Case Study
C & S Department Store is the second largest clothing and
retail store chain in Jamaica. At present, they have 5 clothing and
retail stores in all 14 parishes and are planning to expand to 7
stores per parish in the next 3 years. C & S Department Store
has a centralized Human Resource Department located at its main
office in Kingston. Unfortunately, although the HR processes are
managed centrally, there are many HR tasks, policies and procedures
that are controlled by the clothing and retail store managers or by
the lead parish manger in each parish. Currently, the HR management
processes are using Excel spreadsheet to compile reports from
various parish Headquarters and stores. This task is being
performed by a team of HR executives at its main office in
Kingston.
Simone Coram is the Senior HR Manager of C & S Department Store
and has discovered various administrative and HR issues with the
clothing and retail store sites. Due to high focus on sales revenue
and stores profitability, Retail Store Managers have difficulties
in managing the stores in the areas of staff attendance, discipline
and critical HR practices.
The fundamental emphasis and foundation of C & S Department
Store has been centered on always maintaining the highest standards
of customer service and for that reason they are in direct contact
with customers at each and every Department Store. What sets C
& S Department apart is a commitment to exceeding expectations
making it one of their unique selling points. Giving excellent
customer service is one of the main reasons why their customers
choose C & S Department Store and why they keep coming
back.
Imperatively, the entity’s strategy is purposed towards employing
the ideal candidate for both their part-time and full-time sales
associates with the capacity and proficiency to grow and hone their
skills for prospective advanced position within the organization.
Presently, the store managers for three (3) of C&S Department
Store have made the announcement that they plan to retire within
the next 18 to 24 month. These three managers have insisted that
they will not remain in their position beyond this particular
point.
A team of HR internal auditors has conducted a study and identified
that there are irregularities in the staff attendance data both at
the retail stores and regional offices. Sometimes many of the staff
did not sign the attendance register or signed intermittently.
During the HR audit, it was discovered that some staff signed the
attendance register only at the end of the day. Further, sometimes
staff signed the register and then left their post. There was also
no mechanism to track the leave data of employees. Employees did
not know their exact leave data. At the end of the year it was
revealed that some employees have taken excess leave while some
employees worked incessantly, creating frustration among
staff.
There was also no standardization in the reports between head
office, regional offices and the retail stores and this created
discrepancies. HR provided a set of excel sheets and paper-based
forms to help store managers maintain data. However, many store
managers used and made unique formats of reports making it
difficult to collate the reports. The data thus collated had to be
verified over again and again, as there was a tendency for errors
to emerge.
This discrepancy has caused a significant issue in salary. HR and
attendance data were used to generate data for payroll. As there
were many discrepancies in HR data and reports, this created
several salary discrepancies and caused numerous issues among the
employees, thus lowering employee satisfaction rate and affecting
the employee morale.
Training and communication have become a major issue at C & S
Department Store. As the company was growing at a fast pace,
training employees on various HR procedures and policies was
becoming increasingly difficult. Thus line managers took decisions
based on their previous experience or personal insights and created
unnecessary hassles that required HR intervention.
The staff turnover in two (2) key departments of Marketing and
Accounts was running at 90%. Estimated cost of staff turnover -
including overtime, loss of revenue, loss of skills, training time
and management time to replace a staff member – is equivalent to
approximately $3,000 per position thus costing the business around
$500,000 per year.
Human Resource Management focuses on matching the needs of the
business with the needs and development of employees and as such
you are required to answer the following questions based on the
scenario represented above.
4. Explain five (5) factors that the team should take into
consideration before implementing the MBO
Following are the five factors that the team must take into consideration before implementating the MBO:
Case Study C & S Department Store is the second largest clothing and retail store chain...
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