Tanglewood Stores - Case 2 This print version free essay Tanglewood Stores - Case 2.

Category: Business

Autor: reviewessays 18 July 2010

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Tanglewood stores

Case two

Conduct an analysis of Tanglewood's staffing data and determine if their current staffing practices are sufficient to meet their ongoing needs, or if there will be problems in adequately staffing the organization in the near future.

Recommend how Tanglewood should design its overall staffing mission and strategy based on their upcoming needs.

Calculate representation statistics for various jobs within a single Tanglewood department store to determine where the most critical problems exist.

Recommend what you would do in light of the information you obtain in the calculation of various demographic statistics both for this specific store and for the chain as a whole.

Specific Assignment Details

For the store manager group, you will analyze the information and prepare a report showing the results of the Markov analysis and the EEO investigation. The Director asked you to address these questions in your written report:

1. Currently the organization expects that their forecast for labor requirements is essentially constant from the previous year. Based on this assumption complete the five stages of the planning process:

a. Currently the organization expects that their forecast for labor requirements is essentially constant from the previous year. This means the forecast for next year will be taken as given.

b. Fill in the empty cells in the forecast of labor availabilities in Table 1.1.

c. Conduct an environmental scan. Based on the environmental data, what factors in the environment suggest Tanglewood might have difficulty filling their vacancies in the future?

d. Compute year end totals for each job in Table 1.1 and do a gap analysis to determine where shortages will occur in the next year.

e. Develop a preliminary statement of the action plan for hiring for Washington next year. This should be an overview of the number of individuals needed to meet projected staffing levels for various positions that can be given to store managers. Make sure that your recommendations take the strategic staffing levels issues from the introductory case into account.

2. Examine the percentages of employee representation across demographic categories for Tanglewood and the available labor market for Table 1.3. Are there any particular classes or jobs where the representation within Tanglewood appears to be out of line with the available workforce? What does the pattern suggest to you?

3. Based on your analysis and the affirmative action plan, do you think the company should engage in a specific strategy to change their recruiting and promotion practices? Do you think it is realistic for the company to try to meet their affirmative action goals in this process in a single year? What are the pros and cons of using internal promotions vs. external hiring to rectify the problems with gender and ethnicity representation in supervisory positions?

4. In addition to the specific targets for employee representation for the Spokane flagship location, Tanglewood wants to use this opportunity to establish estimates for the entire chain's staffing policy regarding demographic representation of the workforce. How do you think individual stores can respond to overarching organizational objectives? Prepare a memo to be disseminated to the individual stores that gives a sense of your targets for the organization as a whole, and also gives the stores advice on how they can assist in narrowing any representation gaps you find through their recruiting, hiring, and promotion practices.

Case Analysis

Human resource planning

1. Determining future human resource requirements

Future HR requirements represent the number and types of employees that the organization will need in the future to produce its goods and services. The requirements represent the organizations desired work force of the future. Statistical techniques like Ratio analysis and regression analysis are generally used to forecast HR requirements. In this case study the estimates for coming year's labor requirement is identical to the current year because of stability of the store. Therefore they need 1200 individuals to work as shift leaders, 850 individuals as department manager, 150 individuals as Assistant store manager, 50 individuals as store manager for the coming year.

2. Determining future human resource availabilities

Availability projections focus on the organization's current internal workforce. Their concern is with estimating the numbers and types of current employees that will be available in the future. More specifically, these estimates are concerned with the loss or exit of employees from the organization, the resulting distribution of employees who remain within the organization's internal labor market and the number of accessions during the planning time frame.

Markov Analysis to Forecast Availabilities

| | | |current year | | | | |

|Transition probability | |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |Exit |

|Matrix | | | | | | | |

| | | | | | | | |

|Store associate | |0.43 |0.06 |0 |0 |0 |0.51 |

|Shift leader | |0 |0.54 |0.16 |0 |0 |0.3 |

|Department manager | |0 |0 |0.64 |0.06 |0 |0.3 |

|Assistant store manager | |0 |0 |0.06 |0.52 |0.08 |0.34 |

|Store manager | |0 |0 |0 |0 |0.66 |0.34 |

| | | |Next year | | | | |

| | | |(projected) | | | | |

|Forecast Availabilities |Current work |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |Exit |

| |force | | | | | | |

|Store associate |8500 |3655 |510 |0 |0 |0 |4335 |

|Shift leader |1200 |0 |648 |192 |0 |0 |360 |

|Department manager |850 |0 |0 |544 |51 |0 |255 |

|Assistant store manager |150 |0 |0 |9 |78 |12 |51 |

|Store manager |50 |0 |0 |0 |0 |33 |17 |

| | |3655 |1158 |745 |129 |45 | |

By referring to these figures, and the remainder of the transition probabilities in the matrix, an organization can begin to understand the workings of the unit's internal labor market. Tangelwood has used internal promotions to fill many openings for the department managers, assistant store managers and store managers. 16% of shift leaders will be promoted to the rank of department manager, 6% of department managers will be promoted to assistant store manager and 8% of assistant store manager will be promoted as store manager. The above table clearly indicates the labor forecast. To estimate the labor forecast the proportion of individuals for the next year is multiplied by the current work force.

Vacancy Analysis

|Job category and level |Current work force |Requirements |Availabilities |Reconciliation and gaps |

|Store associate |8500 |8500 |3655 |-4845 (shortage) |

|Shift leader |1200 |1200 |1158 |-42 (shortage) |

|Department manager |850 |850 | | |

| | | |745 |-105(shortage) |

|Assistant store manager |150 |150 | | |

| | | |129 |-21 (shortage) |

|Store manager |50 |50 |45 |-5 (shortage) |

| |10750 |10750 |5732 |-5018(shortage) |

The reconciliation and gaps shows the number of vacancy position in tanglewood store.

3. Conducting external and internal environmental scanning

External scanning is applied to the process of tracking trends and developments in the outside world, documenting their implications for the management of human resources, and ensuring that these implications receive attention in the HRP process. The environment for staffing managerial employees in Tanglewood store is complex. The organization must plan to put considerable time and money into attracting and retaining the needed talent or into developing alternative means of accomplishing its business plan. Planners must be out and about in their organizations, taking advantage of opportunities to learn what is going on.

Informal discussions with key managers can help, as can employee attitude surveys, special surveys, and the monitoring of key indictors such as employee performance, absenteeism, and turnover. Internally, tanglewood has relied on its experienced employees as a major source of talent. This internal staffing strategy has seen as a real strength , because the possibility of being promoted is believed to increase retention of lower level employees.

4. Reconciling requirements and availabilities - that is determining gaps

The reconciliation and gap determination process represents the results of bringing together requirements and availability forecasts with the results of external and internal environmental scanning. Gap figures must be decided on and entered into the column, and the likely reasons for the gaps need to be identified. A relatively large shortage is projected for store associate due to a mild expansion in requirements coupled with a substantial drop in availabilities. This is mainly because of excessive exit rate. The current focus of staffing is to fill the vacant positions. During the planning phase target are set for the number of individuals who need to be hired. The calculation of gap is done in the following table.

|Job category and level|Current work |Requirements |Availabilities |Reconciliation and gaps |Action Planning |

| |force | | | | |

|Store associate |8500 |8500 |3655 |-4845 (shortage) |Staffing activities |

|Shift leader |1200 |1200 |1158 |-42 (shortage) | |

|Department manager |850 |850 | | |Recruitment |

| | | |745 |-105(shortage) |Selection |

| | | | | |Employment |

|Assistant store |150 |150 | | |Other HR activities |

|manager | | |129 |-21 (shortage) | |

|Store manager |50 |50 |45 |-5 (shortage) |Compensation |

| | | | | |Training and |

| | | | | |development |

| |10750 |10750 |5732 |-5018(shortage) | |

5. Developing action plans to close the projected gaps

Action planning involves four basic sequential steps: set objectives, generate alternative activities, assess alternative activities, and choose alternative activities. Movement through these steps is a logical outgrowth of HRP and is greatly enhanced by its occurrence.

Staffing objective:

Quantitative targets should be expressed in head count for each job category/level and will be very close in magnitude to the identified gaps. A forecast shortage of 4845 employees as store associates, should be transformed into a staffing objective of 4845 accessions to be achieved by the end of the forecasting time interval.

For external staffing objectives, these may be stated in terms of averages, such as average educational level for new hires and average scores on ability testes. Ideally, the tanglewood stores have conducted job analysis and have available formal job specifications that it can use to guide it in establishing qualitative objectives. The gaps can be filled by means of new hires, promotions, transfers, demotions etc.

Generating alternative staffing activities:

Both short and long term options for shortages involving a combination of staffing and workload management is possible. Short term options include better utilization of current employees, acquiring additional employees on a short term basis (Seasonal employees). Long term options include staffing up with additional employees ( recall former employees, transfer in employees from other departments, new permanent hires), skill enhancement .

Assessing and choosing alternatives:

The goal of such assessment is to identify one or more preferred activities. A preferred activity is one offering the highest likelihood of attaining the staffing objective, within the time limit established, at the least cost and with the fewest negative side effects. For the past several years, tanglewood store have been confronted with a set of favorable economic condition which has led to substantial job expansion, low unemployment, and high employee turnover. The result has been persistent employee shortages and constant understaffing relative to workload needs. At the higher level core workforce should be used and the flexible work force can be used at the entry level.

Employee representation across demographic categories:

The problem of selection planning is made considerably more complex because of Equal Employment opportunity requirements that fall on organizations that do business with the federal government. When the proportion of protected classes being hired or currently employed falls below the proportion in the labor market, may indicate intentional or unintentional discrimination in hiring and promotion. The store associates and shift leaders are considered as the retail sales person in the study. The ethnicity is analysed by means of census report 2000.

According to EEO Residence Data Results for Spokane, WA MSA , census-2000

Total retail sales person in that area is reported to be 6495 of which 3040 are male and 3449 are female employees. Majority of retail sales person are from White non Hispanic community. 92.1% are white non Hispanic, 2.4% Hispanic, 1.4% Asian Non Hispanic, and 1.1% Black Hispanic community. The employee representation was restricted to store associates, shift leaders and department manager. Assistant store manager and store managers were not taken for the study.

Developing Affirmative Action Plan:

Affirmative action plans are an extension and application of general HR and staffing planning. AAPs have three basic components, namely, utilization analysis, staffing goals and timetables, and action plans. Revised order no.4, which applies to federal contractors, specifies requirements fir each of these three components. Diversity programs are organizational initiatives to help effectively manage a diverse work force. Such programs have the potential for successfully working in tandem with AAPs by contributing to the attraction and retention of AAP targeted people. Tanglewood internal staffing policy as recently articulated from central management is to retain current representation and current work force. The primary goal for this year is to focus on gender representation. The tanglewood store will want to establish a goal of moving their demographic representation in line with the available work force. Utilization analysis is critical in an AAP because through it are derived the numerical standards ie. Available percentage for women and minorities against which the organizations representation is evaluated. Comparing incumbency to availability and annual placement goals indicates that the number is determined on the basis of the eight factors contained in Revised order no. 4. The factors for women are similar to the minorities.

Legality of AAPs

1. The plan should have as its purpose the remedying of specific and identifiable effects of past discrimination

2. There should be definite underutilization of women or minorities currently in the organization

3. Regarding non minority and male employees, the plan should not unsettle their legitimate expectations

4. The plan should be temporary, and eliminated once affirmative action goals have been achieved

5. All candidates for positions should be qualified for those positions

6. The plan should include organizational enforcement mechanisms, as well as a grievance procedure.