Introduction:
Supermarket has become the important part of the employment. It becomes the topic of study as to whether it will provide sufficient wages and job security that other jobs like manufacturing, etc. have provided in past. Supermarket industry has transformed in past decades considerably. It provided full time, good paid jobs at one time but now holds part-time, low wage salaries. The reason for this transformation is due to globalization and fierce competition among the supermarket chain. In DIY supermarket chain these factors are playing a noticeable role. At present of the total workforce a massive percentage of 80% employees are part-time employees and older females. The rest 20% are full-time workers who are young and play a key role of supervisors who supervise these 80% part-time workers. As we go through this report we will find data taken from different sectors and industries where professionals are involved and how these organisations manage them which will give us a new lookout of seeing the issues from a totally different perspective.
Identifying the problem:
After going through the survey of the employees, there are number of issues which have cropped up. Firstly a shop floor supervisor has to wait for 2 years to receive a formal management training course. Secondly older part-time female employees are been continuously pushed to work around by young full-time male supervisors. Thirdly it can be seen that basically the morale of the staff is low. All the above factors are interrelated to each other which are resulting in 80% of staff turnover.
Staff turnover:
Understanding staff turnover is very crucial task for any organisation. As 80 % staff turnover is a very high percentage, it hampers the organization in terms of profitability, level of service, customer satisfaction, staff satisfaction, and in general the overall working environment of an organization.
Staff turnover can be defined as “total number of leavers over a period of time” divided by “average number of staff employed over period of time multiplied by “100”
The above figure differentiates turnover into two broad groups i.e. voluntary when employee choose to leave the job and involuntary when the employer makes the decision for employee to leave job. Voluntary turnover is further classified into functional when it is related to substandard performer and dysfunctional when related to effective or standard performer. Dysfunctional turnover can be divided into two subtypes, they are unavoidable turnover where an employer does not have any influence on employee .For e.g. illness, death, shifting to other region, etc and avoidable turnover which remains the key point to focus for an organization.
The most possible reasons of staff turnover are better job opportunities elsewhere, poor leadership values and cultures, lack of career opportunities and growth, effect on work-life balance, getting bored, poor system.
Factors behind staff turnover:
The above tells different factors that are involved behind the staff turnover.
The main factors are push factor and pull factor, which push the employees to look for another job due to the ongoing dissatisfaction with the supervisors and other senior staff members and pulling factors are other organizations who give high salary and good care to its employees.
The other factors that can be found are environmental, programme, personal, etc which are described as below. Environmental factors may be the cause as employees from different social and geographical environment may find difficult to live in the new environment. [Emergency Personnel Network (EPN) (2005)]. Programme factorsinvolve pressure handled by part-time staff and a very negligible investment done by an organisation on training. (London: Earthscan, 1999). Organisational factors include inadequate terms and conditions of service and poor management of staff. Personal factors include various elements related to personal life, workload and career concerns.
Consequences of staff turnover:
Consequences in terms of costs include direct costs which include separation cost, recruitment cost and induction cost. Indirect costs include inefficiencies, mistakes and delays. While it effects adversely at individual level, organisational level, programme level and sector level. (Figure 3)
The Key:
After studying through all the factors and consequences of employee turnover it is utmost necessary to take drastic steps to reduce this staff turnover by atleast half of present value. As we are lacking in providing adequate training to our staff we should conduct a training programme so we can train the supervisors first and then the part-time staff.
Training:
Acemoglu and Pischk (1999) cite in their journal that, “Most lines of business require specific skills which cannot be provided by general purpose education” so they should be provided by training and development of employees.Training and development are sometimes used interchangeably. Traditionally development was seen as an activity normally associated with managers while training has a more immediate concern and has been associated with improving the knowledge and skills of non-managerial employees in their present jobs. Supporting this (Marchington, M. and Wilkinson, A. 2002) commented in their work that training acts as a catalyst in boosting up the company’s moral and helps in fore-sighting long-term goals. Genuinely training helps the company to develop key skill and produce even more matured employees.
Training Module: for supervisors ( 4 Days) Location-
DIY supermarket- conference room (first floor)
Day 1-
Introduction session
-Principles of Effective and Assertive Communication
Training Objective:
To make them understand the basic principles of effective and assertive communication in order to expose them to the fundamentals of communications. Effective communication will help in getting the feedback, connect with staff more deeply, listen and understand more meaningfully, give respect and take respect, and communicating assertively.
Day 2-
Putting assertiveness to work
-Handling “difficult” people
Training Objective:
To help the Supervisors gain more knowledge in terms of assertiveness and self management to achieve their personal and team goals. Putting assertiveness to work will establish credibility. It will enhance more usage of positive language, and will teach to handle criticism fairly. It will teach supervisors to handle difficult and different people more tactfully.
Day 3 and Day 4
– Peer partnerships
Training Objective:
First line supervisors are paired with experienced managers for coaching to make them learning on-the-job. This will enhance their skills and knowledge that they have learned on day- 1 and day- 2 of the training session.
Training Module for staff (5 days):
Communication:
Considering that most of the employees are part-time there is vast communication gap between the employees and supervisors. To minimize this gap, employees will be trained by coach on how to communicate effectively with seniors, colleagues and customers. This will boost their self confidence and morale as employee can tell exactly the issues concerned to them more effectively.
On-the-job training method:
It is received directly on the job and is used to teach an employee how to actually perform the job by supervisor or instructor. Supervisor demonstrates the job in front of an employee and then the employee imitates the procedure as shown by an employer.
Job rotation:
It involves moving employee to various different departments to increase their knowledge and skill.
Assistant:
This involves employee to be with senior managers and supervisors. Here they will be observed closely by the coach as they will be performing many new duties that will enhance their knowledge about management activities and will also prepare them for next higher level position. Most importantly it will make an employee realise that he/she is valuable asset to an organization and so is being taken care of.
Simulation:
This shows the actual condition at work place and includes experimental exercise, group interactions and focus mainly on improving the decision making ability of an employee.
Cost effectiveness:
It is very unpredictable to say firmly that about the type of actual impact and to which extent this training module will have on staff. Though the cost incurred by an organization lies very much in the budget £18000 set for the same. It will surely help in developing the morale and confidence of the staff and will create a good working environment in organization increasing the overall productivity.
Cost Benefit Analysis:
CBA is analyzing costs and benefits which help an organization to take an appropriate decision. As said by Reddy (1979), “Cost-benefit analysis has an enlarged scope of analyzing the costs and benefits in quantitative terms and guiding the decision maker to take an optimal decision for social advantage.” The training programme is designed to fit for every employee according to the specific needs that he/she need to increase their overall productivity.
Return on Investment (ROI):
As our organisation is facing a loss of £1500 per employee leaving the organisation and as per current circumstances staff turnover rate is 80% .The total loss organisation will be £120000 .As per our plan-out the of conducting the training for 9 days ,a good trainer will cost us around £1000 per day . So the total amount for trainer fees will be £9000 . Now another associated cost for food, travelling, accommodation, etc will cost another £9000 for 9 days . Total cost will be approximately £18000 . We will be saving around £9000 on renting premises as we can conduct this training session in conference hall on first floor of the supermarket. This training session will help us in reducing staff turnover by 50% i.e. 80% to 40% .Our turnover cost will be £60000 .Thus by excluding the cost of training we will still make profit of £42000.
Interference cost:
Interference cost gives us valuable ratio of employees leaving the organisation to that of new recruited employee over a period of time. It becomes very important to analyze the training programme as it has a direct effect on employee turnover. As we are facing a total loss of £120000 at present, after training session the organization will make a profit of £42000. It is very difficult to bear such big loss in current market scenario of high competition and high customer demands, this change will surely be a welcome note for beginning of new episode in the book of DIY supermarket. Mattox and Jinkerson (2005) support this by citing, “It is costly to replace personnel, and often the individuals who leave take proprietary knowledge that is impossible to replace.
Conclusion:
Today a number of organisations are stressing the need of training as an ongoing process. It is very necessary to organize and search these types of programmes at regular interval. Although this 9 day training will surely benefit staff by increasing the overall commitment towards the organization but it should be remembered that still we have to decrease the turnover considerably. Secondly employee retention is another important factor. Only giving training will not reduce the employee turnover rate. The art of retention should also be learnt by the supervisors and managers in supermarket. To improve retention rates different strategies should be used like good work environment (in terms of location, variety, flexibility); financial benefits (in terms of base salary, incentive, bonuses); personal (in terms of quality, skills, training); and relations (with owners, customers and managers).For an employee, the supervisor is the employer just in the same way as for customer coming in the supermarket, the employee serving them is the company. So its utmost important to train the supervisors first as they are the one who directly relate to employees. Limited praise and recognition is the most primary reason for employees to leave job. Retention is all about keeping good people, nurturing human values and how we manage them.
It is said that- “Great people stay in bad jobs with great bosses. Great people leave great jobs with bad bosses.”
Summing up all the above facts it can be outlined that the investment in training will be positive in terms of skills, commitment and productivity and is hence cost effective while the cost of not doing this training will surely damage the long term prosperity of an organization.