1. WINNING THE TALENT WAR

2.  Having attracted and developed effective
employees, an important challenge in
retailing is to keep them.
 High turnover reduces sales and increases
costs.
 Sales are lost because inexperienced
employees the skills and knowledge about
company policies and merchandise to
interact effectively with customers.

3.  To reduce turnover, retailers need to build an
atmosphere of mutual commitment in their
firms.
 Approaches to build mutual commitment:
1. Empowering Employees
2. Creating a partnering relationship with
employees

4.  Empowerment is a process in which
managers share power and decision-making
authority with employees.
 When employees have the authority to make
decisions
 they are more confident in their abilities
 have a greater opportunity to provide service to
customers
 are more committed to the firm’s success.

5.  The first step in empowering employees is reviewing
employee activities that require a manager’s
approval.
 Empowerment of retail employees transfers
authority and responsibility for making decisions to
lower levels in the organization.
 These employees are closer to the customers and in a
good position to know what it takes to satisfy
customers.
 For empowerment to work, managers must have an
attitude to respect and trust, not control and distrust.

6.  Three HR management activities that build
commitment by developing partnering
relationships with employees are:
1. Reducing status differences
2. Promoting from within
3. Enabling employees to balance their careers and
families

7.  Many retailers attempt to reduce status
differences among employees.
 With limited status differences, employees feel
that they play important roles in the firm’s ability
to achieve its goals and that their contributions
are valued.
 Status differences can be reduced symbolically
through the use of language and substantively by
lowering wage differences and increasing
communications among managers at different
levels in the company.

8.  Staffing policy hiring new employees only for
positions at lowest levels in the job hierarchy
and then promoting experienced employees to
openings at higher levels in the hierarchy.
 Other retailers frequently hire people from
competitors when management positions
become available.
 Promotion-from-within policies establish a
sense of fairness and also commit the retailer to
developing its own employees.

9.  Increasing number of two-income and single-
parent families make it difficult for
employees to effectively do their jobs and
manage their households simultaneously.
 Retailers can build employee commitment by
offering services like job
sharing, childcare, and employee assistance
programs to help their employees manage
these problems.

10.  Flextime is a job scheduling system that
enables employees to choose the times they
work.
 Job sharing is when two or more employees
voluntarily are responsible for a job that was
previously held by one person.
 Both programs let employees accommodate
their work schedules to other demands in
their life, such as being home when their
children return from school.