Employee Development and Performance ***This Assignment is for an original, unused, not previously published paper with less than 10% plagiarism as it goes thru a checker. ***Continuing from Assignmen

Strategy, Planning, and Selection

Strategy, Planning, and Selection

Introduction

The retails company mission is to drive customer traffic, improve its products portfolio, and boost its financial sustainability and positive culture towards work. To achieve these goals, the retailer should select best HR-director who will help in selecting the best candidate that would help the retailer achieve its market goals. The purpose of this research on strategy, planning, and selection is in order to explain various strategic goals that might be applied to improve efficiency in resource utilization and management and the effects of this strategy to HR job. Additionally, the research will as well examine four approaches of job design and further explanation of the challenges and constraints associated with recruiting workers.

Selection of the best strategy and how it will have some impact on the retails

Companies that apply business strategies focus on delivering values to customers in order to position the business well in the industry. These strategies are critical in engaging customer, gaining an edge and increase retails store profits. The strategies that might have an impact on this retails company include cost leadership, differentiation and focus on differentiation and low cost. Cost leadership is the approach of producing product at a cost that is lower than the competitor product cost (Porter, M. E. 1989). The retails companies utilize the cost differentiation strategy by employing economies of scale in advertising, manufacturing and sourcing product in order to ensure units cost of each product sold is low hence attracting customers who are price conscious.

Differentiation strategy involves differentiating one characteristic of a product that is known to be important to most buyers while still keeping other product characteristics and their characteristics controlled or in line with competitor cost for the same characteristics. The branding and packaging may be used to differentiate the product from a competitor. The retailer will reduce the cost of primary activities such as human resource function by increasing experience curve, reducing products errors that are associated with labor that might results to high HR function especially when the employees are inefficiency (Zhang, Farris, Irvin, Kushwaha, Steenburgh, & Weitz, 2010). The focused approach specifically focuses on product differentiation or cost leadership that targets a certain market niche.

The retailer may differentiate a product based on the locality by sourcing product locally. Some customer would like to purchase products that boost local community wellbeing, therefore, they may target to purchase locally sourced products where customers can follow up if the suppliers adhere to green business practices. Therefore, a retailer differentiates products by giving the retailer local feel like one of ensuring product demand is high as compared to competitors. The retailer may still utilize low-cost focus by focusing on repackaging product and products mixing to improve the test of the already supplied product as one way of lowering high values brand to meet customer purchasing powers.

The strategies that deem so appropriate for retailer include cost leadership strategy. The retailer may use this strategy by providing a larger assortment of products. The strategy would help in attracting customer with low prices and keep them engaged with discount and shopping convenience (Zhang, Farris, Irvin, Kushwaha, Steenburgh, & Weitz, 2010). Some American only shop when there is a discount involved so that they may benefit with lower cost. Therefore, this retailer may lower the cost of products by providing discounts on the inventory to be bought. The cost differentiation strategy is more appropriate for the efficiency-minded retail organization. The retailer would as well raise its market shares pie by not only focusing on low cost but on improving customer services alone the stores.

Customers are an important resource within an organization because they determine the future of the organization operation. Therefore, having appropriate strategies in place that would improve customer traffic and initiating strategies that would attract customer will help the firm meet market goals. This strategy will have an effect on the HR-job because it will improve efficiency in cost management it involves appropriate allocation of a task, employees training to improve customer services and fewer products errors. The HR function activities would help in reducing cost because if the right employees are selected that would help in improving the brand reputation of an organization then it would be easy not to allocate large budget on marketing hence the products would be sold at lower cost.

Importance of effective job design applications in supporting the overall strategic goals of the organization

The approach of job design includes job rotation, job engineering, job enlargement, and job enrichment. The job rotation is the approach of moving employees from job to job to add variety and reduce boredom by allowing them to perform a verity of task (Garg, & Rastogi, 2006. For example, a store manager moved to senior store manager in other stores. This approach helps in providing employees will a variety of skill so that employees may be effective to do their job without more supervision. This approach of job rotation will lead to job interruption because it would take a while before employees are accustomed to the new task. It increases the cost of training because employees have to be trained on job requirement.

Job engineering focuses on the task to be performed, the method used for workflow among employees, a layout of workers, performance standard and interdependence among machines. These approaches involve a high level of job specialization whereby a worker would be skilled in a particular job but disadvantage involved is that it is boring. Job enlargement is an approach that involves wishing or adopting proper job design by combining various activities at the same level or adding them to an existing job (Garg, & Rastogi, 2006). For example, in ascertain departments an organization can add several tasks in order to ensure after the original task is over the employees don’t to get bored. For example, in Retail Company after employees move from teller section that section may include another task such as offering after services to customers through helping in packaging.

Job enrichment involves redesigning jobs so that the job might be more challenging and less repetitive. The roles that are more repetitive are combined to ensure an organization does not lose a lot of time and cost on repetitive jobs (Garg, & Rastogi, 2006). Example of this approach includes whereby a role of supply chain manager may be combined with the role of operation manager to ensure the task is repetitive because the two roles resemble each other. The job design has major benefits to an organization as it specifies the content and procedures of performing a particular task in the organization. The job design specifies organizational culture, norms, and values that its members need to follow to achieve the organizational goal.

If the retailer is able to align the job design with organization mission and culture the organization would build a sustainable, competitive and profitable organization. The effective job design provides related job data hence helping in selecting a suited candidate for the job. Through job design, the retailer company would be able to select competent employees who are capable of performing their task well in the organizations. Therefore through job design, an organization would have skilled and well competent workers who would help the firm in achieving its market goals. Effective job design makes work more interesting through job rotation or more challenging through job enrichment which help motivate employees to higher performance.

If the strategies set for Retailer Company are aligned with this approach, the employees would be more committed to the organization objective, motivated to work extra hard which as a result and organization productivity and employee satisfaction at work will be impacted as result (Garg, & Rastogi, 2006). Organization change may be addressed through job design and job redesign hence helping the organization to adapt in a more complex environment. Effective job design makes employees see the future in an organization which might lead to high motivation at work and positive change within an organization. Effective job design specifies how the task is performed which usually lead to positive job performance.

Challenges and constraints associated with recruiting workers

Attracting top talent workers is a major challenge that is facing many organizations including top retailer in the country. The candidate job market and firm have to work harder to capture the attention of prized potential employees. In case the job seeker hears bad things within an organization like an issue of delayed salary, poor work remuneration some potential employees will shy away for job-related opportunities (Bergenhenegouwen, 1996). In order for an organization to win the hearts of the right applicants then it needs to work on developing and promoting employer brand. This entails promoting corporate culture, clarity of candidate and user experience form application process perspective. Lack of quality candidate is another issue facing many corporate organizations.

The candidates in the market are not that competent or skilled in the job they apply. The step that might be applied to get right candidate includes providing opportunities within an organization where employees may develop some skills through mentorship hence they might be considered to replace the job position that develops and the unskilled employee may replace those lower position. The organization needs to review the recruitment data in order to be able to attract the right candidates for the job or hire the right candidates. For example, if the job description is biased it may limit potential candidates that might replace the already existing job opportunities (Bergenhenegouwen, 1996). The organization needs to stand out in order to attract capable employees who are more skilled by having a good compensation plan.

Candidate selection process ideas that might add value and overall

The candidate selection process entails notification or advertising, reviewing, screening, interviewing and then selecting the best candidates that meet the organization job description and requirement. The candidate's selection process ideas include first understanding the job. The hiring manager should understand the job responsibility and kind of traits and behavior that would best fit the job. The hiring manager may conduct job analysis internally or through expert review in order to develop a candidate's selection process that best fit organization job requirement. The approach of developing a better candidate selection process entails developing a process and uses it consistently. This involves determining the best means to determine the most critical traits.

The traits that best fit the job requirement would determine the selection tool in addition to other consideration such as efficiency of the process, candidate perception, and fairness. The employees are assessed by using various approaches such as interview and role plays. The best screening tool that would help the hiring committee match the skill needed with the candidate's skills. The third process that would help in developing the best screening process includes identifying a valid tool. The tool selected should best fit the job and be related to successful job performance. The hiring management team should avoid having a poorly written job description. The job description should be free form spelling mistakes; the job description should be complete so that it would attract potential and qualified candidates.

The organization should avoid poorly prepared interview team. The whole team should be prepared in order to be able to select qualified candidates. Unprepared interview team would fail in its mandate of screening the candidates well based on a job requirement in order to check if the skill meets the skill set of the job. The management and hiring team should avoid bad behavior during the meeting with candidates for example multitasking during the interview, taking telephone calls and not listening to candidates. The interviewing team should ensure they allow a candidate to communicate and ask questions when necessary. The management should avoid asking personalize question or use vulgar language more so to people of color because it may sound like the interview team is discriminating the candidates based on race.

References

Bergenhenegouwen, G. J. (1996). Competence development-a challenge for HRM professionals: core competencies of organizations as guidelines for the development of employees. Journal of European Industrial Training, 20(9), 29-35.

Christensen Hughes, J., & Rog, E. (2008). Talent management: A strategy for improving employee recruitment, retention and engagement within hospitality organizations. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 20(7), 743-757.

Porter, M. E. (1989). How competitive forces shape strategy. In Readings in strategic management (pp. 133-143). Palgrave, London.

Zhang, J., Farris, P. W., Irvin, J. W., Kushwaha, T., Steenburgh, T. J., & Weitz, B. A. (2010). Crafting integrated multichannel retailing strategies. Journal of interactive marketing, 24(2), 168-180.

Garg, P., & Rastogi, R. (2006). A new model of job design: motivating employees' performance. Journal of Management Development, 25(6), 572-587.