Question

Farah runs a hair salon in Dammam and employs technicians and cleaners from Kenya and the Phillipines.

Her business is profitable and has grown from 1 salon to 3 salons in the last 2 years. Her employees are paid on seniority and they were loyal to her. She has never trained any of her employees, always asking the senior technicians to teach the new comers.

Recently the following happened:

• Several good technicians quit in Feb and March, to work for the competition
• Two people got injured when they were burnt by hot water and cut by sharp scissors in March
• Some customers are complaining that they were treated with disrespect and not served immediately
• Dammam went into a lock down due to the COVID 19 virus

Farah calls you up, because she knows that you study Introduction HRM. She asks for your advice. What will you tell her?

Answer 1

Ans- First of all, I would say her to personally apologize to those customers who were being treated with disrespect and not served immediately and assure them that such kind of things would not happen again in the future at her salon. She should also take adequate care of those people who got injured when they burnt by hot water and cut by sharp scissors and as Dammam went into lockdown due to the COVID 19 virus and several good technicians quitted from Dammam already so these things cannot be changed and therefore during this lockdown period she should again go for hiring the best technicians and the hiring can be done virtually if it is possible for her but should know how to retain the best employees and for retaining the best employees I would say her to appreciate the employees work from time to time, give them recognition for their work by giving them rewards like a certificate in front of everyone, give them time for themselves and for their family by not giving overwork, treat them respectfully, give them promotions, take their views too in some important matters like asking them to give ideas on a certain thing would let them know that their voices matter in the company and that they are also a important part of the company, be empathetic to them and if anyone is not working properly talk to them and motivate them accordingly. In this way, employees will never leave the company because they will love to work there.

Also, it can be seen that she never trained any of her employees and the training was given by the senior technicians but things cannot work in this way as if the technicians are busy in giving training then it will be difficult to handle the customers and one cannot do all the work at one point of time and also cannot overwork like that. Everyone must have specific job responsibilities so that there is no overburden of work on some specific employees. A company should have a training manager for that purpose who will train the newcomers and therefore from now onwards she should hire employees by giving them specific job responsibilities so that everyone works according to their job description and things can go on smoothly.

In addition to all these things she should promote her business extensively with new advertisements through various social media platforms by focusing especially on customer needs and the advertisements should carry the caption like customer experience would be best at her salon and this is necessary because some customers were complaining about some issues faced by them and they could spread the bad image of her salon among others and so to overcome this she should also go for such kind of advertising.