Employee Morale Problems - Essay Example

? The store faces a variety of challenges that must be resolved in order to ensure the profitability and longevity of the store. In the business world managers have to be able to adapt to situations and find effective alternative solutions to resolve problems. The company is facing employee morale problems and a lack of internal communication among the staff. An inherent problem that is further hurting the relationship between the company and the employees is the fact that the staff is overworked. The managerial staff estimated that the company needed an additional five employees to run the operation. The current compensation system is not motivating the employees sufficiently. A lot of the employees lack experience and educational credentials. Half of the staff has been working for the store for less than six months and these workers are either high school or college students. The sales of the company are below the expectations of the parent company. It is imperative for the company to improve the communication between the managerial staff and the workers. This can be achieved through the implementation of feedback systems. A feedback system can be implemented by simply putting a suggestion box in a wall so that the employees can express themselves and provide ideas. A lot of times the best ideas are hidden in the minds of the blue collar workers. The firm has to immediately deal with the preparation of the staff. The company has too many unqualified employees working for the company. In an ideal situation all the employees of the company would hold at least bachelors degree. There are a lot of young employees working for the company that lack work experience. The retail industry has become extremely competitive. A way for the company to improve the motivation of its workers is by offering scholarships to the best performing employees. The scholarship award will be worth $5,000 per semester. Motivating the employees is critical towards resolving the employee morale problem. “High employee morale means that employees are happy, and this is reflective in the kind of work they produce” (Ehow). A way to improve the employee morale is by instituting a new compensation system. The new compensation system will include a wide variety of fringe benefits for the employees. Some of the fringe benefits the company can offer in its new compensation plan include extended vacations, health and dental plan, the availability of flexible time, free access to a gymnasium, and parental and maternal leave. It will also include a stock option plan and yearly bonuses to the employees. The store also has to improve the knowledge base of its workers. To achieve that goal the firm will use two strategies. The first strategy is to provide training and development to all its employees. Some of the topics that should be included in the training and development sessions include interpersonal skills, active listening, customer service, verbal and written communication skills, and leadership. To optimize the efficiency and costs of the training sessions the firm should use more than one method. The training can be given in-house by one of the managers or the firm could hire an outside consultant to provide the training. Another option for the company is to give the training and development through online lessons. The second strategy that the company will utilize to increase the knowledge base among its staff is by hiring five new employees. The minimum educational credential that the new employees will hold is a bachelor’s degree. All of the new employees must have a minimum of three years of working experience after graduation from college. The company will also implement a new system in which the workers will be empowered by delegating more responsibility to them. The leadership style that I would use to deal with the problems at the retail store is teamwork. The company will be broken down into five work teams. Each work team will be supervised by either an employee with five or more years of experience at the company or an employee that holds bachelor’s degree title. The use of team units will help improve both the communication and leadership skills of the workers. The employees will be excited to work in a new dynamic environment. The team leader of each group will be responsible for communicating with the upper management of the company. The team leaders and the managers of the firm will meet for two hours every Friday to discuss the progress of the project the team is working on. Despite the existence of team units the customer service the employees provide to the clients will stay the same. Employees are expected to treat customers cordially and in a manner that satisfies their needs. All the employees of the different teams will receive monthly mandatory training and development sessions. The team leaders are expected to complete twice as many monthly hours of training than the regular employees. To ensure that the company is operating in an efficient manner the firm will hire an outside consultant to provide an external audit of the firm. The results of the external audit will be given to the managerial staff of the company for further analysis. Based on the recommendation of the auditors the managers will implement actions plans to fix the deficiencies of the firm. A problem that the company faces that also must be resolved in the short term is the fact that the company is not generating sufficient income to meet the expectations of the parent company. This implies that if the firm’s keeps underperforming the store could be liquidated and closed down. A way for the store to improve its sales numbers is by adopting a better marketing plan. The firm has to use multiple marketing channels to advertise the firm. Increased exposure of the brand of the firm should improve the monthly sales numbers. Some of the marketing channels that the firm should utilize to market its products include radio, satellite radio, television, written press, internet, and cellular phones. Work Cited Page Ehow.com. 2012 “About Employee Morale” 9 December 2012. Read More