Module 5: Retail Organization and Human Resource Management

• Planning and Assessing a Retail Organization: Factors to Consider:

  1. Target Market Needs
  2. Employee Needs
  3. Management Needs
• Target Market Needs:

  • Sufficient personnel to provide appropriate customer service.
  • Knowledgeable and courteous personnel.
  • Well-maintained store facilities.
  • Ability address changing needs.
• Employee Needs:

  • Challenging and satisfying positions.
  • Participation in decision making.
  • Clear channel communications
  • Clear authority-responsibility roles
  • Fair treatment of employees
  • Good performance rewards
• Management Needs:

  • Ability to obtain and retain good employees
  • Clear personnel procedures
  • One worker reporting to only one supervisor
  • Adequate staff supports in departments
  • Well-integrated organizational plans
  • Motivated employees
  • Low absenteeism
  • System replace employees as needed
• The Process of Organizing a Retail Firm:

  1. Outline specific tasks
  2. Dividing tasks among channel members
  3. Grouping tasks into jobs
  4. Classifying jobs
  5. Developing an organizational chart to show relationships
• Specifying Tasks:

  1. Buying/shipping merchandise
  2. Receiving and checking in goods
  3. Setting prices/marking merchandise
  4. Inventory storage and control
  5. Facilities maintenance
  6. Personnel management
  7. Billing customer/credit operations
  8. Customer service operations- delivery, gift wrapping
  9. Sales forecasting and budgeting
• Retailer => can perform all or some of the tasks in the distribution channel, from buying merchandise to coordination.
• Manufacturer or Wholesaler => can take care of few or many functions, such as shipping, marking merchandise, inventory storage, displays, research, etc.
• Specialist => can undertake a particular task: buying office, delivery firm, warehouse, marketing research firm, ad agency, accountant, credit, bureau, computer service firm.
• Consumer => can be responsible for delivery, credit (cash purchases), sales effort (self-service), product alterations (do-it-yourselfers), etc.
• Sales Personnel => displaying merchandise, customer contact, gift wrapping, customer follow-up.
• Cashier => entering transaction data, handling cash and credit purchases, gist wrapping.
• Inventory Personnel => receiving merchandise, checking incoming shipments, marking merchandise, inventory storage and control, returning merchandise to vendors.
• Display Personnel => window dressing, interior display setups, use of mobile displays
• Credit Personnel => billing customers, credit operations, customer research
• Customer Service Personnel => merchandise repairs and alterations, complaint resolution, customer research
• Janitorial Personnel => cleaning store, replacing old fixtures
• Management Personnel => personnel management, sales forecasting, budgeting, pricing, coordinating tasks
• Principles for Organizing a Retail Firm:

  1. Show interest in employees
  2. Monitor employee turnover, lateness, and absenteeism
  3. Trace line of authority from top to bottom
  4. Limit span of control
  5. Empower employees
  6. Delegate authority while maintaining responsibility
  7. Acknowledge need for coordination and communication
  8. Recognize the power of informal relationships
• Develop an Organizational Chart => is important to build a good organization which will help build the business.
• Hierarchy of Authority => outlines the job interactions within a company by describing the reporting relationships among employees
• Flat Organization => many workers reporting to one manager
• Tall Organization => has several management levels
• Recruitment

  • It is the process of captivating, screening, and selecting potential and qualified candidates based on objective criteria for a particular job.
  • The goal of this process is to attract the qualified applicants and to encourage the unqualified applicants to opt themselves out.
• Selection => is the process of choosing a qualified person for specific role who can successfully deliver valuable contributions to the organization
• Training and Development

  • Are the indispensable functions of human resource management.
  • It is the attempt to improve the current or future performance of an employee by increasing the ability of an employee through educating and increasing one's skills or knowledge in the particular subject.
• Compensation => is a vital part of human resource management, which helps in encouraging the employees and improving organizational effectiveness.
• A supervisor's role in human resource management is that of setting the strategic course for the department to improve company performance.
• The supervisor can use HR to create levers to influence how workers focus their energy and select workers with skills and interests aligned with the company's goals.
• Women in Retailing

  • Women have more career opportunities in retailing
  • Issues to address with regards to female workers
  • Meaningful training program
  • Advancement opportunities
  • Flex time - the ability of employees to adapt their hours
  • Job sharing among two or more employees who each work less than full time
  • Child Care
• Compressed Work Schedule => working in a full forty-hour week in less than the traditional five days.
• "Nine-Eighty" Schedule => working one full week (five days) and one compressed week (four days), yielding one off-work day every other week.
• Flexible Work Schedules (Flextime) => allowing employees to select, within broad parameters, hours they will work.
• Job Sharing => when two part-time employees share one full-time job.
• Telecommuting => allowing employees to spend part of their time working off-site, usually at home, by using e-mail, the Internet, and other forms of information technology.
• Empowerment is the process of managers sharing power and decision-making authority with employees.
• How does Empowerment work on employees:

  • Gives employees confidence
  • Provides greater opportunity to provide service to customers
  • Employees are more committed to firm’s success
• In labor law considerations, retailers must NOT:

  • Hire underage workers
  • Pay workers “off the books”
  • Require workers to engage in illegal acts
  • Discriminate in hiring or promoting workers
  • Violate worker safety regulations
  • Deal with suppliers that disobey labor laws
• Reward Systems => formal and informal mechanisms by which employee performance is defined, evaluated, and rewarded.
• Effects of Organizational Rewards:

  • Higher-level performance-based rewards motivate employees to work harder.
  • Rewards help align employee self-interest with organizational goals.
  • Rewards foster increased retention and citizenship.