Discuss about the five articles that focus on the importance and role of HRM in the retail sector.
Effective human resource management is pivotal to the success of any organization. HRM ensures that competent employees are recruited in the business and are fairly compensated. Ensuring employee satisfaction is also an important role played by the HRM of a firm. This report highlights five articles that focus on the importance and role of HRM in the retail sector. The selected journals are peer reviewed and have been widely known for their contribution to the subject.
Title: Customer based brand equity and human resource management image
Girod, (2016) ‘Customer-based brand equity and human resource management image’, European Journal of Marketing, 50(7/8), 1185-1208.
Key Words: Brand equity, retailing, Brand management, human resource management and brand image
Methodology: Survey of Swedish customers in two retail categories – Groceries and home decoration.
Literature review: This research highlights the relationships between the HRM image of a firm as well as its customer brand equity. Such researches have often highlighted how to attract and maintain employees through employer branding. This study aims to link HRM directly to branding as well as marketing which is aimed at customers simply as an altruistic dimension of brand image.
This research finds that that a brand’s positioning or customer image is largely impacted by the HRM image in the minds of customers. This research has highlighted that HRM branding of an organization is not just essential to attract, recruit, retain and maintain employees but also plays a significant role in defining an image in the minds of the customers of the brand. This research highlights upon the need of integrating branding and HRM of a firm.
The research depicts that working only with branding in terms of internal employee branding is a rather narrow approach to the understanding of human resource management. On the other hand, HRM of an organization is something that all the stakeholders of the organization concern themselves with. Customers are an important stakeholder of any organization and therefore it is imperative that the HRM practices and ideologies adopted by an organization impact customers as well.
It was also established that most organizations have not yet realized the importance or the connection between human resource management and marketing of a firm. More so, HRM managers and marketing managers do not have aligned goals or attend similar conferences. The research recommends that the marketing departments of retail organizations must join hands with the HRM and address the issue of customer image jointly.
This would lead to an improved image of the brand in the minds of customers leading to better sales and increased customer base. This can be easily understood as most retail organizations have regular people as their customers. It will not be uncommon for a retail organization to find that a few of their employees fall in the exact same target market as their customers. Therefore, it is important to keep their employees satisfied and motivated. They in turn will work harder towards spreading the same positive image to the customers of the brand.
Title: Human resource management and Organizational performance: Evidence from retail banking.
Ann P. Bartel. (2004), ‘Human Resource Management and Organizational Performance: Evidence from Retail Banking’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 57, 181-599.
Key words: Retail management, banking, human resource management, organizational performance, performance evaluation, feedback and recognition.
Methodology: Interview and survey
Literature review: This article throws light on the retail branch trends of employee performance existing in a large Canadian bank. The research depicted that high performance work system allows employees to perform better. A high performance work system is characterized by three important details. The employees of a high performance work system must present opportunity to participate, opportunities to enhance skills and incentives for good performance.
This is true for every organization operating in a retail industry. Incentives are often used as a tool to motivate employees. Through incentives and other such financial and non-financial sources of recognition, organizations make employees feel valued by the firm. This in turn builds trust and mutual respect.
This research showed that the branch which bestowed incentives upon its employees for good performance also recorded positive performances overall. This is true for every firm. When employees are consistently felt valued and offered incentives, they tend to perform better and develop a healthy competitive environment at the workplace.
By offering opportunities to participate, organizations also create a positive flow of communication within the system. Through survey it was established that bank branches where employees were given better opportunities to participate, performed better than others. This can be seen in other retail firms as well. Offering opportunities to participate helps employees in gaining a sense of ownership for the firm. These opportunities also assist managers in building open sources of communication in the entire organization. This in turn leads to an overall positive working environment further improving employee performance.
Branches that offered opportunities to build skills were also depicted an overall improved performance. Employees took these opportunities as a sign of trust bestowed upon by the firm in the employee. Overall, these three factors largely contribute to the success of any organization. These three factors combined lead to improved performance of employees and a better workplace environment within the entire organizational system.
Title: The impact of staffing policies on retail buyer job attitudes and behaviors
Ganesan, Shankar, & Weitz, Barton A. (1996). ‘The impact of staffing policies on retail buyer job attitudes and behaviors’. Journal of Retailing, 72(1), 31-56.
Key Words: Promotions, human resource management, job attitude, retail management, buyer attitude, incentives and marketing.
Methodology: Sampling and Survey
Literature review: Staffing policies have always had a significant impact on the performance of employees. Four critical policies that have been discussed in this research are promotions through seniority, promotion from within, opportunities for intra-organizational mobility and well defined career paths.
Promotions from within depict the opportunities perceived by employees for their growth within the organization. Increased opportunities for growth motivate employees to stay retained within the same organization and has an overall positive impact on the employee performance. These opportunities have had a positive impact on the retailer buyer job attitude and behavior.
Well defined career paths within the organization increase the buyer’s perception of promotion opportunities within the retail organization. The very existence of a well-defined career path makes it clear to the employees about the kind of promotional opportunities they can expect in the organization. This in turn allows them to set clear goals for themselves leading to a positive workplace attitude and improved performance.
Intraorganizational mobility increases the buyer’s perspective of promotion opportunities within a firm. This mobility allows employees to seek opportunity in any part of the organization. Thus employees perceive a greater opportunity for their promotion as well as their growth and learning. Various organizations seek employees with diverse learning experiences and hence allow this mobility for the long term mutual benefit of the employee as well as the organization.
Promotions have often been granted in terms of seniority to employees and have been an opportunity for the organization to show value and respect to an employee who has associated with the firm for a long duration. However, this has had a negative impact on employee motivation. There are several employees who believe that promotion decisions should be based on performance rather than seniority.
Title: ‘Business as usual?’ Retail employee perceptions of organizational life following cross-border acquisition
Pioch, Elke, (2007). ‘Business as usual?’ Retail employee perceptions of organizational life following cross-border acquisition’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18(2), 209.
Key words: Cross-border acquisition, employee relations, international retailing, organizational culture management, sectoral culture.
Methodology: Observation and interview
Literature Review: Strong organizational cultures are the backbone of various retail organizations. With the increasing internationalizations in the retail business, it is becoming difficult for businesses to preserve the culture in the international boundaries. This research is a case study of a UK retailer SuperShop Plus. This retailer tried to understand and establish the same organizational culture within their international offices as their head office in UK.
The research depicts that it is not as easy but organizations must continue to invest their efforts in building the same culture. This can be achieved by certain ways. Firstly direct involvement of employees is very important especially at the beginning of the work. A few employees must be sent to look over the new location rather than hiring an all new team at the new location. Secondly, open and transparent communication is the key to the change. Conducting virtual meetings and allowing the employees from the new location to visit the head office often must be encouraged in order for them to get the first hand taste of the organizational culture practiced. Common trainings, emails and discussion forums must be established in order to flow the same culture in different parts of the business.
The second part of the research also focuses on the fact that it is important in the retail industry to follow the same culture in different parts of the world because this culture has a direct impact on customer positioning. Employees of an organization communicate with the customers of the business and therefore it is imperative that the stakeholders of the business are treated in the same manner irrespective of their geographical location.
Title: Making working in retailing interesting: A study of human resource management practices in Danish grocery retail chains.
Esbjerg, Buck, & Grunert, (2010), ‘making working in retailing interesting: A study of human resource management practices in Danish grocery retail chains’, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 17(2), 97-108.
Key words: Grocery retailing, Human resource management and Employee types
Methodology: Interviewing 5 Danish retail chains.
Literature review: This research demonstrates how a various Danish organizations seek to make low wage and low scale retail jobs interesting. This research establishes that all the employees following in the before mentioned category can be divided into three sections on the basis of their motivations within the firm. These three categories are transitional workers, core employees and career seekers. The central challenge faced is to make a low pay and low scale job interesting for all these three categories of people.
Transitional workers work part time or for short duration and can often be motivated by short term benefits. It has been observed that most of these employees comprise of youth and students who do these jobs for extra pocket money. Small bonuses and movie tickets can motivate them to continue with the job. Organizations tend to hire a lot of these transitional workers in abundance during their peak business sessions.
Core workers work full time but do not have any managerial ambitions. They can be motivated through financial and non-financial ways of rewards and recognition. Core employees are elder than transitional workers but they still do not have high ambitions. A lot of people falling in this category were women. They can be motivated by flexible working hours, awards, opportunities to work from home and other financial benefits.
Career seekers are full time employees with managerial ambitions. They are looking at a long term career in the industry and wish to make it big. They can be motivated through designation promotions, lateral transfers and increased opportunities for learning. Conducting trainings for them, organizing career counselling sessions, guiding them and aligning their personal goals with organizational goals can help the organization in retaining these employees
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