Question

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.

Question

Evidently, the staff at C&S Department Stores is disgruntled. Differentiate between disciplinary and grievance procedures. Using the appropriate legislation, indicate the institutions involved and methods available to employees to have their grievances addressed in Jamaica. As Miss Simone Coram, make recommendations to the management team to minimize the incidents of grievance at C&S Department Store

Answer 1

Discipline:- It is the process by which the management takes steps to help their employees to overcome behaviour problems that are unacceptable in a working place. The objective of having a discipline is to make them comply willingly to accept the rules, regulations and procedures of the organization, obtain direction and responsibility, to accept change and adjustments. It is the process of modulling the employees by providing rewards and penalties.

Disciplinary procedures are provided to address the employees perfromance by the employee. They are of following steps:-

1)understand provided options:- It is done to examine unacceptable performance or accetable performance. The disciplinary process is a fromal way to monitor for an employer but the employer should first look whether it could be accomplished using informal ways. The informal way to address can be more efficient and quick and involves measures like talking personally, setting training, provide improvements in working conditions, listening to their issues etc. After that find whether there is an importance of providing training, support and encouragement. Find if there is a misconduct due to regular absence, denying to do work, cheating and harrassment. fraud, violence, serious complaince issues, unneccesary whistle blowing.

2) undertake a fair procedure:- Evenif the problem didnt solve in the informal way, go forward with the formal way of writing the employee with the misconduct occured and the consequences. This helps the employee to get mentally and physically prepared for the disciplinary meeting. The code of disciplinary meeting varies with organization and the type of business. Company should refer the history to find whether this pe of misconduct had occured and what action has been taken. Both the employer and employee must be given sufficient voice to avoid future greivances and misunderstandings to maintain good health of organization.

3) call for investigation:- A seperate desk with proper designation should be placed for investigating the misconduct occured and whomever is being affected by the same, and whoever is practicing the same. The team will be provided with a deadline and resources to be accessed by them as a part of investigation. The desk should assure that the normal working should not be affected by the investigation and biasing should be avoided.

4) submission of report

5) disciplinary hearing:- Before the hearing the empolyer should provide a formal report on occured misconduct, conclusion of investigation, date, time and location of hearing and possible outcomes. The right to be accompanied should be accepted as a part of hearing and he could be a work collugue,official employee of registered trade union or union representatives. During the hearing the employee should be given the chance to answer the allegation, ask queries, present evidence and witness. If the employee fail to be present then it should be reported before 3 days and provide a valid reason. The hearing will be postponed to followed days.

6) Outcome of hearing:- The decision of the judge will be provide at time or after a period. It could be a warning, suspension, fine , apology or dimissal. It depends on what the desk seeks during the hearing.

7) after the action:- The collegues will be addressed to remove negative feelings towards the viction or culprit. This helps the organizatin to get rid of misunderstanding, gossiping, bad reveiwes and help to build a fair and open relationship among workers. Then it should be followed with a confidential record keeing on the employee to track the further actions and find if there is any need of second call.

Grievence:- They are complaints, dissatisfaction or feeling of injustice n relation with the worker or working condition that should be brought under the consideration of management. The source of grievance can be managerial, personal or related to working conditions. The managerial factors are payscale, overtime, burden, lack of explaining job roles, leadership, lack of collective agreement etc and of personal are attitude, overambition, non cooperativeness, family problems etc. The factors in regard of working condition are non availability of tool and resources, tight production schedule, lack of coopeartion among employess, poor working facilities.

Steps in greievance procedure:-

1)understand the situation:- The employee grievance can be handled either formally or informally. Th informal way of addressing might be efficient and simple way and if it donot work properly go for formal way. Regardless of which form they choose the emploees must be provided with complete hearing and solving of their grievances. Because it should be addresed as sson as possible otherwise can affect the future and productivity of the firm.

2) step forward for formal grievence:- The employees should be aware of the grievance policy of the organization and factors involved in it. An employee can raise it throgh an email, written letter, or a mediator. The managemnt should ensure that the grivence is raised in formal manner otherwise it would result in bad company morale and outcome will bot be optimum.

3) response to grivence:- Look anything like it happened in the history and find out the ways taken to consider it, collect all and relevant infromantion in reagrd of it. The management should keep official records about grivence, actions, and the response of the worker.

4) Investigate: Arrange a grivence addressing team to investigate the reasons of greivance and whom all are suffering with the same, whether the raised one is genuine or not.

5) Arrange grivence meetimg:- It should be conducted before 5 days of written. The meeting should allow the worker to provide a companion as per the right to accompany. The employee should addres the meeting with sources like email and ither official protocols. In the meeting, the situation of grievence is explained and the related evidences are presented infornt of management and jury.

6) prepare outcome:- The outcome can be of findings of meeetig, what is fair and illegal, and what measures had been taken before inregard of similar case.

7) After the grivence procedure:- Address the staff, keep record and keep track of workers in case of similar grivence raise.

Grievance addressal:-

methods:

1) observation:- the managemnt can observe the workers in regard of any dissatisfaction, lack of service, regular absence etc. The primary and most important way is the direct observation and it encourages the trust and closeness of workers and management.

2)Open door policy:- The workers would be always permitted to say about their grivence to the managemnet and HR at any time and without folowing any officail pattern of addresal. The personal will be responsible t address the issue as soon as possible and the situation will remain confidential. This feeds the trust and openness in an organization and if the grivence is addresed personally without the intermediaries it would provide an efficient outcome.

3)Grivence boxes: A box would be placed at some point so that the empoyee is free to explain about their dissatisfaction without fear of management. This might or not make name and designation of the worker to be written specifically. This encourages the freedom to express the reasons to the top management.

4) Exit interview:- Employee turn over would occur due to grivence. The interview placed before the resignation can help to find what exactly is the reason to leave the job. This is common practise done by the organizations to address the same.The firm will get a chance to personally address and even change so that other employees should not leave the firm with same reasons.

Grievance handling institutions:-

1)Department representative:- The department migt have several repesentatives to act as intermediate in between the head of departmet and employee. For example in sales department there might be sales department representatives to handle the orders and recommentations to be translated in both directions. The grivece should handled here before 48 hours of reporting. He should take consideration of the situation and handle it before it climbs on the ladder.

2) Head of department:- He might be personal responsible if the greivance is not handle by the department representative. The employee can take it to the HOD and ask for consideration. The personal should address it before 3 days of report.He should also seek the misconsideration of department represtatie and ask for reasons.

Recommentation to management to reduce greivance:-

1) provide a standard payscale and inform the employees

2) keep record of attendence and ask for reasons of absense

3)make the employees mark attendence in each segment of time

4)make the employees beware in caes of false marking of presence will lead to severe actions.

5)consider employee applause with required techniques

6) adrress the issues and settle them as soon as possible

7) assure the employees that their grivence is ours and will be addresed for sure.

8) provide increment to the salary will increase in sales

9) provide meployees will allowances and bonus

10) increase cooperation and respect among the employees to solve issues by themselves

3)Grievance commitee:- It comprises of unioun and managemnt representatives. If the HOD fails to solve the situation, the employee can take it to the commitee and there the isssue will be handles with more seriousness. It calls the grievent for personally addressing and the HOD for lack of consideration. It should handle and settle the case before 7 days.

4) Chief executive:- The personal in charge of the managment.and they can be corporate executives. They should consider the case before 7 days and seek resons for the greivent for taking the greivence to top managemnt. The actions must be taken on or before 7 days otherwise he could opt for arbitaration.

5)voluntary aritration:- The managemnt and employee would come to terms to take outside the managemnt and seek legal settlement. It is the last institution that the employe can reach and this willl surely provide him with actions.