The Human Resource Function of a Retail Store
JamelleReeves
Dr. Cooper
Human Resource Management Capstone
October 26, 2014
2 In today’s world, retail stores are experiencing significant changes in how they deal with their customers. The customers are looking for specialization and convenience while making purchases, shoppers are as enlightened as the sales people concerning what they want to buy, and an organizations reputation can be built or ruined by a single customer due to the advances in technology. As such these stores must find ways of adopting to meet the needs of a more demanding customer. One strategy that is being employed is ensuring that there is enough staffing to provide adequate sales support yet they also need to ensure that they do not overdo it and thus place a financial strain on the organization. This paper will take a look at how human resource managers can be able to achieve this objective. Human resource management is basically the management of people in an organization. A human resource manager will need to play the following roles in order to ensure that the organization functions smoothly (Craig 2010): They play a leadership role in initiating and formulating procedures and policies that are related to human resource in a manner that is consistent with the overall goals of the organization. They have to ensure that these policies take into consideration the economic situation of the organization and regulations that govern employment. As human resource issues become increasingly complex, other managers tend to seek advice from the human resource manager for expert advice whenever they have issues that are related to the human resource. They also ensure that services like maintenance of HR records, recruitment, selection orientation and training of staff is adequately provided to their organization. Lastly HR managers
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are responsible for ensuring that they monitor HR policies that have been established to ensure that they are fully complied to by other members of the organization. Retail stores belong to a small group of industries where customers interact a lot with the employees. This situation poses unique challenges but can also be turned to opportunities by a store. In order to remain competitive such a store needs to ensure that their clients feel that they are being served by an excellent staff. Customers always have to be served on time, have employees who are knowledgeable and thus be able to provide sound advice to the customer as well as being polite and courteous. All employees of the organization need to regard themselves as public relations officers of the organization. This means that stores need to pursue a staff retention strategy as well as provide intensive training services to ensure that all their employees remain highly competent. Three strategies that can be employed to improve the stores human resource includes (Kokemuller 2014): Reducing turnovers: Shoppers do not like to see a different face every time they visit the store. Furthermore having a high employee turnover means that it becomes difficult and expensive to train employees to a level that they can be able to interact with customers and live a positive impression to the customers about the store. Unfortunately, high employee turnover is common feature of many stores. This can however be remedied by ensuring that employees are better compensated, they are not overworked and at the same time ensure that they have opportunities for career growth. There is also a need for staff diversity as this is a great way for the store to connect with diverse customers as well as learn their preferences. However it is a challenge to maintain
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cohesiveness within a diverse organization and as such HR management need to ensure that they encourage tolerance and teamwork by staff. Coping with
