Unit 8: Recruitment and Selection Process (Assignment 1)
Sample work for BTEC Level 3 Business Studies
Business insights
Recruitment and Selection at Sainsburys
Introduction to Sainsburys
Sainsburys is a supermarket chain with 2,400 stores across the UK. According to their 2020 annual statement, they had 28.1 million customer transactions per week in 2020. With 172,000 employees and equity value of £7,274m at the end of 2020, Sainsburys would be classed as a large business. Their purpose is ‘to help our customers live well for less’. Sainsburys have stated that they are an inclusive employer and aim to get the most out of all of their staff.
Workforce planning
Workforce planning is the process of analysing the workforce and forecasting the future needs of the workforce to ensure the organisation gets the most out of their staff. Activities include recruitment and planning training. This section will explore the reasons for recruiting new staff.
Recruiting Staff
One reason for recruiting more staff is business growth. In July 2020, Sainsburys reported that they recruited 25,000 new staff as a result of their sales doubling as a result of people spending more time at home during the covid-19 lockdown.
Another reason for recruiting more staff is systems change. The first half of 2020 saw an increase in online sales from 7% of total sales to 17%. This led to a need for more staff to manage transactions and deliver goods.
Vacancies can also be created by product development. Sainsburys have an ongoing reformulation programme, where they are looking at improvements to products, staying on top of food trends and changes in regulations. As a result they have job openings in a department called ‘Food Innovation and Agriculture’.
Another reason for vacancies is internal promotions. When a senior position is filled by an internal candidate, that creates a new vacancy in the job that they leave. There are currently four management positions being advertised. If they were filled by current Sainsburys staff, that would create four more vacancies.
Another reason for vacancies is the opening of a new office or branch. In November 2020, Sainsburys announced the opening of two Neighbourhood Hub stores in Bishop’s Watham and Midhurst which they would have needed to recruit new staff for.
Ineffective Recruitment can cause lost productivity, lower staff morale, cost of finding a replacement, time spent dealing with staff member, increased turnover and a negative impact on corporate image. Staff Shortages can cause overtime and temp staff costs, quality issues, employee stress, not being able to meet demand and a negative impact on brand.
The Recruitment Process at Sainsburys
They advertise their positions on their website. This includes the location, salary and contract type. If people are interested, they can scroll down and find a detailed job description and person specification. Interested applicants can click the ‘apply’ button. This makes it easy for interested people to apply for the job.
Interested applicants complete an online application form and for some positions, a CV is requested. Online application forms are easy to complete and Sainsburys can request all of the relevant information they need to make a decision.
The next stage is aptitude tests. At Sainsburys, these are completed online and include verbal, numerical, personality and situational judgement tests depending on the role being applied for. This allows Sainsburys to quickly analyse and compare the skills of their applicants.
HR staff at Sainsburys will then go through the shortlisting process by checking the application forms and results of the tests and will decide on who they want to interview. They will contact shortlisted applicant by email. This part of the process is important as it creates efficiency by only spending time interviewing suitable candidates.
The interviews will take place online or face to face depending on the role. Interviews allow staff at Sainsburys to get to know the character of the applicant and judge whether they would fit in with the culture of the department they are applying to work in.
All interviewed candidates will be contacted to be informed on whether they have gotten through to the next stage or not.
For some positions, applicants will be invited to an assessment relevant to their role. This allows Sainsburys staff to see how the applicant may perform in the actual functions of the job itself.
The final stage is the successful applicant is decided and appointed the role.
Sainsbury’s also use external agencies in their recruitment process. They advertise their positions on sites such as indeed.com, e4s.co.uk and totaljobs.com. This is good because the agencies have specialist industry knowledge, can offer high quality and focused advertising and have a wealth of experience in identifying talent which can lead to a faster and higher quality appointment being made.
Ethical and Legal Considerations
Ethics in recruitment refer to the moral principals and practices used when recruiting new staff. Ethical recruitment means that the person appointed to a job is the person who has the best fit of skills, experience, qualifications and characteristics. Unethical recruitment may involve making it more difficult for an applicant based on race, gender, disability or sexual orientation. In order to adhere to ethical guidelines and expectations, Sainsburys need to ensure that they have recruitment policies in place that cover ethics in recruitment. They need to ensure that their recruitment team are well trained in ensuring they can find the best candidate without discrimination.
One good practice that Sainsburys can use when they are interviewing candidates is to make sure that nobody on the interview panel is related to or already knows the candidate. This avoids a situation where somebody favours somebody they know or uses knowledge about the candidate from outside the interview to inform their decision.
Another good practice is to ask all candidates the same questions. This means that all candidates are given the same opportunities to prove their suitability. Asking different questions can lead to some candidates having questions that better match their skill set.
Another good practice is to have a balanced interview panel. Depending on the number of people involved in the interview, its good to have a mixture of genders, races etc. This means that candidates will be more likely to feel comfortable and having a more balanced panel reduces the likelihood of bias in decision making.
Other ethical behaviour is to keep all information on applicants confidential and being honest in job adverts. This also complies with Data Protection Legislation.
Sainsburys state on their website that they have a range of diversity and equality policies in place in their workforce planning strategies.
Sainsbury’s clear ethics policies which have resulted in them being voted as one of the top places to work in the UK by LinkedIn in 2019. They have been awarded Disability Confident status, have recruited 26,000 colleagues who would normally face barriers to the workplace and are in 71st position on the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.
Employment laws are the rules that govern the relationship between employers and employees as set out by the government of a country. They cover various areas and processe such as recruitment, working conditions, wages, discrimination, and employee rights. The main goal of employment law is to ensure fair treatment in the workplace and to protect the rights of both workers and employers.
In the UK, The Equalities Act 2010 makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against job applicants because of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage, civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity. Sainsburys need to train and monitor staff involved in the recruitment process to ensure that discrimination does not take place.
School leaving age laws place restrictions on the way in which people under the age of 18 can work. For example, they need to be in an apprenticeship or training, they cannot work certain hours or do deliveries and cannot work with certain products such as alcohol. Sainsbury have a statement on their website that states their adherence to these laws and each job advert states whether under 18s are eligible to apply.
Another legal responsibility of organisations in the UK in their recruitment processes is Right to Work Legislation. This puts responsibility onto employers to ensure that all of their staff are legally permitted to work in the UK. This means that as part of the recruitment process, Sainsburys need to check documents that prove their right to work. These documents include passports and identity cards. Sainsburys state on their website that they request these documents at either the assessment stage or the interview. Therefore they check that an applicant has the right to work in the UK before getting to the stage where they are offered the job.
Adhering to legal and ethical guidelines is important for organisations in their recruitment for reasons beyond facing legal action. Organisations that are unethical in their recruitment are more likely to have a negative image as a result. This could lead to reduced demand for their products but also reduced applications for positions at the organisation leading to a smaller pool of applications to choose from.
Analysing Recruitment Methods at Sainsburys
Job adverts are important because they communicate a vacancy and attract candidates to apply. A good advert will be targeted at an appropriate field of candidates and lead to Sainsburys having a good number of strong candidates to choose from when deciding who to appoint. Sainsburys advertise through recruitment agencies, their own website and LinkedIn. This is good because they are targeting people who are actively looking for work and as their main methods of advertising are online, people can very easily access further information about the role to decide if it is suitable for them.
Application forms are important because they gather specific information in a way that makes it easy to compare information about different candidates when shortlisting. Sainsburys have an online application process where candidates complete forms regarding privacy and diversity. However, they request a CV to be uploaded rather than candidates completing an application form. This does allow candidates to share key information about themselves that s relevant, however it is more difficult to quickly compare candidates with CVs that vary in style and layout for each person than using an application form.
Job descriptions are important because they describe the main roles and responsibilities of a job. This helps candidates apply for the job and for the recruitment teams to decide what they want to ask in interviews and can help resolve any disputes about responsibilities of a role later on. Sainsburys have clear job descriptions on their website for each role which are clear to understand, have sufficient detail, have some element of flexibility to support future changing needs of the role and are easy to access anywhere.
Person specifications are important because they allow a candidate to see if they are suitable for a role and help the recruitment team to make decisions on an appropriate candidate. By making this clear at the point of advertising the role, it can save time for both the applicant and the organisation. Sainsburys are inconsistent with their person specifications. Some roles have clear requirements of qualifications and experience and some do not state at all. This can lead to applicants wasting time on applying for a job they are not qualified for and the recruitment team having to sift through a large number of inappropriate applications to shortlist which is a waste of time for them too.
Interviews are important because it gives the recruitment team an opportunity to see the personality of a candidate to see how they would fit in with the culture of the organisaton and it also gives an opportunity to expand on responses. Sainsburys have a two stage recruitment process. The first is an online interview and the second is onsite which includes some sort of case study activity. This is good because it avoid wasting time on candidates that are unsuitable and gives an opportunity for the recruitment staff to see how the final short list of applicants will cope with specific demands of the job role.
Evaluating Recruitment Processes at Sainsburys
As a supermarket, a key indicator of success is their revenue. In simple terms, higher revenue is a more successful supermarket. Other measures of success include brand image. Sainsbury’s have stated in their business strategy that they wish to offer value to customers through quality, range and innovation. Other strategies include reducing costs and reducing the impact on the environment. Recruitment plays a role in ensuring they have the best talent to achieve these aims.
One strategy that Sainsbury’s use in their recruitment is the use of external agencies. For example, people can search and apply for jobs through agencies such as Indeed, Totaljobs and Reed.
One benefit of using external agencies is that they can leave time consuming activities such as advertising, shortlisting and interviewing to the recruitment agency. According to employee voice, Sainsbury’s turnover sits at around 20% per year. This means that Sainsburys could potentially be recruiting more than 34,000 staff per year. By handing over recruitment activities to an agency, this can save time for existing managers to focus on achieving their aims. However, using external agencies can increase costs. Once a person has been hired through an agency, Sainsburys will need to pay the agency fee which is usually a percentage of their salary. As a result of these fees, Sainsburys may see their costs increase which conflicts with their “Save to Invest” strategy. This is a strategy to improve efficiency and reduce costs so that more money can be invested into improvements to food. Spending money on recruitment agency fees could reduce the finance available to invest in this strategy.
Another strategy that Sainsburys use in recruitment is to use technology and online application processes including a jobs page on their website and adverts on social media. They began moving their recruitment process online in 2004.
A benefit of online recruitment is that job adverts can be more dynamic and flexible. This is because there is no limit to the amount of information that can be provided. On the Sainsburys website, applicants can search through list of job titles and can opt to get more information on ones that they are interested in. If they would still like to go forward with the role, they can apply directly using a link on the job advert. A similar strategy is used on LinkedIn, candidates who are interested in an advert can choose to view more information by clicking links. This can help attract strong talent to support the business strategy as people applying for roles have more information about the job to compare to their own skills and experience before applying which may lead to a stronger appointment.
Another benefit to online recruitment is that it can shorten the recruitment process. According to Skynews, one person applied for a job at 7pm, was appointed for the role at 10pm and started work the next day. This allowed Sainsburys to meet the rapid increase in demand created by people staying at home during the Coronavirus lockdown. However, a drawback to using an online recruitment process is that there could be a perception of informality. Sainsburys post jobs on their own website and on LinkedIn and some recruitment agencies they use post their vacancies on other social media sites such as Facebook. People who are used to more traditional recruitment processes may view these methods as too informal. This is because they view websites and social media as places to interact socially rather than professionally. This could lead to some potential candidates either not seeing the adverts or not taking them seriously. This could reduce the standard of applicants to shortlist from.
Another strategy that Sainsburys use is job specific recruitment activities such as presentations and case studies. This is one of the final stages in their recruitment process when candidates are invited onsite after an online interview to either make a presentation or take part in a role play activity related to their role.
One benefit of a presentation is that a candidate has the freedom to demonstrate their creativity. They can choose to share skills, ideas and experience that the panel may not have thought to ask about if only an interview was used. A key objective at Sainsburys is innovation with food, by giving candidates the freedom to present their ideas, recruiters at Sainsburys will get a much better impression of their creativity which should lead to the person appointed being better able to achieve the aims of improving the food they offer. A drawback of using presentations in the recruitment process is that in vacancies where presentations are not part of the role itself, recruiters may be making a decision on an irrelevant skill set. This could lead to candidates with more relevant skill sets not being appointed to the role.
Sainsburys aim to be ethical in their recruitment strategies. For example, they state their privacy polices and request applicants to agree to them before they can submit their information.
A benefit of being ethical in recruitment is that it can make the organisation a more desirable place to work. This can in turn attract better candidates to apply for the job roles, which in turn gives Sainsburys more strong candidates to choose from. This is more likely to lead to the appointed candidate having more of an impact on achieving objectives. A difficulty in implementing ethical policies in recruitment is that there can be a conflict in values. Not everybody shares the same views on what is ethical and what isn’t. In the case of Sainsburys, some people may argue that using presentations in the recruitment process is unethical because it assesses skills and knowledge that are not directly related to the job role if the assessor cannot be objective about the content being presented rather than the presentation skills themselves. If Sainsburys are seen to be acting unethically in their recruitment, their brand image may be damaged including their image as an employer. This could lead to both reduced customers and reduced job applications.
Sainsburys has experienced success as a supermarket. According to the Retail Gazette, they were the only supermarket to record growth in early 2020. However, there are other indicators of success such as value to customers. According to YouGov and Which surveys, Sainsburys was voted the 6th most popular supermarket in the UK. In a small market, this may be seen as something that could be improved. Recruitment strategies that may have led to their success are the time savings of using recruitment agencies, efficiencies generated by online recruitment, the opportunities to get to know candidates better through presentations and the attractiveness of their ethical policies in recruitment. However, they may be facing increased costs from recruitment agencies, informal perceptions from online advertising and ethical issues related to their use of presentations in the recruitment process.
Overall, Sainsburys appears to have a progressive and evolving recruitment strategy that is focused on achieving their overall aims. They are making good use of online systems to advertise, communicate and accept applications as well as making easy links to social media and recruitment agencies. They could improve by having more consistent person specification information and by using application forms instead of or as well as CVs to make shortlisting easier and more effective.
