Many thanks for your reply @Technogeezer.  I did see a little bit about this before but because they were month's old I didn't put much stock in them as I though VMWare would have resolved the issue by now.  Turns out they haven't...

I tried changing the power profile as you suggested and although it definetly helped a little, unfortunatly it hasn't resolved the issue.  It's still miles slower than VirtualBox.  Did a bit more research into the Alder Lake issue and found some more possible solutions like disabling the E-cores in the setup file/s, but there's no guarantee that'll work either and it's really isn't something we should have to do.  I'm shocked VMWare haven't managed to get on top of this issue by now considering Alder Lake's been around for over a year.  Should have done a bit more research before purchasing this laptop, but it never crossed my mind that mainstream software wouldn't work with mainstream hardware...  Live and learn I guess.  Definitely won't be purchasing Workstation Pro now though.

Apologises for ranting...  But many many thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.  The path forward is much clearer now.