Tanglewood’s staffing practices have been rather stable for years, and many stores in the state of Washington have been operating without any problems for quite a while. Since Tanglewood uses the resources of its internal labor market to fill in the openings, a certain percentage of the jobs will become vacant in the nearest future. Besides, a large number of employees will not remain in position for the next year. This way, the external hiring will have to cover both of these numbers.
For example, out of 1200 active shift leaders only 50 per cent will stay in position for the next year. As a result, another 600 of shift leaders are needed for the next year. At the same time, the number of shift leaders promoted for the next year is 192, which means that 192 shift leader positions will remain vacant after the hiring plan is implemented. Apart from this staffing gap, Tanglewood has to deal with environmental labor market realities. For example, the decreasing number of the individuals willing to pursue career in retail or the specificity of Tanglewood’s culture to which some employees cannot adapt. Besides, the expansion of managerial sector reduces Tanglewood’s ability to obtain the needed number of employees in the future.
Based on the data analysis carried on above, Tanglewood will experience serious staffing issues next year. Tanglewood is very proud of its internal promotion strategy which is based on the idea that each employee should start at the very bottom of the professional chain and then gradually get promoted from one stage to another. This approach provides educated and experienced specialists for the managerial positions and also helps the company to retain its employees due to the perspective of improvement and career development. As a result, in order to cover insufficiency of shift leaders, department manager and assistant store managers Tanglewood requires excessive number of new store associates. This will allow creating opportunity for promotion within the company and eventually supply other areas with employees.
Bigger branches do not have as much opportunities of hiring trained and experienced professionals from smaller branches. In this case, the best way for Tanglewood to access new workforce and fill in the staffing gaps is to hire college graduates and quickly promote them. In this reference, the company is recommended to engage into job promotion and arrange new approaches in order to encourage job seekers to pursue careers at Tanglewood.
The issue is that the potential leaders such as college graduates are reluctant about spending years at the bottom of the workplace hierarchy working as store associates. The company is recommended to introduce some changes for the improvement of the working conditions at this position. For example, Tanglewood should encourage higher appreciation from the managers, flexible schedules, bonuses and awards, engage into team-building activities such as internal gatherings of casual character (parties and entertainment).
In the analysis of representation data for Spokane, Washington, conducted with the help of Census 2000, EEO Residence Data Results shows the following: the total number of retail salespersons in the area is 6495. Demographically, out of all sales representatives in Spokane, 3040 are male, and the number of females is 3449. Besides, the vast majority of the employees are the representatives of White non Hispanic group. The other ethnic groups and communities are underrepresented. Precisely, 92.1 per cent of retail salespersons are White of non Hispanic background; to compare, only 2.4 per cent are represented by Hispanic community, and the people of Asian and Black origins compose 1.4 per cent and 1.1per cent accordingly (EEO Residence Data Results for Spokane, WA MSA, par. 1).
In order to maintain and manage diverse workforce, Tanglewood is recommended to improve their demographic representation and target ethnic minorities as the future employees. Since the company’s hiring and promoting strategy is based on hiring retail store associates and then promoting them from within, not much change can happen at the higher levels of managerial hierarchy of Tanglewood because the newly hired diverse specialists will take years to work their way to the leading positions. In order to attract diverse workforce the company needs to focus on the effects of past discrimination and address them so that the new specialists feel comfortable at the workplace.
Besides, it is important to remember that when a company targets particular groups as employees, the groups that are well-represented should not feel pressured or underappreciated at the workplace. Finally, the actions directed at the improvement of representation need to be temporary and to stop being implemented as soon as the objectives are met.
Works Cited
EEO Residence Data Results for Spokane, WA MSA. U. S. Census Bureau. n. d. Web.