Katie Eckel
Sean Johnson
Audrey Nassal
Tasha Smith
Tanglewood Case 2
Table 1.1 Markov Analysis Information
Transition probability matrix
Current Year
Previous year: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) ( 5 ) Exit
( 1 ) Store associate 0.43 0.06 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.51
( 2 ) Shift leader 0.00 0.54 0.16 0.00 0.00 0.30
( 3 ) Department manager 0.00 0.00 0.64 0.06 0.00 0.30
( 4 ) Assistant store manager 0.00 0.00 0.06 0.52 0.08 0.34
( 5 ) Store manager 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.66 0.34
Forecast of availabilities
Next Year (projected)
( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) ( 5 ) Exit
Previous year: Current Workforce ____
( 1 ) Store associate 8,500 3655 510 0 0 0 4335
( 2 ) Shift leader 1,200 0 648 192 0 0 360
( 3 ) Department manager 850 0 0 544 51 0 255
( 4 ) Assistant store manager 150 0 0 9 78 12 51
( 5 ) Store manager 50 0 0 0 0 33 17
Gap analysis Next Year (projected)
( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) ( 5 )
Year end total 3655 1158 745 129 45
(column sum)
External hires needed 4845 42 105 21 5
(current workforce-total)
Environmental Scan
Upon performing an environmental scan, we have determined that Tanglewood might have problems filling their vacancies in the future for a variety of reasons. According to the scan, there are available candidates who are ready to fill managerial positions. However, our hiring policies at Tanglewood require employees to start out as store associates and work their way up in the organization if they choose to do so and if the store needs these positions filled.
We also strive to hire an exceptional workforce. One way we may want to go about hiring an exceptional workforce may be to hire motivated, intelligence college graduates. However, according to the environmental scan, we have found that recent college graduates do not necessarily want to start at the bottom of an organization as a store associate in order to work their way up to a higher position. Additionally, the retail industry holds a negative (and partially accurate) image of providing low pay, requiring long hours, and of their being frequent conflicts with lower-level employees.
A Prelimiary Statement of the Action Plan for Hiring for
According to the forecast of labor requirements found in Table 1.1, next year we will need 4,845 store associates, 42 shift leaders, 105 department managers, 21 assistant managers, and 5 store managers. As a result of both these figures and our hiring policy of hiring internally and thus starting every employee at the lowest position, we will need to hire a large amount of store associates. We will keep most of them at the associate position and promote some of the more experienced associates into the managerial positions. We also must keep in mind our other hiring policies of developing talent and having exceptional workforce quality. In order to fulfill all of our hiring practices, we propose the following plan.
We will hire at least 4,845 store associates to meet our projected needs for the next year. We will do this by attempting to dispel negative perceptions of retail store employment by providing higher pay and store discounts as well as offering flextime. We will also strive to have and to build exceptional workforce quality in a number of ways. We will work to improve job satisfaction by providing employees with task variety. We will allow store associates to work in different departments and to do different things from working the cash registers to designing and assembling in-store displays. We will also encourage teamwork by having contests between store departments and have parties to celebrate everyone’s hard work and to honor the winning team. Tanglewood’s comment system will also be stressed to show that although store associates are the lowest level position at Tanglewood, these people are one of the company’s most important assets and that their comments and suggestions are encouraged. We must keep in mind that associates are often the face of the company because they directly interact with customers. We must show them how important they are to Tanglewood.
We may want to focus much of our efforts to recruiting high school students for these store associate positions. Each store needs to have a large number of store associates and not very many managers. As a result, we do not want all of our associates to have a desire to move up into managerial positions. High school students may be the perfect match for this role because these candidates may just be looking for a part-time job to have in order to make some extra spending money and to gain some work experience. They may not want to have all the responsibility of a manager and they cannot work all of the hours required of a manager because they must go to school.
We will also work toward developing talent and hiring internally. For employees, such as recent college graduates, who have expressed a desire to attain managerial positions, we will allow them to enter a management trainee program. This program will follow our policies of having everyone start at the bottom, but it will allow participants to move up quickly in the organization provided they learn what is necessary to hold these positions. Workers in this program will be paired up with exceptional workers so they can learn the culture and operations of Tanglewood quickly.
