CASE STUDY - HR

Shyam the VP-HR looked worried. Most of his and his team efforts were going into hiring frontline staff, who are designated as Customer Executives (CE) in his company. This takes substantial part of their role and leaves very little time for developmental HR like Training, Employee Engagement, Performance Planning, Career Path etc. Shyam works in a company which is a leading "Retail Brand" in the country, that retails leading fashion brands of men, women and kids. With over 25 stores across the nation, there are more than 1100 frontline staff who manage the inventory, merchandise them, serve the customers, manage the billing and manage the stores. Each store is managed by a Store Manager, who is assisted by Duty managers and Customer Executives (CE) who manage the customers, change the merchandise, take stocks, manage housekeeping and keep the store fresh. The Customer Executives are paid approximately Rs. 12000 per month. Many of them come from poor families and have not continued education beyond their higher secondary. Every store would have approximately 40 CE. In FY 18, their attrition was 140%.

During the monthly business reviews, the Store Managers complain that the CE attrition is leading to poor customer engagement which in turn affects the sale. 140% attrition means almost the CE are new every 8 months. Shyam knew that this attrition will affect the business performance, Net promoter score and company’s success in the long run.

Profile of a CE: CE come from all walks of life. They are often college discontinued, 12th pass or fail. Hiring drive and reference brings in plenty of candidates. Some of them even pursue evening college. Each candidate is interviewed for his communication, presentability and his past experience. The interviews are conducted by HR and are sent for observations at Store. Their observations and feedback from Duty Manager contribute to their assessment. The selected candidates are trained for 7 days at the corporate office on "Steps of Sales" which is the Holy Grail of managing customers in the stores. Here they are taught, how to deal with a customer, how to assist them, how to manage shelves, bill and account for sales and inventory. After their training, they are deployed at the stores.

Most of the CE need a job to meet their aspirational needs like owning a bike / phone, dress like their customers, eat out and have fun. After all they would like to be away from home and earn a living to meet their personal needs.

After they are assigned their jobs, they learn on the floor and are trained by the Trainer who comes once every month. The job demands them to come in any of the two shifts. The morning shift starts at 8AM and ends by 4PM. The second shift starts at 2PM and ends by 11PM. The CE are provided uniform, lunch and are entitled to PF/ESI benefits. Good CE after 24 months can grow to senior CE with a hike that takes their monthly salary to 14500. The company has an annual appraisal cycle, where the increase is anywhere between 5 to 10% depending on the inflation and revision in minimum wages. Shyam was unable to understand, what is causing the attrition and decided to dig deeper and found the following insights from the exit interviews.

a) 20% of the CE abscond from work and are not contactable.

b) 60% of the CE leave their job in 90 days.

c) Many CE give reasons such as need to study, strenuous job, better salary, own business, medical, unfair treatment as reasons.

d) 10% of the CE owed the shortage led debit to their salaries as the reason for attrition.

e) On an average the CE leaves between 4-6 months.

f) CE are happy with the company culture but mention that their Senior CE are bossing over.

g) 10% were willing to join if offered again

h) 20% left their jobs to complete education

What should Shyam do, to bring down attrition. His CEO has asked him to come with concrete recommendations to reduce attrition.

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