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:

The staff complains that there is a need for training for managers at C&S Department Store. Do you agree/disagree? How would you determine whether training is needed? Discuss the training methods that you would utilize in training managers, if you would undertake this intervention.

Answer 1

Complaints of the staff that there is a training need for managers at C&S department store is found correct and I agree with their demand. To determine the training needs, certain facts regarding the C&S department are considered. First is the high labor turnover in marketing and account departments. Due to high labor turnover in these two departments, the store suffers from a loss of $500000 each year. This fact suggests that managers of C&S are not competent enough to motivate workers and retain them for a long time. The second issue for the department store is lack of training and communication from line managers as line managers take decisions from their personal insights causing hassles for the store. The third issue is discrepancy in HR reports and data as no standardization is established between regional office, head office and retail stores. This causes many issues for employees and reduces their satisfaction and morale. Poor practices regarding maintaining attendance of employees is another issue that cause de-motivation for many workers as some workers take excess leave and some work continuously. These issues determine the need of training to the C&S managers.

Training methods

The training methods chosen are both on the job training and off the job training methods. Coaching that is a on the job training method will be provided to the managers to eradicate the issues of the departmental store. Continuous feedback and guidance will be offered to the managers. Step by step training should be provided to managers to manage attendance and standardization in presenting reports and data. As the managers are experienced, they need information from case study to learn their mistakes. Therefore, off the job training method that includes a case study method is also used as an intervention. The case study method can assist the managers to identify possible issues in managing daily operations of the store and develop their analytical skills. A simulation training method is also used where the managers are asked to solve the problems by giving them an imaginary situation. These steps can help managers to develop analytical and conceptual skills as well as strategic approach to manage issues in business operation.