Human Resource Managements role in the companys success increases each day. In this article I will discuss the reasons for the increasing impact of the HRM and will also talk about HRM in the retail industry.

Human Resource Management is a vital function in organizations. It is becoming more important than ever. Line managers are getting involved in HRM, and human resource managers are becoming members of the management team. Also, everyone in the organization can make a contribution to the management of people and the success of the organization at the same time. Human resource management includes a variety of activities, such as the following:

What staffing needs to have and whether to use independent contractors or hire employees to fill these needs

Recruiting and training the best employees, ensuring they are high performers

Dealing with performance issues and ensuring its personnel and management practices conform to various regulations.

This report will contain the following topics:
* The special Human Resource Environment of retailing
* The process of Human Resource Management in Retailing
* Human Resource planning
* Recruitment & Selection
* Training & Development
* Performance management

The Special Human Resource Environment of Retailing

Staffs are a major resource in any business. This is particularly true in retail industry, which has a very large amount of employees and which provides a range of services to its customers. The retail human resource environment has its special features: a large number of inexperienced workers, long hours, highly visible employees, many part-time workers, and variations in customer demand. Those features also create difficulties to retailers.

First of all, a large number of inexperienced workers and part-time staffs in a retail business may lead high employee turnover, poor performance, lateness and absenteeism. This is due to several seasons. One is that inexperienced workers can apply retail positions, such as check out clerks, wrappers, stock clerks and some types of sales personnel, which doesn't require high education, training and skill. The other one is that employees who work in retailing companies likely live near the retailing stores. In addition, part-time staffs are very easy to quit their jobs.

Secondly, long working hours may result that retailers need to two shifts of employees. As the trend of longer store hours (evening and weekend), retailers need to consider employ staff for evening and weekend use.

Thirdly, high visible employees mean that retailers have to monitor employees very closely. As consumers nowadays play a very important role in retail industry and employees are highly visible to the consumers, retailers must select and train employees carefully, especially care about their manners and appearance.


Finally, variations in customer demand may create difficulty to retailers to predict exactly how many employees are required. Retailers need to have the knowledge about what season, what number of employees is needed; and what day, what number of employees is needed; and which period of a day, what number of employees is needed.

The process of Human Resource Management in Retailing

The four main activities of the process of Human Resource Management are Planning, Recruitment and Selection, Training and Performance. When retailers are applying the Human Resource Management process, the labor laws, diversity and employee privacy has to be considered.

Planning

By analyzing the current workforce will allow the company to evaluate the department performance and helps to realize what kind of staff are required in order to form the skills which they needed. Retailers need to employ the right number of staff in order to make the workforce more efficiency. Too many employees will increase costs, and too few will not able to carry out of its work. Therefore, retailers have to analyze both current human resources within the retailing organizations, and future plans or strategies of the organization and the effect on human resource.

Meanwhile, because of the special human resource environment in the retail industry, the effects of the labor market factors have to be considered for their human resources planning. Due to the development of Information Technology, companies may not be able to find the employees who have the skills they required. In addition, internal staffing factors such as labor turnover, sickness or accident rates also have to be considered. However, planning has to be thought out carefully, and updated when other factors have changed. Take boots as an example, they evaluate the local market trend and qualification of local population, etc and seek to the staff that need to form the skills they lack.

This process takes time to operate. However, it is less expensive than the recruitment and selection process. Meanwhile, it will be helpful to find the employees who already have the skills that the retailers require.

Recruitment & Selection

Recruitment is the process of identifying the need for a new employee, defining the job and the appropriate person for it, attracting a number of suitable candidates, then selecting the one best suited to the job.

When a company is looking for new employees, they tend to use different channels in order to find the most suitable personnel. The channels could be educational institution, TV/magazine advertising, agency or any other channels which is the best way to find the right personnel. For example, in a retail company, when they are looking for an entry level sales personnel, they tend to reply on educational institutions, advertisements and employee recommendations. Moreover, when a retail company is looking for middle-management positions, they are likely to use employment agencies, competitors, advertisements and current employees. The recruitment process can be very costly. It takes a great deal of time to set up an effective recruitment process. Therefore, the company has to carry this job out in a systematic way.

The next job is to select new employees from among those the company has recruited. The main objective in the selection process is to match the character of potential employees with the requirements of the jobs to be filled. The process of selection includes job analysis and description, the application blank, interviewing, testing, references and a physical examination.

These processes should be followed in an integrated manner. However, the selection process can be very costly because the company has to pay for the postage of sending out application forms to candidates and they may also have to pay for the travel expenses for candidates' journey to interview.

About the author :

Mary Anne Winslow is a member of Essay Writing Service counselling department team and a dissertation writing consultant. Contact her to get free counselling on custom essay writing.

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