The Chern’s Case Study Chern’s is an upscale departmental store that was founded more than 20 years ago by Ryan and Ann Chern as a shoe and handbag retailer. Since its inception, the company has experienced tremendous growth to an extent that it’s a successful national chain that specializes in men’s and women’s apparel. The rapid success and growth of this company can be attributable to various factors including its provision of high-quality merchandise to customers and outstanding team of workers. The other factors that have contributed to its success and growth include utilizing a highly trained professional sales team and using an up-to-date inventory and customer service management software. However, the company is experiencing tremendous challenges in its staffing strategies given an average of 20% and 15% turnover in its full-time and part time employees respectively. As a result, the company needs to identify a suitable solution to its staffing strategies in order to enhance the effectiveness of its workforce.

Step 1 – Recap and Analyze the Relevant Facts

Chern’s has existed for more than 20 years and developed to become a national chain of upscale men’s and women’s apparel. Some of the factors that have contributed to the success and growth of this company include customer service, high product quality, and commitment to hiring highly qualified candidates. A critical aspect in the firm’s commitment to hiring the right people is the use of appropriate staffing strategies. Chern’s has a history of promoting from within since it considers its employees as long-term investments for its future growth, success, and profitability. Throughout the years, Chern’s has utilized strategic staffing through which its hiring approaches are based on specific outcome goals. These outcome goals are divided into two including short-term outcome goals, which are the basis for short-term processes for hiring additional support staff (Daley, 2014). On the other hand, Chern’s also utilizes long-term outcome goals, which are the bases for aligning the staffing function with the organization’s business strategy and other aspects of human resources. However, the company is experiencing issues in relation to the appropriate mix of its full and part time staff given the average of 20% and 15% turnover of each respectively. The identification...

This turnover indicates that the company needs to evaluate is mix of staffing, especially in relation to its aggressive plan to expand by opening 15 stores annually over a period of 5 years. The second component is the need for the firm’s HR strategy to obtain, develop, and sustain an employee base with long-term career goal. The strategy should also be diverse depending on demographics of every market where the company operates in. Third, Chern’s needs to ensure that its staffing strategy mitigates the probable claim of discrimination given that most of its Department Managers and Store Managers tend to be males.
Step 4 – Generating Alternatives

One of the alternatives for Chern’s to address the root problem is to engage in strategic staffing, which will entail linking particular staffing processes and outcome goals to business strategy. According to Phillips & Gully (2015), strategic staffing is a process that entails staffing a firm in future and goal-centered measures that promote an organization’s business strategy and effectiveness. For Chern’s, strategic staffing will entail increasing the number of its part time staff while reducing the number of full-time employees. The company should retain its strategy of shifting a part time staff to full time as well as moving a full-time associate to a managerial position. As part of workforce planning in strategic staffing, Chern’s should develop a proper recruitment and advertising plan with specific timelines for reviewing CVs, interviews, and assessment of job applicants. The second alternative is for the company’s HR administration to be centralized in order to link staffing processes with business strategy. The third alternative is for Chern’s to review its job screening process and its retention…