availability, product quality and their loyalty.
Even banks declared Woolworth has improved its execution over a period and leads to the
potential to continue to improve and gaining market share (Woolworth group, 2018b).
Overall, this culture transformation is fundamental, ensures that the strategies and programs
are implemented, and leads to the success of an organisation (Staff, 2018).
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 5

4. Engagement- related initiative

Q3. Woolworth has renewed emphasis on customers’ engagement by providing new training
programmes for employees and certain aligned incentives for executives, which has helped
Woolworth to improve sales. Woolworth focuses on group’s commitment with its clienteles,
societies, and supply chain and for its team associates who not only benefits organisation in
earning but also give emphasis on employee engagement. They also focus on the best
practices compliance system, according to the international social compliance program,
Woolworth collaborated with its top organisations to improve their employees living
standards. In 2016 around 1875 new indigenous team was formed by joining Woolworth
through employment parity program. In addition, in 2018 Woolworth maintained safe
environment for their team members, suppliers and for their customers (Gleeson, 2017).

The success of Woolworth is to build their people and keep focus on attracting, retaining and
developing their talented team in their present and in their near future. By the theory of
work-role model of engagement, the company focuses on maintaining a secure environment
for their team members and they fell like working in a meaningful working environment. In
today’s scenario, gender biasness is the major issue for that, Woolworth group is building
such kind of culture where they allow their team members to enjoy same prizes, wealth and
chances or opportunities, regardless of gender. 50 precent of females working in Woolworth
states that company has strong representation of women across an entire business. Moreover,
to improve this various initiative is underway to develop the working environment in order to
keep high-performing staff (Morrison, 2016).

On the psycho-, social theory of engagement states that to improve the employee engagement
Woolworth focuses on establishing a culture where psychological security as well as physical
protection is must. They have also executed several innovating programs to assist their team
and their families. Woolworth introduces a family violence policy, which has delivered an
additional paid leave for their team members who are impacted by their families. They ensure
free counselling, a practical support or transfers to accommodate changes. Such assistance
marked benefits for the employees and made them towards employees’ engagement (Thomas,
2015).
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 6

5. Recommendations
Recommendations for improving the performances of the workforce are, by changing
the techniques for motivation. A good leader will always understand that what
motivation trick is used to which individual. As every person has its unique needs and
it varies from the other individuals. Some reward improvements are to be done;
sometimes leaders think that awards and gifts are the best way to motivate or to show
appreciation but often verbal praise and a promise of career advancement profs
effective in motivating the team members. So accordingly, good leader will always
ensure that their team should always feel satisfied and performing at its best.

Recommendations made in order to improve the Woolworth culture is by finding way

to flexibility; a flexible environment always makes work easy. Woolworth should also
encourage risk-taking factor. As with every business, a bit risk is always associated.
Therefore, with Woolworth, it should have some risk taking factor with the changing
environment. They should spend time to measure, analysis and make reliable
decisions so that they can be ready for the positive outcomes. They should also put
collaboration first as this is the best corporate culture created when all the employees
will be working for the common goal and values (Archambeau, 2017).
For a proper enhancement of employee, engagement in an organisation is to place
employees at the right position or in right role. This highlights that employees are to
be placed in a particular department according to the talents they have. This ensures
that employees are rightly aligned to their departments, which will surely meet
companies’ goals. The best way to improve employee engagement is to hold
meetings, include every employee of the organisations in the meetings foe the
problem solutions and discussions. This technique should be on priority basis as it
helps the organisation to drive faster and greater financial returns, easy for them to
overcome their competitors and will be easy to generate success and improvise
reputation.

6. Conclusion
From the above paragraphs we can conclude that Woolworth work over the solid foundation,
right from the beginning, many initiative are made by them for improving the employee
performances, employee engagement and organisational culture. A relationship of trust, a
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 7

freedom to speak, honesty and maintaining healthy environment, which helps organisation
enhance the overall performances and productivity. Not only this, for improving culture and
employees engagement many initiatives were made like more of training programmes, by
providing physiological and physical security to employees free counselling programmes and
involving women’s to work equally without any gender discrimination leads that Woolworth
has come a long way on its success field.

7. References
Archambeau, S. (2017) 3 strategies for CEOs to improve corporate culture [Online] Available
from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/295171 [Accessed 25/11/2018]

Gleeson, B. (2017) 5powerful step to improve employee engagement [online] Available

from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2017/10/15/5-powerful-steps-to-improve-
employee-engagement/#2bb3b385341d [Accessed 25/11/18]

Heitzman, A. (2017) 5 easy actions that will improve company culture [Online] Available
from: https://www.inc.com/adam-heitzman/5-easy-actions-that-will-improve-company-
culture.html [Accessed 25/11/2018]

Low, C. (2016) New Woolworths boss promises fresh culture [Online] Available from:
https://www.smh.com.au/business/new-woolworths-boss-promises-fresh-culture-20160226-
gn4k4q.html [Accessed 25/11/18]

Mitchell, S. (2017) Woolworth culture change drives turnaround [Online] Available from:
https://www.afr.com/business/retail/woolworths-culture-change-drives-turnaround-
20171128-gzucdz [Accessed 25/11/2018]

Morrison, M. (2016) Employee engagement and satisfaction models [Online] Available from:
https://rapidbi.com/employeeengagementsatisfactionmodels/ [Accessed 25/11/2018]

Staff, R. (2018) 7eye-opening strategies to improve employee performance [Online]

Available from: https://risepeople.com/blog/7-steps-improving-employee-performance-2/
[Accessed 25/11/2018]

Thomas. (2015) Employee engagement- all you need to know about employee engagement
[Online] Available from: https://www.thomasinternational.net/getmedia/0abf97a1-35d4-
4199-8b92-398e8d45906a/Employee-Engagement-Whitepaper.pdf [Accessed 25/11/2018]
 People, culture and contemporary leadership 8

Woolworth group. (2018a) How we do business [Online] Available from:

https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/page/about-us/our-approach/how-we-do-business
[Accessed 25/11/2018]

Woolworth group. (2018b) Culture and people (human resources) [Online] Available from:
https://au.gradconnection.com/employers/woolworths-group/human-resources/ [Accessed
25/11/2018]

Woolworth group. (2018d) Tomorrow- together [Online] Available from:

https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/icms_docs/195398_2018-sustainability-report.pdf
[Accessed 25/11/2018]

Woolworths group. (2018c) Together- 2018 annual report [Online] Available from:
https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/icms_docs/195396_annual-report-2018.pdf [Accessed
25/11/2018]