Introduction
With business evolvement and increased competition of firms in different industries, organizations have highly embraced human resource functions, a business unit that has been neglected for many years. Today, organizations view their employees as the ultimate source of their success and are continuously attracting and retaining competitive employees. Through strategic human resource management and technological advancement, organizations are continuously gaining competitive advantage over their competitors.
Tom Bell as both the operations manager and human resource manager (HRM) plays a significant role in the success and survival of Gladwell Grocery Stores (GGS) within this competitive industry. Travelling to its 10 departmental stores every week is tedious and a challenging task for Mr. Bell. Additionally, being on a business trip, the organization incurs huge cost on fuel and considerable amount of time that could have been used in other productive tasks is wasted on his travels to its different stores to perform such functions as recruitment, scheduling and hiring and interacting with employees to handle various problems. Worsening the situation, the payroll is still calculated on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and use computer Software to print checks. The organization is incurring huge costs on time and movement from one store to another which in turn has a considerable impact on Gladwell Grocery Stores profitability. Mr. Bell is seeking help on approaches that will rise efficiency in the organization’s human resource functions and cost-effectiveness.
Business Assessment
Human resource management is a strategic and inclusive function that revolve around the management and control of employees within an organization. With advancement of technology and globalization, human resource management has played a significant role in the success of organizations in different industries not excluding service-focused retail industry, particularly food and grocery retailing (Sultana, 2014). GGS business operation fall within this industry with its headquarters in New York. GGS plays a significant role within the supply chain as it avails goods and services to the final consumers.
As a booming sector in many economies, retail industry requires effective human resource management. In the retail sector, employees get the opportunity to interact one-on-one with customers. Despite its booming trend, retail industry faces various challenges. As presented in the scenario, it is evident that Mr. Bell travels to different stores for recruitment purpose, a clear indicator of high turnover. High turnover rate poses huge challenges on staffing functions (Mekraz & Gundala, 2016). For example, it makes training and developing of employees hard and time wastage on constant recruitment process. Moreover, building customer loyalty and rapport becomes difficult due to continuous unfamiliar faces in the stores.
From this case, it is evident that there is misconception regarding the work environment. For instance, constant travels for hiring is a clear indicator that the GGS top management believes that retail industry is long working hours, non-fulltime job, poor pay and no training industry (Krel, 2013). These are the key cause of high turnover rates. By embracing technology and working against these assumption, GGS can evade the huge costs incurred. By providing full-time normal work shift and competitive remuneration, employees will have sense of commitment and belongingness to GGS minimizing costs of recruitments and hiring.
Poor management of diverse workforce is prone to conflict (Krel, 2013). From the case scenario, Mr. Bell travels to GGS diverse stores regularly to settled distinct employee issues. This is a good indicator that the GGS management is to conversant with benefits associated with diversity and its high time for it to embrace it too avoid conflict and support a spirit of lenience, teamwork and effective communication.
Identifiable Issues
There are various beneficial Human Resource functions that should be taken into consideration by Gladwell Grocery Store. These include Recruitment and Selection, Safety, Employee Relations, Compensation and Benefits, Compliance, as well as the aspect of Training and Development.
For this case, the primary focus will be the aspect of Recruitment and Selection since it is the most sensitive and substantial segment of HR management unit. GGS should take into dire consideration recruitment and selection because it is the key determiner of the kind of employees who will fill in different vital positions within an organization. It offers a chance to align and integrate employee’s skill to organizational goals and objectives, and more so for departmental and personal growth. Appropriate planning and assessment of the vacant position and organizational needs will help hire right individuals with the right skills, knowledge and capabilities for the job and team.
For retail company, the recruitment and selection process can be focused on the applicant capability to deal with sales transaction and other major tasks (Meeks & Chen, 2011). With the advancement of technology, recruitment and selection is now easy since through the internet to advertise vacant position and attract pool of applicant to choose from. This creates a room to critically evaluate diverse applicants and select an individual with the right skills, knowledge and abilities to fill in the vacant position based on SSG needs and standards.
Conclusion
In conclusion, HRIS adoption will be highly beneficial to the GGS. First, it will cut costs incurred due to regular travels by Mr. Bell. Through the HRIS, all the GGS store will be integrated and Mr. Bell will operate all the HR functions from the company’s New York headquarters. Additionally, HRIS system offers effective, user friendly and customizable payroll and recruitment system. The use of HR payroll system, will eliminate the use of Excel spreadsheet as a payroll while the recruitment system will enable the GGS to recruit and select highly qualified employees and retain them from a pool of applicants.
- Krel E., (2013). Business Leadership Lessons from Retail. SHRM. Retrieved 25 July 2017, from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0913-retail-hr.aspx
- Meeks, M., & Chen, R. J. (2011). Can Walmart integrate values with value? Journal of Sustainable Development, 4(5), 62.
- Mekraz, A., & Gundala, R. R. (2016). Leadership Style and Retail Store Performance-A Case Study of Discount Retail Chain. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research, 10(2).
- Sultana, A. (2014). Human Resource Management in organized retail industry in India. Global Journal of Finance and Management, 6(6), 491-496.
