In Tanglewood, high turnover rates are caused by internal and external factors. Without a properly managed workforce, there are several undesirable outcomes that may occur. First, the instruction that is done may be uneven in quality and effectiveness. This means that the wrong skills may be taught and/or that employees are inadequately prepared for all their job duties. Second, without adequate training, employees are more easily flustered and stressed in trying to do their work. The case vividly portrays that inadequate HR practices and lack of job analysis may lead to voluntary and involuntary turnover and low performance among employees.
The main causes of turnover are instability among lower level employees, inadequate selection and recruitment procedure, low compensation and benefits, increased responsibilities and supervisors on the “Tanglewood way”. These factors lead to low motivation and dissatisfaction. Depression, anxiety, irritation, and anger are common results of work-related stress. These usually lead to job boredom, burnout, and/or withdrawal in the forms of absenteeism and turnover.
Stress has serious consequences for the organization as well-absenteeism, poor employee-management relations, poor productivity, high accident rates, high turnover, poor organizational climate, antagonism at work, job dissatisfaction, and decreased ability to make decisions. Lack of innovative benefits offerings forces new employees to find new jobs in competitive firms. Another problem is lack of career development and career outcomes proposed by other retail companies.
Many employees dislike the “Tanglewood way” seeing it as old fashioned and ineffective for a retail chain. Tanglewood does not support employees who have family problems so it is easier to find another job than to receive additional support in Tanglewood. The organization is a network of retail service units scattered over an area. Each unit can provide the full services offered by the organization. This means they both sell new services to customers and maintain the account relationships with existing customers. All employees are expected to be able to perform most of the tasks for which the customer asks (Marvin 2004).
In Tanglewood the turnover is dysfunctional because the majority of employees who leave the organization are low skilled workers (Reed, 2001). Thus, there are some employees who have high performance results but dissatisfied with pay and compensation. In general, this situation is caused by internal and external factors mentioned above and low compensation rates. The case shows that “it generally is preferable to see negative correlations between performance indicators and satisfaction, because it means that those with higher levels of performance are less likely to leave the organization” (Case study).
Effective compensation administration must be sensitive to competitive labor market conditions. For this reason, using salary survey information skillfully becomes very important. Beyond grounding pay rates in competitive market conditions, compensation plans should be properly structured and designed to support organizational goals. Such issues as how much money it takes to serve as a lure to more performance, ethical concerns in using incentive plans, and fully aligning incentive plans with organizational requirements are all vital ingredients to effective plan design. Benefits plans and designs are important in their own way.
Such plans can consume a sizable portion of total compensation dollars. For that expense, employers would like to receive–but often have trouble obtaining–returns in employee goodwill and performance. For these reasons, effective benefits design is often a silent but important partner in human resources planning and administration (Reed, 2001).
Additional forms of information needed for Tanglewood are competitors analysis and compensation rates paid for competitors, career development programs and benefits. Also, Tanglewood should collect data about innovative training programs and benefits programs, their advantages and disadvantages for a retail company. Job analysis is required because it is crucial for problem identification and evaluation of turnover rates.
These are among the most basic problems with which a human resources management program must grapple. Even though each of these questions deals with a different facet of human resources management, their answers eventually find a common solution in the process of job analysis. This is to say that job analysis is a taproot to virtually all HRM programming and practices. The analysis of a job or set of jobs can feed a number of HRM applications. As elaborated on later, each form of analysis focuses on distinctive features of jobs (Reed, 2001).
In order to reduce employees’ turnover, Tanglewood should improve its compensation system and introduce innovative benefits programs. To achieve this purpose, the duties and activities that characterize a given job are identified and described. The result of this kind of job analysis is a job description. In its most comprehensive manifestation, all jobs in an organization are identified and described. These job descriptions are then put through some form of job evaluation.
The job evaluation compares jobs on certain criteria (such as the amount of responsibility required or the complexity of the work). By evaluating the typical duties and activities of different jobs using standard evaluation rating procedure, the relative worth of jobs in the organization can be determined. Jobs can then be ranked into groups (or grades), and priced accordingly (Marvin, 2004).
With the economic restructurings taking place in the economy, though, this traditional orientation to filling manpower needs has been increasingly replaced by a more critical approach to organizational staffing. In this newer approach, human resources managers can add value by questioning the existing structure and recommending alternatives to full-time staffing to meet organizational production needs. Once a decision is made to staff an open position, the issue is to find someone to fill it. The process of finding and attracting qualified applicants is the heart of the recruiting process (Marvin, 2004).
Tanglewood should change its selection and recruitment practices. The case study mentions that:”11% of external applicants are selected to become assistant store managers” (Case study).Tanglewood should employ only those people who are interested in this job and is eager to stay with a company. The processes of staffing and recruiting should be considered in terms of how those processes impact on the composition of the workforce eventually hired (Marvin, 2004).
Many organizations are obligated to comply with equal employment and affirmative action (AA) requirements so that certain classes of people–especially minority members, women, and disabled individuals–are not discriminated against in hiring practices. Findings of unlawful employment discrimination can lead to costs in court settlements, bad publicity, and employee ill will.
In sum, dysfunctional turnover is caused by poor HR practices (selection and recruitment) and lack of analysis within the corporation. Whether the application is compensation, selection, training, performance engineering, or career management, all begin with the process of job analysis. Job analysis will help to determine responsibilities and duties of employees, and evaluate the level of stress and dissatisfaction caused by increased responsibilities and work overload
References
Marvin, B. (2004). From Turnover to Teamwork: How to Build and Retain a Customer-Oriented Foodservice Staff. Wiley; 1 edition.
Reed, A. (2001). Innovation in Human Resource Management. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Case Study Tanglewood. N.d.