workforce development and planning a8

MGMT 364-DEB

Miko Smith

Case Study

Professor Williams

Workforce Development and Planning

At Tanglewood, the primary concern for recruiting is the turnover rate; it needs employees who can impact huge sales. The process of recruiting is, therefore, very important to the management of the company. It encourages systematic review of the existing policies that encourages a recruiting system for store associates. Despite concentrating on the policies, Tanglewood focuses on the type of recruitment methods that will attract diversely cultural and personalized group of applicants on timely basis. The ideal types of individuals at Tanglewood are those who are committed to delivering their best in terms of output on timely basis. The organization focuses on energetic individuals who are also knowledgeable and skilled in working at the organization.

Recruitment Methods

There are different methods in the recruitment process depending on the organizational needs and the costs of acquiring new applicants. These methods can be narrowed down into two categories, that is, open and targeted recruiting processes. Each of the methods has its own advantages and disadvantages besides the cost implications of each of the process. Some of the methods are opened to any kind of applicant who wishes to work with the company such as applicant initiated, state of the job services, and kiosks. On the other hand, some of the methods are targeted to specified applicants. These methods seem to go after industry’s best personnel for specific positions in the company that are deemed demanding. These methods target the most experienced and competent people in the industry.

Why Work at Tanglewood

The retail industry has had an experience of years in handling different kinds of employees, working at Tanglewood means being part of one of the biggest organizations in the retail industry that attracts over $4 trillion in sales in a single year. It incorporates a very friendly organizational culture, policies and values that are conducive for productivity of different employees. Compared to most of the same corporation in the same industry, Tanglewood is the best to work for due to its friendly management style and teamwork of the employees.

Recruiting Yield Data

What the information from the table implies is that Western Washington recruits more applicants through broad recruiting methods (four of them) than Eastern and Northern Washington that only uses three recruitment processes each. Generally, the three common and widely used methods that attract many applicants include Applicant Initiated, Kiosks and Job Service but of all the methods, applicant Initiated is the least expensive recruitment method compared to the rest of other methods in each of the application regions. No application methods exceeds a 50% qualification rate with Recruiting Agency only coming at 48% in the applicants it brings and followed closely by, surprisingly, referrals at an average of 46% across the three regions. The hiring rate falls higher for the Employment Agency, Referrals and Kiosks in that order for all the regions with Job Service scoring the least hiring rate. This implies that it attracts a lot of unqualified applicants. The retention rate of the organization is quite impressive with individuals who have been referred to the company staying longer than other applicants sourced using other methods.

Using Kiosks and Staffing Agencies

Staffing and staffing agencies attract relatively more qualified applicants and they are comparatively cost-effective methods of recruiting compared to referrals that are quite expensive to prepare and set up. What this means to the company is that, by using staffing agencies and kiosks, it is in a position to attract qualified applicants at very cost-friendly rate thus saving the company the overall costs of recruiting. The implication of other regions using more of the formal hiring methods would boil down to total overall costs of hiring where, additional methods of formal hiring would mean more costs being incurred.

Improving Customer Service

The top management should not only recruit and leave it at that. The management, through the human resource department should identify the best applicants in terms of qualifications, talents, interests, and so on and retain them through various ways for long-term needs of the company. The retention of top employees can be achieved through methods such as fair employee treatments, conducive environment to work in, industry’s fair remuneration levels and effective management. Management concern with alternative methods would be based on the competitiveness of the industry and the methods used by the organization’s competitors. This is why the management needs to comprehensively analyze the environment to effectively come up with alternatives of improving customer service.

Reference

Kammeyer-Mueller, J. (2015). Tanglewood Casebook for use with Staffing Organizations (8th ed.). Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.