Organisations sustain competiveness in the market based on the employees’ talent and skills. Ensuring customer satisfaction is the major talent of the employees in any organisation. However, in many organisations the problems with the customer satisfaction is emerging in various ways. It is mainly found to be associated with the frontline staff. There is growing concern related to the casualisation in Australia (Page et al., 2013). In this report the casualisation related to the Australian based retail company and consumer service chain, “Cole’s supermarket Australia Pty Ltd”. It is trading as Coles and is headquartering in Melbourne (Keith 2012). The report deals with the issue in the organisation related to the increasing level of casualisation since last five years. It has been profoundly noted among the frontline staff and the frontline supervision. It is suspected to be the root cause of the problem. The report is addressed to CEO of the organisation, discussing the positive and the not-so positive impacts of casualising the employment conditions of people at the customer interface (face-to-face, call centre, online and support staff). It appears that the rationale for casualisation is the limited career opportunities and talent enhancement training. On the other hand it has been observed that there are some extremely talented people in the ranks of the casuals. The report aims to reflect on the issues among others and identify the solutions to recommend the same to overcome the target issue. The report provides recommendations to strengthen the frontline performance of employees in Coles.
The issue of casualisation
Casualisation in retail industry is the growing concern in Australia. It is the shifting of the permanent or full time employees to the contract and casual positions. These employees end up in long sick leaves or annual leaves. Most are recruited for pay on hourly basis. Casualisation rate in Australia is found to be 35% (Mortimer and Ingersoll 2015). In Australia, retail is the largest industry in terms of employment. This industry contains 13% of the Australian workforces. The employee type varies significantly in this industry starting from frontline employees, support staff, employee in the back office and in call centre. There are high job opportunities. However, there are many employees working in this sector casually (Price 2016). The rate of casualisation has been found to increase since five years in Coles.
Considering the issue of Coles, the casualisation of employees is mainly attributed to the extension of retail trading hours and lack of growth opportunities. Although it is in alignment with the state government rules, it led to casualisation (AO 2012). There is an increasing need of the part time and the casual employment in the Cole stores. It is due to the increasing trend of late night shopping. Full time employees in retail have 5 day working week. The full time employees and the permanent employees cannot staff the stores, for the duration of the opening hours of the stores. It is increasing the rate of the part time and casualisation. In the areas like New South Wales and Victoria, the trading hours are extended. The stores are open on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. This enhances the casualisation as the full time employees cannot cope up with the stretching of the hop hours (Page et al. 2013). Retrospectively, it is still in doubt if the union’s success in making the voluntary participation of the employee on Saturday afternoon, exacerbated the casualisation. With the Sunday trading these issues further got exacerbated (Heino 2015). In addition the casualisation in Coles may be due to lack of talent management opportunities and scope of career development. The opinion that the casualisation of employees is mainly attributed to the limited career opportunities is supported by Schermerhorn et al. (2014). Casualisation according to this study is due to flexibility needs, and for opportunities to learn new skills. It implies for the need of training and flexibility for the young workers to give them career and income security.
Lack of training prevents front staff to fulfil frontline employee’s role as they are not aware of the customer needs and tactics to engage them. It leads to poor follow up of the protocols and workplace rules. It results in employee turnover and customer dissatisfaction. Without training and learning opportunities the employees fail to give high productivity. The skilled employees end up meeting the needs of the unskilled workers. The unskilled employees always seek guidance from the seniors and supervisors. Consequently the customer care is at stake (Nankervis et al. 2013). Employees at call centre too ineffectively mange the client issues and leads to poor satisfaction among customers. Consequently, the incompetent employees lose enthusiasm and motivation to work. The same is supported by Mortimer and Ingersoll (2015) and it highlights that it is unattractive for many employees to work in retail job and leads to casualisation. Younger employees are found with greater percentage of casualisation than the older employees. The young employees are frustrated with the perceived lack of career progression in retail store jobs. They look for alternate jobs and opportunities such as freelancers or any other. The employee remain absent from work for longer period, which is increasing the rate of casualisation (Ivancheva and O’Flynn 2016).
Impact of casualisation
Casualisation greatly impacts the employee performance at the customer interface. It is because of the crucial role played by the frontline staff and the frontline supervision. In any retail store the front line employees play a great role in customer satisfaction. A receptionist at front desk knows the organisation well and tackles the routine enquires on spot. The front line employee makes or breaks the retail store. Their role is vital in engaging the customer by explaining the promotional offers, new items stores, discounts, and how to take advantage of the good deals. It helps customers to enjoy the shopping experience and encourage the client engagement. The front line staffs fulfil the two basic needs of the staff. It includes feeling welcomed and important. The skills required to excel in customer care are flexibility, confidence, patience, innate friendliness, multitasking, respectful behaviours, optimism, empathy and positivity (Handa and Gulati 2014). The role of the call centre employees in retail sector involves fulfilment of the customer requirements. They deal with the inbound and outbound calls and communicate with the customers through the emails, web chats and posts. The employees known as customer agents, customer service representatives, and associates sell products and services by undertaking the customer research. The skills required for employees at this stage to provide excellent customer care are the effective communication, empathetic, listener, problem solver, adaptable, problem solver and building rapport. The team leaders find ways to better customer satisfaction, conflict resolution and negotiate effective utilisation of resources. Casual employees fail to fulfil these needs of customers (Korschun et al., 2014). There are both positive and not so positive impacts of casualising the employment condition at the customer interface. The impact is discussed in subsequent sections.
Positive and the not-so positive impacts of casualising the employment conditions
The positive impact of the casualisation is the increasing staffing level and flexibility of the frontline employees in the Coles stores. The casual frontline employees are recruited in the busy months at low wages. They may deliver better service at lower cost as they are entitled to hourly pay that is casual loading. The staffing level will help customers even at odd hours such as night time shopping. The old frontline employees are not available at odd hours in Coles. Customers return happy as they are guided even at night by the casual employee with the same enthusiasm and optimism as they are by a permanent frontline employee in the morning shift (Rogatyuk 2016).
The desire to get paid for immediate needs prove the frontline employees to engage proactively with the customers may it be face-to face, online support, or call centre. The casual employment is considered an only source of bread and better and improve standard of living (Huws et al. 2015). It is because casual frontline employees find the work as temporary solution to the unemployment. They are more enthusiastic and motivated in problem solving and helping customers make grocery purchase decisions. The outcomes are positive customer experience. In addition the employees even at call centre handle the dirty and odd conflicts as they are more absorbed in the work (Korschun, Bhattacharya and Swain 2014). Consequently the frontline employees in stores and call centres grab every opportunity to leave a positive influence on the customers in Cole stores. They play a vital role in converting the browsers to the groceries shoppers by responding to the mails and queries online. The casual employee thus pays attention to details and impresses the customers with knowledge. It is the best way to give the grocery shoppers a superior experience, which is difficult to gain in online shopping.
The positive energy in casual employees may be reinforced and the motivation may be sustained by training facilities. It will help promote the kind of behaviours and leaning required in the retails store teams. If the behaviour appropriate for customer attraction is rewarded, the employees an better understand the demands of the retails store jobs in Coles. It will help the casual employees to maintain the cheerful demeanour. It promotes greater customer engagement and interaction with the staff (Nda and Fard 2013). Casual employees with the right talent must be good at planning; organising and managing customers service in back end and front end, even with the temporary employment. It may include indenting for the stocks, crating the roasters, making reports at one end and also interact with the customers at one end. With such due diligence the employee can leave a positive impression whenever interacting with the customers. The backend casual employees also work hard in maintain product availability, stock accuracy, cleanliness and hygiene and reporting any product issues. Even though working for short duration or temporary contract period, working diligently for allocated hours ensures the return of the happy customers. It will help the casual employee achieve the set targets through cross selling or upselling (McGann Moss and White 2012).
The not so positive impact of dealing with casual employees is low wage and payment method and no rewards or incentives. The negative impact of the casualisation is the lack of commitment among frontline employee in supporting and engaging customers in stores. They have lesser attachment with the organisation and thus do not give sincere efforts in meeting the customer needs and demands. They have less familiarity with the Coles and latest products or discounts. Therefore, they fail to address the inquiries of the customers on spot (Wan, POON and Chu 2014). The poor customer service such as not welcoming at store or explaining the products is due to lack of knowledge among the casual workers. Eventually, the customers are dissatisfied with the experience and return to the competitor’s stores. The casual employee in call centres fails to demonstrate the winning attitude during the customer complaints due to poor knowledge, skills and attitudes. Thus, it greatly hampers the customer loyalty. Due to lack of knowledge the employees in the frontline as well as in call centre fail to tailor recommendations that are customer oriented versus the one that sounds overly promotional in theoretical way (Egbo 2014).
The casual employees at front and back office may be demotivated overtime as they are not entitled to compensation or extra benefits during any major illness or workplace accidents. It may add to anger and resentment overtime that may deteriorate the customer handling skills. The demotivated front-end employees due to lack of job security may fail to attend the customers in details and grab the attention. Customers do not prefer going to staff those are too distant or enraged. Decrease in customer strength will eventually impact the business profit (Egbo 2014). The frontline staff as well as those in call centre or support service may end up communicating with the client in monosyllable rather than in paragraph. It may be an added backdrop with the overflowing customers in the weekend, increasing incidence of online sales and malls overflowing with customers. Therefore, the causal employee will fail to impress customers to return to the stores (Watson 2013). The casual employees tend to look for the alternate source of learning opportunities if the same is not present in Coles.
Recommendations to strengthen the frontline performance of organisation
The following recommendations are made to overcome the issue of casualisation and poor customer satisfaction in Coles and other long term consequences. It is necessary to consider about innovation. It may happen that casualised workforce in frontline has per incentive to innovate and business may get away from customers. Casual workers may be motivated through target setting, incentives and small rewards. Training opportunities may be provided to eliminate the feeling of insecurity and vulnerability among employees. It will help Coles to capture knowledge and intellectual capability of potential workers. It will improve the customer service and prevent return of customers’ to the competitor’s market (Mortimer and Ingersoll, 2015).
The organisation may take initiative in converting the casual employees to the part-time employees based on agreement of the enterprise and state rules. It is recommended to the CEO to consider engaging the larger number of full time employees and fill the less number of positions with the part time employees. There is a need of radical change in the level of permanent employment. The casuals may compromise of less than 10% of the total workforce. It will greatly reduce the casualisation as per Rogatyuk (2016). It will decrease the employee turnover and prevent replacing the old employees with low wage casual employees. It is advantageous because the experienced frontline staff will give excellent customer service. It will also decrease the union members per store for the union. Since Coles is the stable trading pattern, it will be easy to eliminate the casualisation problem. Further, the CEO is recommended to convert the casual workers to the part time employees and consider the request of permanency from employees. It will further ensure greater permanency in Cole supermarkets and customer service.
Conclusion
Casualisation is the growing concern in retail sector of Australia. The report deals with casualisation of employees in Cole supermarket in Australia. Supermarket has multiple forms of control over the workforce. The positive impact of the casualisation of employees on customers service are increasing staffing level and workforce flexibility of the frontline employee, deal with the client with enthusiasm and optimism, proactiveness in solving client’s problems, increase in positive customer experience, ease in converting the online browsers to the groceries shoppers, increase returning clients and sales, and meet targets. There are several negative impacts observed that may affect the customer service at Coles due to casual employees (in frontline, call centre or any support service). It includes lack of commitment, pessimistic attitude towards customers, demotivated employees and poor problem solving, desire for alternate source of learning opportunities and less attention to the daily store services, poor communication with customers in store as well as in support service. Another not so positive impact of the casualisation is the low cost of dealing with the casual employees. Overall, considering the extent of casualisation in Coles, it can be concluded that the casual employee if not permanently employed, will greatly impact the profit making of organisation. The report made recommendations to CEO to overcome this issue of casualisation and its not so positive impact on customer service.
References
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