Effective Management in Organizations - Staffing & HR - Recruitment, Selection, Retention and Traini

Knowledge outcome – On completion of this module you will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the processes, procedures and practices for effective management in organisations.

Intellectual /transferrable skill outcome – Students who successfully complete this module will be developing your competence in using a range of basic analytical and managerial techniques and processes including objective setting, monitoring and evaluation as well as interpersonal skills of successful managers.

Students will be developing an understanding of and using techniques to solve business problems with awareness of commercial acumen as well as developing your ability to write reports and have confidence in team working.

Problem 1 Staffing & HR - Recruitment selection retention and training of managers for high street stores

• High street retailers experience many challenges in terms of recruiting and retaining good quality store managers and supervisors especially in these difficult trading conditions including those imposed by the Covid 19 crisis. With many of the stores being under financial pressure, attracting talented retail store managers and supervisors to work for the group is difficult. Equally the stores that remain open where they are trading reasonably well, they need to be run efficiently by well-motivated, well trained, experienced managers and supervisors. Sports Direct have a ‘job search’ site[ Sports Direct (2020) which tries to attract new managers and supervisors to work in the stores. The site is failing to attract enough new managers and supervisors to staff the stores.

Propose and justify measures that would help resolve the following issues:

• The recruitment practices for the group are failing to attract and retain managers and supervisors with many leaving before 6 months into the job. Outline and justify three different human resources and recruitment practices (choose one for each of a,b,&c) from a Human Resources Manager perspective, that could be suitable to a) attract new talented managers; b) offer suitable incentives and rewards; and c) retain managers for at least beyond one year of employment. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the three proposed practices in the context of the Sports Direct. (Notional weighting 70%)
• From an operations manager’s perspective, consider three ways of enhancing the company culture to meet the stated values of the company:

We aspire to be an international leader in sports, lifestyle, and luxury apparel retail, by offering our customers a dynamic range of iconic brands.

We value our people, our customers, our shareholders and our third party brand partners - and we strive to adopt good practices in all our corporate dealings.

We are committed to treating all people with dignity and respect. We endeavour to offer customers an innovative and unrivalled retail experience. We aim to deliver shareholder value over the medium to long term, whilst adopting accounting principles that are conservative, consistent and simple.

The retail stores for the group operate on a regional basis. The South East Region, which includes London, is overseen by a Regional Manager. Each store is assessed for quality service and operation in a number of ways. The stores get a monthly benchmark score based on feedback from customers who complete a customer service survey, as well as with assessment from a Mystery Shopper research. The key complaints are in the following areas: Poor customers service with staff being sometimes rude or abrupt; Messy stores with poor presentation of clothes and products; Errors made in billing; & clothing being unavailable in a suitable range of sizes, especially those on special promotions. The stores in this region consistently score 10% lower than the other stores in the group achieving an average quality score of 66%. The Regional Manager needs help to raise the standards of service in the stores in the region. Sports Direct have also been rated low for service 1.3/5 on the Trust Pilot rating[ Trust Pilot (2020).

Propose and justify measures that would help resolve the following issues:

• Poor customer service – Discuss the options available to the Regional Manager to improve the performance of the individual stores and their staff members. Review and assess different methods of benchmarking, measuring and testing the service quality that could be offered in the stores to be responsive to customer needs. (Notional weighting 70%)
• Weak store operations procedures – Discuss contingency plans that could be put into place to deal with the operations specific problems in the region, especially around poor response to complaints and product purchase queries, as well as rude unhelpful staff in the stores. (Notional weighting 30%)

Between you handing in your final report and then receiving your feedback and marks within 20 days, there are a number of quality assurance processes that we go through to ensure that you receive marks which reflects their work.  A brief summary is provided below:

• Step One – The module and marking team meet to agree standards, expectations and how feedback will be provided.
• Step Two – A subject expert will mark your work using the criteria provided in the assessment brief above.
• Step Three – A moderation meeting takes place where all members of the teaching and marking team will review the marking of others to confirm whether they agree with the mark and the feedback that has been provided.
• Step Four – Your mark and feedback is processed and made available to you.

Please state which one of the 4 problems you are addressing

• What do you consider the core reasons for this specific problem at Sports Direct?
• Briefly identify which management theories you are intending to apply to the analysis in your report.
• Consider an alternative way that this specific problem could be resolved
• Outline key sources of information and academic sources that you are going to use in your report (List at least 5)