Staffing Strategies for Tanglewood
Staffing Quantity and Staffing Quality

Yu Gao
Yuting Dai
Xiaoman Hu
Yuzhu Guo

Jan, 15, 2013
Yu Gao
Yuting Dai
Xiaoman Hu
Yuzhu Guo

Jan, 15, 2013

Memo
To: Daryl Perrone, Staffing Services Director Marilyn Gonzalez, Vice President of Human Resource Department
From: Yu Gao, Staffing Services Consultant Xiaoman Hu, Staffing Services Consultant Yuting Dai, Staffing Services Consultant Yuzhu Guo, Staffing Services Consultant
Date: January 15, 2013
Subject: Staffing Strategies for Tanglewood

Tanglewood is facing a big change in staffing strategy, considering the company’s plans for expansion. In this report, we analyze the company’s situation, concentrate on staffing quantity and staffing quality strategies and give a general recommendation on a series of strategic staffing decisions.
Staffing Quantity
Acquire or Develop Talent

Acquire refers to acquire new employees who can “hit the ground running” and be at peak performance the moment they arrive. These employees would bring their talents with them to the job, with little or no need for training or development. A pure development strategy would lead to acquisition of just about anyone who is willing and able to learn the KSAOs (KSAOs is used to describe person’s qualifications that needed to perform the job. It refers to Knowledge, Skill, Ability and Other characteristics) required by the job. Staffing strategy must position the organization appropriately along this “buy or make your talent” continuum.

For critical and newly created positions, such as might occur in the software organization example, the emphasis would likely be on acquiring talent because of the urgency of developing new products. There may be no time to train, and qualified internal candidates may not be available.

Based on the company culture and value Tanglewood owe, develop talent within company (internal development) is more advisable. They emphasize the centralized culture, acquire talent outside let they spend much time on consolidating culture and value.

In addition, Tanglewood is a retail store; they value experience rather than high-tech knowledge. When employees has enough experience and could provide valuable suggestion, they may have promotion. Employees in Tanglewood do not need to have strong professional knowledge, and they could earn experience during their working. Therefore, we believe develop talent internally is more advisable.
Hire Yourself or Outsource

Outsource means companies use outside organizations to recruit and select employees. Hire yourself fit for companies or organizations that have unique requirements for employees in this organization. Organizations with a strong, unique culture may not wish to engage in outsourcing.

In Tanglewood, hire yourself is more effective. There are several reasons. Firstly, Tanglewood have own unique culture and value, and they understand their demand exactly. Secondly, Tanglewood allows each department manager to formulate distinct methods for running their department. Therefore, each department may have different requirement for hiring new workers. If Tanglewood use outsources to hire new workers, it is very difficult to satisfy the demand of each department, and it may cost extra money. Thirdly, Tanglewood has own strategy to select and test employees. For example, the employee selection specialists in the corporate staffing function developed a format for interviews that is now used as a part of the hiring process for nearly all stores.

On the other hand, stores may find that for some markets, there are local recruiting firms with more expertise and specialized staff who could facilitate bringing in candidates and performing initial screens for a cheaper cost than if each store has to do everything by themselves. However, under such process, Tanglewood may need to spend time to negotiate with local human resource company and to understand each employee.

External or Internal Hiring

We suggest Tangelwood use more internal hiring. If an organization or company wants to cultivate a stable, committed workforce, it will probably need to emphasize internal hiring, which will allow employees to use the internal labor market as a springboard for launching long-term careers within the organization.

External hiring might be restricted to specific entry-level jobs, as well as newly created ones for which there are no acceptable internal applicants. External hiring might also be necessary when there is rapid organization growth, such that the number of new jobs created outstrips internal supply.

Tanglewood values the employees’ suggestion, and want to cultivate employees to think as leader and make contribution to their company. They believe experience and deep familiar with company is very important for a qualify employees, and individuals who have extensive experience with the organization’s unique methods for doing business will be likely to be more successful. Therefore, we strong recommend that Tanglewood should use more internal hiring.
Core or Flexible Workforce
Tanglewood is supposed to use the core workforce more. The Core workforce refers to full-time or part-time employees who are central to the core goods and services delivered by Tanglewood. Flexible workforce is more peripheral. Flexible workers may be used on peak seasons or other needed time.

The core workforce should be paid more attention in Tanglewood. Because the company is value-centered and core workforce contribute more to the consistency in employee behavior and understanding of corporate culture and core value. Specifically, in the company’s mission statement, it aims at deliver high-quality goods and maximizes the value of stakeholders such as customers, employees. But as the mission said, the goal accomplishment requires adhering to the core values. The core workforce is perceived as vital for the company values and culture.

Flexible workforce is not suggested to be used extensively as many other retailers do. The reason is Tanglewood differentiate itself from other retailers by different culture, which is providing high-quality products and adding more value to middle- and upper-income customers. Additionally, the company put emphasis on teamwork. Temporary workers can hardly participate well in the team and add more value to the company because the lower level of commitment to the company’s value.
Hire or Retain
It is suggested here to make more effort to retain existing employees rather than hire new ones. Retain employees related to minimize turnover and replacement. Overall, Tanglewood pay attention to the development of existing employees and employee suggestions, which lead to the preference to retention strategy. Also training new employees will result in additional cost to company.

In specific, employees in Tanglewood are encouraged to offer suggestions regarding operations. Some major operational changes in this company came from employees’ suggestion. Besides, under the company’s culture, employees participate more in the decision making process. Employees in Tanglewood can make their own decisions and they work within teams within which all the tasks are shared. Also members in the team help each other. In addition, “straight talk” is introduced within company. All the employees can access to information such as share price and profitability. As a result, development of each employee is paid attention to. Employees who stay longer can be developed better. They are also more familiar with the operation. Furthermore, they tend to provide more valuable suggestions and are more likely to work better with other team members compared to short-time employees.

A serious problem of hiring new employees constantly is cost of time and money. For example, all new employees include those with college degrees should spend extra time working in store as an associate to know the unique culture and values here. Also, the recruiting process and afterwards training of new staff can result in high cost. For a value-centered company like Tanglewood, high turnover can take a toll to the company’s culture and profitability.
National or Global
Tanglewood is suggested to keep activities nationally. Firstly, while the core value can be protected well within the domestic stores, finding global workers who shared the same value to the company and maintain control can be hard. Therefore, international outsourcing is nor preferred. Secondly, all the 243 stores of Tanglewood are in the U.S (Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona), so it is much easier to high domestic employees. As a result, operate domestically is more suitable for Tanglewood.

Attract or Relocate

Currently, Tanglewood should put more emphasis on attracting than on relocating. Attracting is a typical staffing strategy, which based on sufficient numbers of qualified people coming to the organization for employment. However, some organizations may challenge the traditional strategy; they choose to relocate. Relocating means organizations relocate their business or plants to the locations where there is fairly large labor supply. Compare these two strategies, relocating is much more expensive than attracting, because it must bring the organization to the labor.

Tanglewood is a western-based company. There are a lot of good colleges and universities locate in western U.S. Tanglewood can use its geographic advantage and attracts high-quality graduates from this huge employment market in urban cities, such as Los Angeles, and Seattle. Then, managers could hire assistants from these graduates who understand local’s needs better. Also, through attracting, Tanglewood could save time and money, thus makes the operation management more efficient, and passes the maximum value to customers. This strategy is closely related to the mission statement of Tanglewood.

On the other hand, if Tanglewood choose to relocate, the company has to relocate to a place like urban city to get close to the employment pool. There are some successful examples of using this strategy, such as the shift of lumber mills and automobile manufacturing plants to the southern U.S. However, Tanglewood is a retail store and not rely on high technology; it is less necessary for Tanglewood to relocate. Also, relocate may hinder Tanglewood’s revolution to centralize human resource.

Overstaff or Understaff

The ideal solution for Tanglewood is to staff as nearly to expect demands as possible. Organizations should use overstaffing when there is a suddenly increasing demand for the organization’s products or services. Lacking of staff at this moment will make customers disappointed and turn away. Understaffing happens when the organization is suffering with chronic labor shortage. Moreover, if there is a prediction of an economic downturn, organizations may understaff to avoid future layoffs.

Usually, it is better for a quality and customer service oriented organization to overstaff with a few extra employees. Tanglewood committed to always keep performance and customer service in the forefront. Understaff will result in negative customer interactions which violated Tanglewood’s goal and culture.

Some organizations may decide to use a flexible staffing arrangement, such as temporary employees. However, Tanglewood does not extensively use a flexible workforce. A core workforce is viewed as essential for the organizational values and culture. Additionally, chronic overstaffing will become financial burden to the organization. That is why Tanglewood should try to find a balance between overstaffing and understaffing.

Short- or Long-term Focus

Tanglewood should focus more on long-term. Although the ideal situation is to have labor demands exactly as expected for both short term and the long term, it is too difficult to reach that goal. Organizations should try to balance referring short-term labor shortages as well as exploring and developing talents for the long term.

Unexpected labor shortage happens in peak shopping seasons, the labor shortage can be huge damage to the organization. Tanglewood focus on providing high-quality customer services, so the company may plan on finding someone who will be immediately ready to work from the first day. Also labor shortages could occur during economic crisis when the number of qualified candidate is decreasing. Therefore Tanglewood could preserve a few short-term employees to avoid labor shortages.

On the other hand, because of the heavy emphasis on employee suggestions, Tanglewood’s upper managers have sufficient opportunities to observe the leadership and decision making qualities of their associates. Then they can make decisions for promotion and advancement. Moreover, to preserve the company’s unique culture and values, all new employees without retail experience, even those with college degrees who are targeted as having management potential, spend a period of time working in the store as an associate. We can see Tanglewood spends much effort on developing employees; it is part of Tanglewood’s culture which ensures Tanglewood moving forward.

Staffing Quality

Person/Job or Person/Organization Match Person/Organization Match Model Person/Organization Match Model

In Person/Job Match model, the job has certain requirements and rewards associated with it. The person has certain qualifications and motivations. The model focuses on this kind of dual match between the person and the job. In general, this strategy is used when the operation system consists of particular tasks that require specific knowledge to do them. However, in Person/Organization Match model, applicants are often assessed concerning how well they will fit into the organization, in addition to how well they match the specific job’s requirements and rewards. In this case, other issues are taken into account, including organization values, new job duties, multiple jobs and future jobs.

As explained above, we would recommend Person/Organization Match strategy for Tanglewood. At this specific period of company expansion, maintaining the company’s culture is very important. Since the distinct culture and values of the company is employee participation and teams, a person who can fit with the organization as a whole and has potential to jive with the culture and value well in the future might be the most needed type. Plus all employees first perform as associates who supposed to share tasks and help each other at work. No specific professional knowledge is needed. However, learning skills and ability to manage multiple tasks should be considered at first place. Therefore, Person/Organization Match is definitely the right option.

Specific or General KSAOs

Specific KSAOs means focusing on job-specific competencies. However, general KSAOs requires a focus on KSAOs that will be applicable across a variety of jobs, both current and future.

In this case, we prefer the latter choice. Since the company’s tasks are shared within the teams and there’re no designated roles for employees in one team, applicants are expected to manage multiple jobs and support each other whenever needed. Therefore, general KSAOs such as flexibility, adaptability, learning skills, written and oral communication skills, and basic algebra skills should be the preference. This also complies with the person/organization strategy.

Exceptional or Acceptable Workforce Quality

Pursuing exceptional workforce quality is the best choice. First of all, Tanglewood does not extensively use a flexible workforce. Core workforce is viewed as essential for the organizational values and culture. Based on this, exceptional workforce quality is necessary and crucial. Exceptional strategy would make the company’s human capital deliver superior performance with the “best and brightest” workforce. However, acceptable means pursuit of a less high-powered workforce. Therefore, picking acceptable workforce quality would take a risk that compromises the development of the organization in years.

In the key moment of expanding, exceptional workforce would not only keep the human capital at a certain level, but also facilitate the philosophy of the company along with the growth of the organization.

Active or Passive Diversity

Active diversity strategy is optimal. Since Tanglewood is a moderate price range retailer that competes with larger, lower priced chains. Superior customer service is the foremost to focus. Active workforce allows the organization to be more attuned to the diverse needs of the customers it serves. Though it requires substantial planning and assimilation activity, the urge of a central planning body in staffing is exactly a great help in the process.

Recommendation and Conclusion

Considering the aim of Tanglewood is to expand, with the best use of human capital to maintain the value and culture, we strongly recommend use core workforce with exceptional general KSAOs. Keep the human capital, which can understand and jive with the culture of the company well, at a high quality level and consider the development of the employee, focusing on the long run. And it is surely that the company will retain the competitive advantage and stay ahead of the retail industry.