Introduction
WBA plc is a London-based company specializing in developing IT solutions and software for various retail, manufacturing, and communications businesses. Questions and problems in human resource management arise in the context of the continuous growth of the company. The lack of specialized skills and young professionals, due to the rapid volatility of the business, forces the company to develop a training and development program to attract new human resources. Due to the intense competition in the market and the rapid development of technology, the company needs to maintain momentum to remain the leader in its field.
PESTLE Analysis
Political factors that can affect a company in the long term, as a rule, include the level of loyalty and protectionism of the authorities in the required business sector, the presence of administrative barriers to development, the level of taxation, and the general political situation in the country. Legal factors are generally closely related to legislation to be considered together in this context. The maintenance of protocols and records of the training provided and the safety aspects discussed and taught to employees is an essential part of the legal factors of this analysis. Health and safety training will help the company avoid accidents, especially during a pandemic, and prevent financial losses (Mohammed, 2019). It is also worth considering the British taxation system, which also adjusts its income, from which tuition and talent training are paid.
The current situation with the global pandemic is forcing states to introduce multiple restrictions that affect any branch of business in one way or another. Since WBA plc has a long-standing tradition of bureaucratic structure, the company needs to provide all necessary security measures for its employees in its office. It is believed that the transfer to remote IT work is usually the most painless in the case of a well-established software development structure and the communication tools provided (Fedorenko et al., 2021). Moreover, recruiting for remote positions significantly speeds up the signing of new employees for the required vacancies; however, since interviews are also conducted remotely, the HR department will need more time and resources to analyze potential employees (Gandhi, 2021). This format has its advantages and disadvantages, although, in a pandemic, it is a necessary measure that does not provide alternatives. WBA plc can reduce the cost of maintaining security conditions inside the office due to employees working from home.
This analysis’s economic and social factors are the most important within the framework of the problem under consideration. The inflation rate and stability of the pound in the foreign exchange market represent an advantage that has already helped WBA plc achieve significant market success. The only problem among economic factors that can pose threats in human resource management is the unemployment rate. The numbers rose to a record number in the past year, including the pandemic (Levine-Clark, 2020). The economic recession caused by the pandemic negatively affects companies since there is no free money in the budget that could go to development and training. This approach, which is not designed for the long term, is not focused on human resources but on the company’s tasks and responsibilities. In addition, the imposed restrictions always affect client companies’ purchasing power, which WBA plc has a lot (McKibbin & Fernando, 2020). Companies can limit or suspend WBA plc services if they are included in the list of those most affected by the COVID-19 epidemic. For the IT industry, these consequences are indirect due to the close relationship with their customers. Even the slightest loss of customer base can lead to a lack of funds to implement a training and talent development program.
Social factors are critical in matters of curriculum design and talent development. The most promising and used method is mentoring, which is widespread in Britain for several reasons. Transformational leadership is a relatively strong example in the organizational culture of any company, and an example should support any training, a person in a job who has already received this knowledge and is always ready to help consolidate it. In addition, the UK population is constantly growing, as is the level of medicine and life expectancy; therefore, indirectly, these factors have a positive outlook (Hayami & Ruttan, 2020). British educational traditions are considered one of the best globally, so local students have a good chance of quality training.
Social factors on the part of company leaders are equally important. At the moment, social responsibility, along with environmental responsibility, is a mandatory attribute of every large company if it maintains a high reputation level. Responsible talent management includes inclusiveness, corporate responsibility, fairness, and equal employment opportunities (Anlesinya & Amponsah-Tawiah, 2020). These ethical aspects will increase the loyalty of employees and their job satisfaction, at least on the principle of a respectful attitude.
Technological factors are the main field of activity of the company and are characterized by rapid development in modern times. The company’s continued adherence to all the latest scientific advances is a critical element in its success (Moktadir et al., 2020). In addition, the context of developing a program aimed at attracting, training, and further retaining qualified employees, also requires the use of modern technologies, which are also characterized by rapid development due to the pandemic (Crozier et al., 2021). These technologies aim to attract graduates and currently meet all the standards and requirements for streamlined processing of incoming resumes and interviews.
Any new developments in this area require the attraction of the company’s financial capabilities to use the product or develop its software for the necessary goals of the company. At this stage of the development of the program, a particular online module is used for training, but they need to maintain the relevance of these modules by the pace of development of both the company and global technologies has not gone away. In addition, Industry 4.0 is fundamentally changing the dynamics of all industries in terms of talent training (Karacay, 2018). Personnel requires retraining to reflect new trends in the skills of their profession and interdisciplinary training for a greater level of agreement between sectors of the same company.
Environmental factors have become global trends relatively recently. As a rule, they are dictated by a shortage of used raw materials, environmental indicators of climate change, and environmental pollution. Any large company in our time must meet the requirements of environmental responsibility. Involvement in specific actions that preserve the environment has a beneficial effect on the environmental behavior of existing employees and the attractiveness of the company for new personnel who are not indifferent to environmental issues (Pinzone et al., 2019). These activities are primarily aimed at maintaining the company’s high reputation and assisting the authorities in solving global problems. In the end, green learning is beneficial for both the company and the employees, comprehensively developing their joint responsibility.
SWOT Analysis
According to PESTLE’s analysis and the case of WBA plc, its strengths include a high level of service, and high customer loyalty, which ensures the organization’s leading position in the market for several years. The technological advantage and the ease of transition to the remote work format are significant advantages of the company in general and among competitors. The organizational structure includes a flexible program of benefits, bonuses, and high salaries for the company’s employees, which reduces turnover within WBA plc to almost zero.
In educating and developing talent, the possibilities for WBA plc are truly endless due to their involvement in software development. The entire talent development cycle can be automated or deeply analyzed through machine learning or intelligent systems: employee planning, recruitment, initial training, and continuing skills maintenance, development, and planning for success. Naturally, at the stage of assessing the performance of an already trained employee, the company can highlight the already existing talents who can create a product for the needs of managers.
Weaknesses include a lack of staff, and low participation of employees and consultants in the organization’s hierarchical structure. While benefits, salaries, and bonuses partially offset the second problem with employee integration and engagement to keep job satisfaction high, a shortage of skilled workers poses a threat in the long term. Another issue arising from this problem is related to the training and talent development program under development. Indirectly, the company’s weaknesses are associated with threats at the superficial level, since given the rapid nature of this business sector, competitiveness directly depends on the availability of highly qualified specialists. Since the critical components of high qualifications are education and experience, even in the best cases, training will take time.
Opportunities and threats for the company as a whole rest on the success of the talent development program. First, the company creates its software to support learning. This event will not only allow not to spend resources on attracting additional funding for training but also to increase the awareness and engagement of employees within the company who will participate in the project and know better about the critical skills of new employees. Secondly, the company’s ability to manage human resources and use technology in this direction can allow the development of new approaches to finding and hiring new personnel. Reward packages will attract young professionals, and maintaining the current growth rates is possible only with constant scouting in the critical IT areas. In addition, it is worth using the moment since the company employs many age employees who have extensive experience in the company and, with the help of mentoring methods, can share their skills and advice with new employees. Moreover, the company has already adopted the vector of searching for new employees abroad, which opens up opportunities for developing international relations, cooperation with higher educational institutions, and expanding the client base.
Consequently, the capabilities of the company can be assessed using theories of possible development of learning. These theories include transformational leadership and mentoring. In the first case, managers set an example for their subordinate employees, broadcasting the main goals and philosophy of the company in each business (Eliyana, A., & Ma’arif, 2019). In the second case, the company needs to use the experience of its older employees, who, before retirement, will be able to transfer the most crucial experience in the context of the WBA plc for new specialists. Mentoring requires a confident demonstration of professionalism, emotional intelligence, and highly developed practical communication skills from an experienced worker (Chrysoula et al., 2018). Moreover, current trends require the development of soft skills among employees (Piip, 2019). Due to the development of automation and robotization, the stakes on human skills are increasing, and therefore the employee must have not only professional skills but also many others for comfortable and effective communication within the team and with clients.
Threats to any IT company are associated with the rapid development of technologies, the relevance of which determines the competitiveness in the market. Concerning WBA plc, which still has a certain amount of time and qualified employees, it is necessary to urgently and efficiently establish a system for finding and training talent. The company is still attractive in the market, both from the side of the services provided and from the side of open vacancies. Global development reinforces the likelihood of a solution to this problem, but any delay or omission in such issues can have long-term consequences that will be very difficult to address. Consequently, since the software development market is satiated with competitors, the race for specialists and the lack of relevant products in the company’s lineup threaten losing its customer base (Mariani & Wamba, 2020). In addition, since the training and talent development program is only at the development stage, the company may encounter various pitfalls and unexpected cases of a new approach along the way. Lack of experience in this area can result in a waste of time and additional resources, which will affect the company’s effectiveness.
Strategic Solution Options
WBA plc needs to focus on developing its training and talent development program, but there are several ways to do this that have their pros and cons. At the moment, training includes self-service through the online platform module, which contains all the necessary information about the company’s policy, security measures, benefits, and other organizational issues. A little later, the students focus directly on the company’s products, studying its capabilities, and the main directions that they have to sell. Product introduction ends with a four-day introductory course with a more detailed immersion in details and company orientation. Finally, the company provides a series of workshops on specific, not too general, topics.
This approach has several advantages. First, employees’ self-service fosters a sense of responsibility and saves the company from additional financial costs. Confident performance during autonomy is a necessary trait for every employee in transformational leadership theory (Azim et al., 2019). At first glance, this may seem paradoxical, but dependence on a leader, as an example, does not imply agreeing with him every step. Secondly, in a pandemic, this fact allows keeping employees remote and reduces direct contact. Finally, thirdly, using software tools, it is possible to create a platform in different languages to make it easier for employees from different countries to learn. However, this approach has its drawbacks – it is impossible to apply the practice of mentoring and the relatively short term of the introductory course.
Consequently, the first strategy for solving the conclusion is to develop the theory of transformational leadership in increasing the motivation of employees, in particular new ones. Among the four elements of the methodology, the most important in tech companies are individual consideration and inspiring motivation (Wiyono, 2018). In addition, this model tends to be proactive in solving problems, trying to warn them rather than react to them. In contrast, there is a transactional leadership model, but transformational leadership is better for several reasons when applied to a large tech company. First, the model is capable of increasing employee engagement for shared goals. Secondly, the participation of each person in the general process excludes the status quo and local sources of stress among employees.
The collaborative agreement is critical in a large enough organization with a broad field of action. Moreover, the internal alignment allows for maintaining loyal relationships with customers since, in their promises, employees from the sales department fully trust the developers in terms of timing and quality. It will be easier for newcomers to understand the internal processes of the company when they are presented from at least two points of view. The company needs to recruit salespeople for its manufacturing and supply chain processes. In this connection, the first strategy will acquaint newcomers with the orientation and goals of the company but also show from the inside the most critical and necessary processes for a specialist, with total immersion in the specifics of products.
The second strategy reflects the ability of WBA plc to create new software products not only for training but also for many other business processes of the training and talent development program. Firstly, control over the quality of training can also be implemented through test modules that can complete each block of topics on the online platform and controlled by the trainer during the course. Secondly, creating a remote mentoring system will allow new employees to get closer and bring more human interaction to improve their understanding. The mentor, in turn, will be more involved in the WBA plc processes, and the employee’s efficiency and satisfaction at work depend on the employee’s involvement (Ćulibrk et al., 2018). Finally, involvement will also manifest itself in writing projects aimed at expanding the company’s software, since employees will better understand the processes taking place inside, get an idea of the image of the employees needed by the company, and will in every possible way cultivate these traits after successful employment.
The third strategy is mentoring, which can be a significant asset for the company. Vacancies will be more attractive to specialists if they know that they will be provided with training from an experienced person, which will help establish themselves in a new place and their future career. Mentoring allows learning not only for beginners but also for developing experienced workers’ teaching ability, which contributes to the systematization of knowledge and experience (Naim & Lenka, 2017). In addition, a trained beginner will already be able to find an approach to experienced employees and establish communication so that it will be easier to solve everyday problems later.
Based on this data, a particular base of information is collected, which is then taught either face-to-face or using communication tools remotely for employees—keeping up-to-date needs to be maintained in an open discussion format with unlimited time, especially when it comes to remote participation. These discussions raise essential questions in the context of the company’s goals, which gives employees a sense of belonging and involvement beyond the core function of learning.
Strategy Choice
The choice of a strategy from the proposed ones must fully meet the goals and values of WBA plc and take into account all threats and weaknesses to neutralize their effects, focusing only on the company’s strengths. An equally critical factor in this recommendation is time, its resource is highly valued, and therefore the general solution should prepare new highly qualified personnel as quickly as possible and maintain and update their level.
The company’s strengths include extensive experience in the development, support, and deployment of software, so creating a new project that will be useful primarily for the company and the employees themselves is an important task. For the most part, employees stay in the company due to high salaries, bonuses, and flexible benefits; the percentage of involvement in the common cause is relatively low. A mentoring and transformational leadership strategy can fix this problem while also bearing fruit in other respects.
Integration of knowledge and participation in a common cause in the daily process of developers and salespeople is also possible when developing a particular application in the interests of the company. As a successful company that plans to grow globally in the future, it is better to focus on more expensive options so that actualization and in-depth analytics become part of the company’s competence, which in the future could provide consulting services and implement the information obtained in its products—in this regard, mentoring looks like the most promising option, which partly correlates with the first strategy.
Conclusion
All four proposed strategies can gradually lead to better training and support of the required level of knowledge among new specialists. In addition, against the background of any chosen strategy, introducing control systems is mandatory since it will be very rash to evaluate an employee by the first mistakes with real customers. Employee engagement is a prerequisite for an equally important consequence – maintaining competence and improving agreement between the company’s sectors. These measures lead to an increase in employee satisfaction and, therefore, labor efficiency.
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