Case 1 Mary Watson Recruiting Assistant Store Managers
Mary Watson was recently promoted to the position of regional sales manager for Today’s
fashion, a national chain of specialty clothing stores with 200 outlets across the country. Mary is
the regional manager for the Pacific Coast, which is one of Today’s Fashion’s largest markets. She
manages 35 outlets in California and Oregon; each of these outlets has a store manager who
reports directly to Mary.
Each outlet has between three and five assistant store managers, depending on the number of
specialty departments. Each assistant manager is responsible for one particular specialty
department. These departments vary considerably in size and in the number of sales clerks
reporting to the assistant manager. Because the chain’s success lies in being receptive to local
customers’ tastes and buying habits, each store has a different collection of merchandise, and
several different combinations of departments can be found in Mary’s region. The departments
include casual wear, formal wear, shoes, cosmetics, and jewelry.
Prior to being appointed to the regional sales manager position, Mary had been both a store
manager in a casual-wear department. While she was an assistant manager, Mary had often
thought that she was responsible for many aspects of store management that other assistant
managers were not held responsible for. In addition, she never really felt that there was
considerably room for improvement in how Today’s Fashion was managed. As a result, one of the
first things Mary did after being appointed to the regional sales position was to initiate a job
analysis for the job of assistant store manager.
Mary had a BBA degree with a marketing emphasis from Wyoming State University. Although she
had no formal training in job analysis, she was confident that she could construct an accurate and
useful job description and specification for the assistant manager job, primarily because of her
personal experience with that position. However, rather than simply writing from her own
experience, Mary interviewed three current assistant store managers from the outlet closest to
her regional office in Sacramento. On the basis of these interviews and her own experience, Mary
constructed the job description and job specification shown in Exhibit 1. She hopes that these
documents will form the basis of a new selection program that she wants to implement for her
region. She believes that the best way to improve store management is to hire assistant store
managers who are qualified and perform successful.
Suggested field of study:
1. Critically evaluate the job analysis that Mary conducted for the position of assistant store
manager. Has she used appropriate methods? What are the strengths and weaknesses of her
efforts?
2. What kinds of factors about Today’s Fashion and its operations should Mary have examined
more seriously in order to improve her job analysis?
3. Carefully read the job description and job specification that Mary prepared. Do they appear o
be thorough? Do you think that they are adequate to serve as a basis for a new selection
system? How well do you think these documents will work if Mary is sued for discrimination
in her hiring practices? How would you prepare one for Mary?
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EXHIBIT I
Job Title: assistant Store Manager
Reports to: store Manager
General Description of the Job
Manages the daily functions of a specialty department in the retail operations. The assistant store
manager has responsibility for customer service, supervision of salesclerks, training of new
employees, merchandising, and maintenance of inventory.
Principal duties and Responsibilities
1. Assists customers in merchandise selections, returns, and layaway as need.
2. Clarifies any questions or problems that a salesclerk encounters.
3. Trains, coordinates, directs, and supervises department salesclerks daily.
4. Maintains inventory records.
5. Prepares the department for opening at the beginning of each day.
6. Ensures that the department remains professionally organized and orderly.
General qualification Requirements
Education:
1. Minimum: four-year college degree in marketing or related discipline from an accredited
university.
Experience:
1. Minimum: Six months to one year in a retail environment.
2. Preferred: One to three years as a salesclerk for Today’s Fashion.
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities:
1. Basic math
2. Effective interpersonal skills
3. Good judgment and independent thought
4. Self-starter/highly motivated
5. High integrity
6. Good typing and computer skills
Physical Requirements:
1. Standing and walking required for more than 90 percent of work time.
2. Ability to lift and carry boxes weighing approximately 15 pounds or less.
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Case 2
Recruiting at British Airways
British airways (BA) has the largest centralized commercial recruitment operation in the United
Kingdom, recruiting nearly 5,000 people each year. A team of only ninety people, supported by a
mainframe computer system, has the rather arduous task of handling 72,000 applications, 13,000
job applicants, and 169,000 unsolicited inquiries – all for a workforce of 50,000 employees.
At the beginning of the 1990s, senior human resources executives at BA took significant steps to
deal with changes they had observed in the labor market. For some time it had been increasingly
difficult to find skilled recruits in areas such as information technology, finance, and engineering.
In addition, there had been a clear downturn in the supply of skilled young people. All of these
trends were occurring side by side with an increase, driven by business growth, in demand for
skilled labor.
The widening gap between supply and demand led to the creation of a recruitment marketing
team within BA. The primary purpose of the team was to ensure consistency in the promotion of
BA as a first-choice employer and to extend the company’s customer-focused approach to the
recruitment field.
The team’s firth priority was to apply some basic customer service principles to the recruitment
operation as a whole. Having identified that there were, in fact, two customers for recruitment –
external applicants and line managers – the team drew up basic guidelines and targets for
measuring the quantity, quality, timing, and cost of services provided to each. Within career
services, measure s were developed to ensure excellent response to telephone inquiries (e.g.,
answer all calls within twenty seconds) and graduate recruitment (e.g., acknowledge receipt of a
candidate’s application within three days).
In addition to establishing quality standards, BA also developed four different training programs
for line managers to help increase their understanding of the recruitment marketplace,
emphasize the importance of equal opportunity in recruitment, and improve their basic skills in
assessment and selection. This training was a crucial element of BA’s strategy of meeting the
needs of the airline while simultaneously reducing the head count in the recruitment department
itself. As a consequence of the reorganization and training, many of the traditional HR functions
were handed over to line mangers themselves.
In order to promote BA as a first-choice employer, the company worked with Barkers Advertising
to develop a recruitment advertising style and was consistent with the company’s $40 million
advertising budget. The philosophy was to convey a consistent corporate message while targeting
different niches, especially for positions that were difficult to fill.
In their efforts to promote BA as a first-choice employer, the recruitment department made
special efforts to maintain a delicate balance between projecting the genuine opportunities of
working for a company of the size and diversity of British Airways and the tendency to paint too
rosy a picture of the realities of life within a large corporation. This was seen as especially
important since retaining talented employees in a diminishing labor market was perhaps more
important than attracting them in the first place.
These efforts at BA are indicative of the company’s overall effort to build a more flexible and
capable workforce. Flexibility and capability are two vital ingredients in the company’s strategy to
become a work-class carrier in the airline industry.
Suggested field of study
1. What is the relationship between strategy, human resources planning, and recruitment at
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British Airways?
2. How do you think about BA’s decision to shift responsibility for recruitment and selection
over to line managers?
3. What else could BA do to attract qualified candidates?
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Case 3
Pamela Jones
Pamela Jones enjoyed banking. She had taken a battery of personal aptitude and interest tests
that suggested she might like and do well in either banking or librarianship. She applied for
employment with a large chartered bank, the Bank of Winnipeg, and was quickly accepted.
Her early experiences in banking were almost always challenging and rewarding. She was
enrolled in the bank’s management and development program because of her education (a B.A.
in languages and some postgraduate training in business administration), her previous job
experience, and her obvious intelligence and drive.
During her first year in the training program, Pamela attended classes on banking procedures and
policies, and worked her way through a series of low-level positions in her branch. She was
repeatedly told by her manager that her work was above average. Similarly, the training officer
who worked out of the main office and coordinated the development of junior offices in the
program frequently told Pamela that she was ‘among the best three’ of her cohort of twenty
trainees. She was proud to be a banker and proud to be a member of the Bank of Winnipeg.
After one year in the management development program, however, Pamela found she was not
learning anything new about banking or the B of W. she was shuffled from one job to another at
her own branch, cycling back over many positions several times to help meet temporary
problems caused by absences, overloads, and turnover. Turnover – a rampant problem in banking
– amazed Pamela. She could not understand for many months why so many people started
careers ‘in the service’ of banking, only to leave after one or two years.
After her first year, the repeated promises of moving into her own position as another branch
started to sound hollow to Pamela. The training officer claimed that there were no openings at
other branches suitable for her. On two occasions when openings did occur, the manager of each
of the branches in question rejected Pamela, sight unseen, presumably because she had not been
in banking long enough.
Pamela was not the only unhappy person at her branch. Her immediate supervisor, George burns,
complained that because of the bank’s economy drive, vacated customer service positions were
left unfilled. As branch accountant, Burns was responsible for day-to-day customer service.
Eventually, George Burns left the bank to work for a trust company, earning $90 a month more
for work similar to that he had been performing at the B of W. this left Pamela in the position of
having to supervise the same tellers who had trained her only a few months earlier. Pamela was
amazed at all the mistakes the tellers made, but found it difficult to do much to correct their poor
work habits. All disciplinary procedures had to be administered with the approval of head office.
After several calls to her training officer, Pamela was finally transferred to her first ‘real’ position
in her own branch. Still keen and dedicated, Pamela was soon to lose her enthusiasm.
At her new branch, Pamela was made assistant accountant. Her duties included the supervision
of the seven tellers, some customer service, and a great deal of paperwork. The same economy
drive that she had witnessed at her training branch resulted in the failure to replace customer
service personnel. Pamela was expected to ‘pick up the slack’ at the front desk, neglecting her
own work. Her tellers seldom balanced their own cash, so Pamela stayed late almost every night
to find their errors. To save on overtime, the manager sent the tellers home while Pamela stayed
late, first to correct the tellers’ imbalances, then to finish her own paperwork. He told Pamela
that as an officer of the bank, she was expected to stay until the work of her subordinates, and
her own work, was satisfactorily completed. Pamela realized that most of her counterparts in
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other B of W branches were willing to give this sort of dedication; therefore, so should she. This
situation lasted six months, with little sign of change in sight.
One day, Pamela learned from a phone conversation with a friend at another ranch that she
would be transferred to Hope, British Columbia, to fill an opening that had arisen. Pamela’s
husband was a professional, employed by a large corporation headquartered in Vancouver. His
company did not have an office in Hope; moreover, his training was very specialized so that he
could probably find employment only in large cities anyway.
Accepting transfers was expected of junior officers who wanted to get ahead. Pamela inquired at
head office and learned that the rumor was true. Her training officer told her, however, that she
could decline the transfer if she wished, but he could not say how soon her next promotion
opportunity would come about.
Depressed, annoyed, disappointed, and frustrated, Pamela quit the bank.
Suggested field of discussion:
1. Analyze this case by using the expectancy theory model.
a. Did management make the ‘right’ hiring decision?
b. How did management fare with regard to providing a motivating environment?
c. To what degree did management fulfill the expectations of Pamela? Was the
performance-reward connection clear to her?
2. What should management have done to create a truly motivating environment?
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Case 4
To Merit or Not to Merit
In January 1993, the Samaritan Memorial Hospital implemented a formal performance appraisal
program for its 127 staff nurses. The program originally met with some resistance from a few
nurses and supervisors, but generally the system was welcomed as an objective way to appraise
nursing performance. Complaints centered around the increase in time it took to complete the
appraisal review process and the fact that supervisors disliked having to confront nurses who
disagreed with their performance review. Nursing supervisors are required to appraise employee
performance annually and to forward to the HR department a copy of each appraisal from.
In July 1995, Thomas Tittle, HR manager for the hospital, reviewed all nurses’ appraisals on file
since the beginning of the program. From this study he concluded that the large majority of
nurses were evaluated as performing at an ‘average’ level, as indicated by a global rating at the
bottom of the form. Approximately 10percent were rated ‘above average’ or ‘superior,’ and the
remainder received ‘below standard’ performance reviews. As a response to these findings, Tittle
decided to base the annual raise of all nurses on the consumer price index for the hospital’s
metropolitan area. This, he concluded, would allow the nurses to maintain their standard of living
while guaranteeing all nurses a yearly raise. For the past three years, nurses have received their
annual way increase according to this policy.
As part of the hospital’s employee involvement program, Tittle holds quarterly meetings with
groups of employees to solicit their feelings regarding hospital policy and their jobs. Both positive
and negative opinions are expressed at these gatherings. These opinions are used to modify
hospital policy. At meetings in the past year, a number of both junior and senior nurses have
expressed dissatisfaction with the across-the-board pay policy for annual raises. The biggest
complaint concerns the lack of motivation to increase output, since all nurses are paid the same
regardless of individual performance. These comments have been numerous enough that tittle
has considered changing the nurses’ compensation policy. During the past seven months, nine of
the better nurses have quit to take jobs with area hospitals that annual increases on a merit or
pay-for-performance basis.
Suggested field of study:
1. What are the advantages of adopting a merit pay plan for hospital nurses?
2. Develop a merit pay guideline chart based on the following level of performance evaluation:
superior, above average, average, below average, and poor. Use current cost-of-living figures
for your area or salary survey data available to you to guide your merit percentage increases.
3. It is not uncommon for hospital nurses to work in teams. Explain how a team-based incentive
program for nurses might be developed to motivate nurses.
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