Question

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

1. What is Human Resource Management? Explain the functions of the HRM. Based on the scenario, identify five (5) challenges that C&S Department Store faces and propose appropriate HRM solutions to meet the challenges identified.

Answer 1

Human Resource Management can be defined as the management of employees and development or sharpening of their talent in an organization. This department specializes in employee engagement, skill development, employee appraisal, recruitment, compensation and benefits and organization development. One of the most important aspects of Human Resource Management is to develop and implement programs across to organization to increase employee efficiency in all the levels of the organizational hierarchy. In this way, they also try to maintain and strengthen employee relations with the organization, by providing on-time query resolution, proper training and maintaining a friendly and productive work environment through several activities round the year.

Some of the most important functions of the HRM department are as follows:

1) Organizing recruitment and selection process as per the company requirements.

2) Managing employee appraisal and promotions across the organization.

3) Creating company and/or personnel policies and implementing the same.

4) Organizing employee wellness programs and also monitoring employee benefits programs.

5) Periodic training and development of the employees.

6) Adding value to the work of the employees in a strategic way thereby improving morale.

7) Managing all the procedures related to employee separation from the organization.

List of 5 challenges:

1) Employee irregularity and/or shortage of attendance.

2) Resignation decision made by three experienced employees.

3) No discipline or culture in terms of maintaining leave or absence record.

4) Error in generating employee payroll details resulting in decreased morale.

5) Lack of training and development resulting in lower revenue.

In order to combat attendance related issues, there is an urgent requirement to implement on time reporting to the office. This can be easily solve by installing biometric scan before the employee enters the store. It must be made mandatory for all the employees to report on time and scan their fingerprint on the biometric scanner to generate a proof of their attendance in the HRMS (Human Resource Management System). The employees must be given three chances in case of reporting late, any case of reporting late more than three times in a month will result in salary deduction of one whole day.

The HRM department must hire immediately before the managers leave the organization and also conduct internal promotions of assistant managers to managerial position as soon as possible so that they can learn from the existing managers as much as possible before their last working day.

It must be made mandatory for all employees even a half day leave in their employee portal and get the same approved by their reporting managers in the system before they plan for any leave. It must also be made clear that any leave taken without assigning in the respective system and without prior approval from the manager will be considered absent and will result in salary deduction.

Once the attendance and leave issues are taken care the issue related to payroll will automatically get solved.

The HRM department must design twice a year training and development model for all the employees of all the levels and departments. This must include modules on interpersonal development and communication development with special focus on public speaking. This program must be designed in a way that while attending the training program employees must be given real life scenarios and that they must be provided with effective solutions so that they can utilize the same in their job. It must also be understood that the employee selection list for a particular training program must be diverse and must include employees from different department levels in order to promote employee engagement and minimize burden on any department in case of employee not available due to mandatory training.