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Based on the article, consider the approaches to organizational design. Analyze the effects and applications of the various organizational structures and levels of authority. Given the benefits and motivations mentioned in the article, share an analysis of the referenced company’s impact on employee motivation, morale, and organizational culture.  

Your response should be two pages in length, not including the title page or reference page. You are required to cite at least one article.   All sources used must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying in-text citations in the proper APA format.

FEATURE
ASSOCIATION FORUM

Hiring tiie Very Best
How to increase your employees’ morale and productivity

By Tracy Mullin

Tracy Mullin is
president and
CEO, Nationai
Retail
Federation,
Washington,
D.C,
muliint@nrf.com.

I
remember a quote from former ABC execu-

iive Thomas Murphy, who said. “If you hire
the best people and leave them alone, you

don’t need to hire very many.” While I think re-
tailers should be hiring the best people possible,
and treating them well, it may not always be best
to leave them alone. Especially during the holi-
day season.

With the holidays almost upon us, retailers are
scrambling to hire the best seasonal workers—
more than 520,000 of them—while retaining
their top performers. And during the most cru-
cial selling period of the year, there is no time
for mistakes. Executives know that good em-
ployees ean bolster the image of a store and
unsatisfactory employees can be disastrous.

More often than not. finding good workers is
high on the list of challenges facing retail exec-
utives. And keeping those people is even more
difficult.

Turnover in the retail industry is nothing new,
and it is not a problem that will disappear any-
time soon. After Sept. 11, many retailers experi-
enced low turnover as employees waited for the
job market to improve. Now that the economy is
back on traek, workers are keeping an eye out
for new opportunities, and many are moving on.

Statistics reinforce that theory: According to
the 2005 NRF/Mercer Retailer Compensation
and Benefits survey, released last month, turn-
over for store managers rose 20% last year over
2003.

Leading HR experts seem to agree that tradi-
tional approaches to management haven’t been
working. Author Bruce Tulgan. a consultant
who spoke in June at the National Retail Eed-
eration’s Loss Prevention Conference, talked
about the mind-set of the new American worker
and said that the best way retailers could keep
their employees was to find out what people
want and use it to drive performance.

Best Buy is one of those retailers. Nearly half
of the 3.500 employees at Best Buy headquarters
have embarked on a radical strategy that enables

employees to work where and when they
as long as their job gets done. The approach
seems to be working, as executives maintain that
this new program has reduced turnover and
increased productivity at the same time.

Other retailers, such as Costco, believe that
the way to their workers” hearts is through their
wallets. Costco’s employees earn an average of
$17.41 an hour and receive some of the most
generous health benefits in the industry. Perhaps
that’s why they are able to maintain a low
turnover rate of about 17% per yean

However, money isn’t everything. In his pre,s-
entation, Tulgan also featured several non-finan-
cial elements, such as people needing to be sat-
isfied with their jobs. One of those basics, giving
employees control over tasks, is an area where
Trader Joe’s has an upper hand. Instead of giv-
ing employees specific instructions on how to
merchandise and what to feature. Trader Joe’s
trains the staff on their products and gives them
the green light to handle the rest. By offering
workers some creative authority, the environ-
ment tends to be more personal, more original
and more fun.

But not all retailers are quick to paint their
entire employee base as worthy of keeping
around. Applebee’s recently implemented a pro-
gram that ignores overall turnover but instead
rewards managers for keeping turnover low
among top-performing employees. They call it
“Mix Management”: the idea is that not all
employees perform equally, nor should they be
mourned equally when they leave. By focusing
on the top tier, Applebee’s has been able to keep
turnover low among their very best performers.

Retailers don’t need to be reminded that
employees are always an extension of their
stores, or tbat keeping turnover low can reduce
overhead costs in the long run. But as the retail
landscape becomes more competitive, turnover
will start to matter more, and the retailers with
the best employees will win. Maybe we don’t
need to be leaving our employees alone, but we
might want to think about giving them a little
more leeway.

34 www.cbainstoreage.com CHAIN STORE AGE, OCTOBER 2005