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

Discuss five (5) possible reasons for the 90% staff turnover in the Marketing and Accounts Departments? As Miss Simone Coram, what would you recommend to minimize the high level of attrition in these departments?

Answer 1

Answe1. Five reasons are mentioned below because of them 90% staff turnover in Marketing and Accounts departments is happening :

1. Growth and development is very important for retaining good employees in the organization. But after analyzing the above case study its clear that employees feels trapped in a dead-end position , So, they look towards different organization for the chance to improve their status and income.

2. Staff turnover also happens in case of workoverload ,for example in a period of ecomomic pressure, extra responsibilities and workload is faced by employees which makes them frustrated as accounts and marketing departments are most busy department because the workload of recording and mentioning every single record is very difficult.

3. Giving feedback is also important for employees because that help them in growing and improving in their work .If unhelpful feedback is given then employee will feel dishearted, struggle and eventually they give up and this leads to staff turnover.

4.Little opportunity for Decision making should be given to accounting and marketing department heads so, that they can execute new techniques to deal with problem without wasting time in meetings.

5. Selection of right employees should be done by managing comittee because any poorly matched employee is bad for organization as no one does their best work than that create unhappy environment and reduction in the efficently of work comes and it also leads in increasing staff turnover proportion.

RECOMMENDATION FOR MINIMIZING HIGH LEVEL OF ATTRITION BY MISS SIMONE ARE AS FOLLOWS:

1. Investing in employees is very important because we need to make them feel that they are important part of the organization and time to time promotion and rewards should be given to improve workforces productivity and this will attract new and efficinent employees to join.

2.Blancing of work techique should be applied in an organization because otherwise employee may feel bogged down with work, this will lead to unproductivity so, proper breaks and manageble worklod should be given.

3. Providing appropriate , well considered feedback is very important to give because this helps employee to understand his area of improvement and appreciation

4. Fair wages should be provided to increase their professrional development and doing this will ensure that employees won't search for better offer elsewhere.

5. Selection of candidate should be fair and necessary qualities required for job should be seen before finalizating the employee in the organization.