Tanglewood Case 1
HR594: Staffing Strategic
Instructor: Travis Deur
November 6, 2011 Tanglewood
Tanglewood is a chain of retail of stores that sells clothing, appliances, electronic and home accents. Tanglewood was originally founded in 1975 by Tanner Emerson and Thurston Wood. The original store opened in Spokane Washington and the named was TannerWood. TannerWood also sold outdoor clothing and equipment that Tanner and Thurston had designed themselves. According to the text “Tanner and Thurston financed their early store plans with credit cards and personal loans from friends and family. They had little money and put every penny they made back into the stores The first store was very successful due to the unique merchandise making them successful quite rapidly, which lead them to expand and add several more stores during the late 1970’s. Emerson and Wood rename their store chain Tanglewood in 1984. Tanglewood has a total of 243 stores in Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona.
The business strategy and goals of Tanglewood is to find a specific niche that’s similar to Kohl’s and Target that would target to the middle and upper-income market at reasonable prices. Tanglewood also focuses on stocking quality products, providing customer service, and a more designer appearance than discount stores. This strategy is further supplemented by the company’s trademark “look” which involves an outdoors theme, complete with real wood décor and use of natural colors. The thirteen strategic staffing decisions are the acquisitions, deployment, and retention of the organization's workforce. Some decisions pertain primarily to staffing levels and others primarily to staffing quality. Acquire or Develop Talent
Tanglewood should focus more on acquiring talent internally to fulfill its staffing needs. Selecting an internal candidate gives the organization an opportunity to know that they are experience with the corporate culture and can hit the ground running and be at peak performance the moment they arrive. The internally employees will bring their talents with them to the job, with little or no need for training or development.
Hire Yourself or Outsource

Tanglewood should focus more on doing the hiring themselves mainly because this is a large organization that has a professional HR staff and will be able to recruit enough employees on its own, so it may supplement its recruiting or selection efforts with those of a vendor that specializes in staffing.

Hire or Retain

Tanglewood should focus more on trade-offs between hiring and retention strategies for staffing. If, Tanglewood seek to retain employees the turnover will be held to minimum. Both strategies have costs benefits associated and the organization could conduct an analysis to determine hiring and retention.
National or Global Tanglewood should focus more on global outsourcing technical support and database management only. Many growing computer-chip makers, such as IBM, Intel, and Motorola, contract with outside vendors to manufacture their chips; often these companies are overseas. This would cost for the organization.
Attract or Relocate
Tanglewood should focus more typical staffing strategy to attract employees to come to them, this better and cheaper to bring labor to the organization than to bring the organization to labor.
Overstaff or Understaff
Tanglewood should focus more on understaff, due to the bad economic this will avoid future layoffs. If Tanglewood decide to understaff they can adjust staffing level demand and can increase employee’s overtime or using flexible staffing arrangements such as temporary employees.
Short-or Long Term Focus
Tanglewood should focus more on trade-offs for short or long term focus this will give the organization balancing addressing short-term labor shortages with the identification and development of talent for the long term.
Person/Job or Person/Organization Match
Tanglewood should focus more on Person/Job or Person/Organization match
Tanglewood should have assess any time a person is being hired to perform a finite set of tasks and make sure applicants meet this specific job requirement.
Specific or General KSAOs
Tanglewood should focus more on specific or general KSAOs which are competencies, of the job knowledge and technical skill. According to the text examples of such KSAOs include flexibility and adaptability, ability to learn, written and oral communication skills, and algebra/statistics skills. An organization expecting rapid changes in job content and new job creation, such as in the software development example, might position itself closer to the general competencies end of the continuum.

Exceptional or Acceptable Workforce Quality
Tanglewood should focus more on an acceptable workforce quality. Acceptable strategy offer less high-powered workforce and probably a less expensive one as well. The organization will likely opt for the exceptional workforce quality end of the continuum.
Active or Passive Diversity
Tanglewood should focus more on passive diversity workforce, favoring a more passive strategy suggest that diversification of the workforce takes time because it requires substantial planning and assimilation activity. In the software development illustration, an active diversity strategy might be pursued as a way of acquiring workers who can help identify a diverse array of software products that might be received favorably by various segments of the marketplace.
Conclusion
The Tanglewood case along with the thirteen strategic staffing decisions will be a work in process. Staffing is a critical organizational function concerned with the acquisition, deployment, and retention of the organization's workforce this has also allow me to really learn the definition of staffing and the implications of staffing systems.

References
Heneman, Herbert Gerhard, 1944- Staffing organizations / Herbert G. Heneman III, Timothy A. Judge—6th ed. p. cm.