How businesses Work Essay

Introduction For this unit I will give a clear description of the activity, aims and objectives of my chosen business, a description of four functional areas of the business including human resources. Descriptions of the equal opportunities of employees are safeguarded by legislation, an explanation of different functional ways to communicate with each other and external contact. The company I have chosen for this unit is Tesco the reason I chose Tesco is because it is a very successfully growing company. Tesco is public limited company (Plc). (Means that any one can be shareholder) Public limited companies are the largest type of privately owned enterprise in the UK. Tesco sells Groceries, cloths, CDs, videos, DVDs, books, computer games, electrical, school equipment, wines and other alcohol drinks. Tesco offers finances such as loans, credit cards, savings, flexible, and mortgages, travel money. They also offer insurance such as motor insurance, home insurance, life insurance, pet insurance, travel insurance and breakdown cover. One of the other services they offer is Internet shopping, making shopping much easier for customers. Tesco all so has an in store pharmacy. Throughout out years Tesco’s in store pharmacy grown in to one of the country’s leading pharmacy chains. Tesco is currently the leading supermarket in UK. Tesco as a pretty good competition from other supermarket such as Sainsbury, Safeway. But Tesco is cheaper then mot of the other supermarkets and they offer lot more products. Recording to Tesco on average sainsbury’s is 4% more expensive then Tesco and Safeway are 10% more expensive then Tesco. There are more then 700-plus stores and many distribution centres are located in United Kingdom. They have several office sites in the UK. And Ireland, where they’re key support functions is based. The majority of office staff is based in Hertfordshire, Tesco has been operating on a international basis for long time, anticipating the need to become a major retail name in key regions, they moved into central Europe, where they have a strong presence in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic and the dynamic Asian market. The aims and objectives for Tesco The main aim of tesco is to make profit, just like any other business. This is a important aim because if they don’t make any money then they won’t be able to fund there business and keep it up and running, the other aims are To exceed competition and to increase the number of customers. To recruit new employees with the potential to do well. The most important aim for Tesco is to provide a highly competitive service to the customers. To survive as a business. To expand the business worldwide and to increase image status. To be environmental friendly. The departments of Tesco Customer service, Human resources, Marketing, Finance, Administration, Distribution, Research & Development Production, The functional areas of Tesco Human Resources Human resources are concerned with the employees who work for Tesco. Tesco regard staff as there most important resource. This is impotent recourse for tesco because if the employees were not motivated with good pay and working conditions then tesco would not be very successful because tesco won’t have any workers. But if the tesco motivate their staff and offer good working place for all the staff then they would be keen to work. This helps the Tesco to achieve its aims. The overall purpose of the human resource function is to attract and retain good high quality staff. The human resources department deals with: Recruiting new employees and firing employees Working conditions Health Safety Promotion Development Training Human resources staffs are involved in specific activities such as Recruitment, Retention and Dismissal of staff, The training, development and promotion of staff, Monitoring and maintenance of good working conditions, Liaison with employee’s organizations and trade unions, Health and safety. Tesco recruit by advertising in newspapers, Internet to find the experience workers. Tesco Retention their staff by motivating them and organizing social events, flexible hours. They also offer discounts, holiday pay, and sick pay. Another way to motivate and retain employees is to give them more responsibility, so they fell more involved. Tesco won’t dismiss an employee with out a reason, but if they do they would give them severance pay. Tesco train their employees on the job, so the workers can get use to the surroundings. Off the job training is when employees go somewhere else to train. Development and promotion of staff- if an employee’s work at their best and heaver good punctuality then there is a good chance of that employee getting promotion. When the employee gets a promotion he has to go a way and do the training course. Job roles in human resources: Human resources manager: Human resources manager works most at the store level and tells everyone where to work. Recruitment Officer: Responsible for the recruitment and selection of staff. Training/staff development officer: responsible for training and staff development. Personal / staffing officer: keeping staff records, monitoring staff welfare. Health and safety officer: overseeing all health and safety matters, accident monitoring and prevention. HR administrative assistants: administrative work relating to the human resources function. Administration The administration department helps tesco to run smoothly from day to day. The admin department covers tasks such as clerical work, collecting and distributing mail, keeping records, and organizing meetings, responding to enquiries. Admin is also charge of cleaning, maintenance and security. The administration department all so orders and distributes office goods for Tesco. Administration is also involved in communications between departments e.g. send messages, fax, telephone and receiving and sending mail. They store all the documents and records used by tesco and are responsible for their safekeeping. All theses small jobs which keeps tesco running efficiently. The activities of the Administration department Keeping the company records, Maintenance, Clerical work, Job roles in Administration Company secretary: they are senior executives who are responsible for the legal affairs of Tesco; they deal with shareholders and arrange the directors meetings. Reprographic supervisor: they have the responsibility of making sure the smooth running of the central reprographic section in tesco. Security: they are responsible for the security that tesco needs, which maintains the high level of safety in tesco. Manager: he is the manager for the it requirements for tesco which include advising of the central reprographic section in tesco. Finance Another functional area in Tesco is finance. The finance keeps track of all the money going in and out of the Tesco. Financial department can notify how much stock tesco sells, how much tesco spend on their stock, employees and other general expenses. This department sets budgets for all other departments at tesco to keep their planned level of income and expenditure, they keep up with how much each department spends because finance get all the employees as well because the payment of their wages and salaries is part of that function. They get a set wage each week, which is sent in to the employee’s bank account. The purpose of the finance function is to Keep all the finance records required by Tesco (receipts and payments that have been made) Pay salaries to the staff. Pay the suppliers, Providing up-to date financial information for the managers about the business performance. The activities of the finance department Preparing accounts Obtaining money Paying salaries Job roles in finance department Financial manager: Financial manager manage the finance function and staff. Credit controller: Credit controller ensures that money owing to Tesco is kept with in agreed level. Chief accountant: is responsible for preparation of Tescos accounts. Financial director: He gives advice to Tesco senior managers on financial matters about game. They oversee Tesco’s budget and are in charge of all financial fuctios in tesco. Marketing Department The job of the marketing department in tesco is to sell the finished products to the customers. If the marketing department fails the whole company fails. The department identifies the consumer’s requirements and supply their needs. This involves a lot of market research and finding out what the customer’s requirements are. Tesco use many types of initiatives to encourage customers to shop with them. For a example Tesco offers club cards that gives the customers points which are exchange in to money off in their next shopping trip, tesco offers internet shopping so that it is easier and quicker for the customers to do their shopping. Tesco carry out many activates to find out about customers such as Internet questionnaires, which is based on the net. (Or can be on the store). They do this to find out what customers needs and try to cater them, by doing this they increase customers and profit. This department is responsible for the advertising, promotion and selling of goods. They are therefore likely to take advantage of using the Internet for research purposes, sending out letters and questionnaires to assess the needs of customers and using the telephone as a means of telesales. Job roles in Marketing Department Marketing director: responsible for the overall marketing function and its aims and objectives. Sales director: responsible for the sales function. Sales manager: responsible for sales staff and the achievement of sales targets. Export manager: responsible for overseas agents. Order clerks: accept and process sales orders. Marketing director: he is in charge of the whole marketing department. Advertising manager: he is in charge of advertising and meeting with agencies over publicity. Communication between departments of Tesco Written forms include: Letters – Formal and slow. Normally used for formal communication, which do not require a quick response. Usually addressed to an individual. Memos – Formal/Informal and Slow. Used to address a wider audience. E-mail – Formal/Informal and Fast. Used for quick response, group or individual. Verbal forms include: Telephone – Formal/Informal Used to discuss issues with a specific person for a quick response. Interviews – Formal/Informal Used to speak to a specific person, usually regarding a specific issue. Meetings – Formal/Informal Employed to discuss specific issues, for an audience of up to 8 people. Presentations – Formal Used to cover issues that concern a large proportion of the employees. In addition to these there are things like internal invoices, requisition orders, posters, notices, group discussion events, etc. Tesco can use these form of communication in many ways for a example if the administration department organise a meeting but ends up they can’t make it they they can telephone the heads of all the departments and tell them that the meetings been cancelled. There are many ways to communicate but the two main ones are oral and written. These include memos. Letters mobile phones and verbal and all of these, have there advantages and disadvantages. For intense E-mails have their advantages and disadvantages mails are resaved quickly they can be send to more then one person at a time, they can be kept for long time and it’s a very cheap way to communicate. Their disadvantages are that they can take long time to type up and people can misspell words and it’s is very uninsured. Telephones are an example of oral communication it’s too as its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages is it’s very fast and an easy way to communicate. Phones can be used to talk to any one in the world in seconds. The disadvantages are it can be expensive to call people out side the country. (UK). If the telephones are disconnected your calls won’t get through and it’s impersonal so contracts can’t be made this way. The person in the other side may not be the person you won’t to speak to so Tesco’s employees can give out important information a way. This form of communication can be useful to get in contact with external contacts because they telephone them and pass what ever information they need quickly and cheaply. Notice boards can be used to display information to large amount of people. People can get all the information they need from the message boards. This form of communication even be use to get a message across to external contacts. This forum of communication is used in tesco for an example if the financial department wants all the employees of the departments to know a particular detail such as if a sudden day off was planned. By putting this information on a notice board the employees can easily read it and find out what they have to do. Memos are quick to write down, cheap and easy to use. They are not secure because any one can read them. They can be used in game if one department has a not so important message to give to another because they can take some time to get where they need to go. This form of communication may be used if someone wants a message to be short and if they don’t need it going somewhere urgently e.g. office equipment needed. This would be sent to admin who would then order the needed equipment. Examples of communication betweens departments The marketing department will contact the finance department by faxing them a letter saying that they need finical backup to advertise a new product. Another example of this form of communication being used in Tesco is if the finance department wants to send to admin a load of invoices. This form of communication would be used if a document needed to be sent because a telephone would be useless because the recipient can not read the document over the phone. . . How Tescos customer services help achieve the companies aims Tesco reduce they prices very often. They all ways keep customers up to date by handing out leaflets and advertisements on TV. Good customer service means happy customers. If the tesco keeps they are customers happy they get more customers. The employees serve good customer service so the customers come back to the shop at Tesco’s again and again. Organisational structure of Tesco Tesco’s Matrix structure Matrix structure The advantage of Matrix structure is that information and ideas flow very quickly between the departments. So the product can be released before other companies. They take specialists from the hierarchical structure to form the Matrix structure. So they can release new products before other companies. After they released the products they go back and do their normal jobs in the hierarchical structure. All the specialists in the Matrix structure are equal and have an equal say in the product that is going to be released. Tesco use this kind of Matrix structure because the old Hierarchical structure was not the best structure for tesco because they are such a large company. Also the other companies where releasing their products before tesco so that’s why they had to replace their structure. Hierarchical Organisational Structure Tesco’s Hierarchical Structure Above is a hierarchical organizational structure for Tesco. It’s shows how the business works and who works for who. For an example Accounts Clark work for Administration Manager and Computer Programmer work for Technical Manager. The disadvantages of the Tesco’s Hierarchical Structure is that massagers take a long time to flow down to the shops floor and some times the massagers can get mixed up. Another destadvantage of the Hierarchical Structure is that a company can release the product before Tesco release it. This is because it takes time for the idea of the product to flow downs the Hierarchical Structure. The advantage of the Hierarchical Structure is that it’s shows the line of power.