Human Resources and Retail Shopping

Human Resource Function of a Retail Store

Describe the human resource manager's role from the Human Resource Manager's viewpoint.

Human Resource Management

Human resource management has been operational for more than a century now, both in terms of discipline and practice for managing people in any firm. It has developed on a broader level and has many offshoots. This field has been the fulcrum of trial and error, theory and experimenting with different concepts by managers and academics (Farnham & Pimlott 1979; Storey 1989; Armstrong 1995). The core forces working in case of human resource management are still environmental as the quest continues for hiring competitive and working with productive workforce (Itika, 2011).

The human resource manager is tasked with shaping policies and methods that works best for the organization whilst keeping in mind the betterment of employees. When employees are cared for then organization prospers. As per the HR managers, no matter you are the manager in a supermarket standing along with checkout operators, general manager of certain bank, union representative of some airline or director of human resource management in a tech firm, the core job is managing people. A person may love handling people below him, but empathy is part of the picture in human resource field. As per Hunt (1999), the HR managers should be aware of conditions which drive productivity of their employees to the maximum. As per Andrew Fastow from Enron, he stated that, when people eat what they hunt, then they hunt quite well' (Introduction to Human Resource Management, n.d.)

Create a human resource management strategy for the retail store.

Most retail organizations have come to the conclusion that their growth in market depends on their HR department. The HR department needs to retain their employees by employee's best practices in workplace. Retail trends are altering fast which affects the HR working in retail as previously, they were just operating, but now they have strategic prominence in business (Charania, 2013).

Management Strategy for Retail Store

Building Capability: Retail staff thinks differently now due to HR intervention in store levels with respect to their firm. HR should concentrate on equipping in-house talent capability as only some professional courses for retail exist.

Matching Individual and Organizational Expectations: The retail sector is quite unorganized as it experiences a bundle of changes for becoming organized. Hence the HR department should meet the market challenges whilst keeping the employees motivated with respect to their careers.

Increasing Employee Productivity: The department has to focus on building manpower efficiencies and on ways to enhance employee productivity on an ongoing basis.

Job Insecurity: HR department plays a very significant role of a catalyst and as an internal training department by which employees can meet their desired productivity level.

Managing Compensation Expectations:

Develop a brand new and encouraging compensation mix, but it will be a challenge to accomplish it. A broad number of variable components are based on performance, and taken lightly by subordinate workforce (Charania, 2013).

Talent Management: Staff retention among others such as, working long hours, weekend duty and lack of career growth are tough challenges for retail firm's HR recruitment team. HR departments in most retail firms are experimenting with different innovative methods to keep employees motivated (Charania, 2013).

Propose three (3) methods to improve the human resource functions at the retail store.

1.

Participation in decision making: In a friendly work place, employees can take decisions relating to their work (Camps and Luna-Arocas, 2009; Lawler, 1986; McLean, 2006; Vandenberg et al., 1999). Hence, employees must have an opinion on quality, work models, productivity and routine decisions which influences them (Tay, 2011).

2.

Accessibility to information and resources: The active organizations which aspire to empower and encourage employee participation permit sharing of information freely from top hierarchy to bottom hierarchy. Such firms appreciate valuable input from their employees and work on their recommendations (Tay, 2011).

3.

Training and development opportunities: Training is basically for enhancing the knowledge of employees, solidifying their skillset and professional experience in organizations (Camps and Luna-Arocas, 2009; Lawler, 1986; Tsaur and Lin, 2004). They are perfected in technical and decision making skills, employees are trained to work as a competitive team (Tay, 2011).