tanglewood answer for case study chapter1

RECRUITMENT & SELECTION

INTRODUCTION

Tanglewood is a chain of general retail stores featuring items such as clothing,

appliances, electronics, and home decor. The company operates in the moderate price

niche, targeting middle- and upper-income customers. Tanglewood’s strategic

distinction is an “outdoors” theme, with a large camping and outdoor living section in

every store. The store also distinguishes itself by its simple, elegant, and uncluttered

design concepts for the store and their in-house products.

It was founded by two best friends in 1975 by Tanner Emerson and Thurston Wood

and later renamed their store chain to Tanglewood in 1984. Initially it operated as a

single store and as years went by, as the business developed from 1975 to 1984, the

business had grown substantially with a strong base of employee participation,

customer satisfaction, and profitability. The company grew to other parts of

America has today has a total of 243 stores open in the states of Washington, Oregon,

Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New

Mexico, and Arizona.

The company would like to now consolidate its current management strategy. But

before doing so, there is a need to study Tanglewood’s current operating environment.

There are several area of study and they are:

Competition and Industry


Tanglewood’s Return on Assets (ROA) is at the second position in which it has

efficiently managed its assets to revenue. Return on Revenue (ROR) shows that

Tanglewood is one of the top after Kohl. An increasing ROR implies that there are

fewer expenses incurred for higher net income. The percentage of proceeds obtained

from selling the investment of interest (ROI) shows a healthy figure. However,

Tanglewood needs to be concerned of direct and close competition of several

companies like KoStoreshl’s, Federated Dept and Target.

Profit ratiosROR (%) ROA (%) ROI (%)

J.C. Penny 1.1 1.9 5.8Saks 1.2 1.5 3.1Dillard’s 1.7 2.0 5.5

WalMart 3.3 9.021.

6

Sears, Roebuck 3.8 3.324.

6

Target 3.8 6.319.

1

Federated Dept. Stores 4.0 4.311.

3

Tanglewood 4.1 12.717.

2

Kohl’s 7.1 11.420.

4Table 1: The ROR, ROA and ROI of Tanglewood which indicate corporate profitability

Competitive Response and Strategy

The company targets middle and upper-income consumers with reasonable prices.

Tanglewood’s provides the same products offered of general merchandise retailers but

with a focus on quality products, providing customer service, and a more designer

appearance than discount stores. This shop also comes with a trademark “look” which

involves an outdoors theme, complete with real wood décor and use of natural colors.

Tanglewood has developed several proprietary brands of merchandise which are

designed to complement its look. While the actual products are made by


subcontractors, Emerson and Wood have personal responsibility for all products that

are produced.

The company has also incorporated technology into their business. Tanglewood’s web

portal has all the necessary information with a clear guide to merchandise available in

the stores. Their stores serves as a pick-up location for items ordered online. This

allows them to utilize their low-cost shipping arrangements to the benefit of

customers.

Organization Structure

The organization structure of Tanglewood encourages employees at all levels of the

corporation to make suggestions regarding operations. More than one major

operational change has come from an employee suggestion. Overall, there are 1 store

manager, 3 assistant managers, 17 department managers, approximately 24 shift

leaders, approximately 170 associates and around 215 employees per store. All

employees, full or part time, are treated and considered as members of the core work

force. Tanglewood does not extensively use a flexible workforce, such as temporary

employees. A core workforce is viewed as essential for the organizational values and

culture, described below, that Tanglewood seeks to develop and maintain.


Diagram 1 : Stores are organized into 12 geographical regions, with approximately 20 stores per region. Each region has a regional manager who oversees operations of the stores. The store managers report directly to the regional managers. There is considerable variation between regional managers in how they run their HR practices. The tendency for some regional managers to encourage human resources practices which are counter to the Tanglewood philosophy is a major reason that an external consulting firm was brought in to centralize

human resources.

The breakdown of stores and employment by division is as follows:Division Area Covered Stores PCs PCs/S Employees

1 Eastern Washington 25 3,120,000 124,800 5,4002 Western Washington 25 3,011,000 120,440 5,4003 Northern Oregon 18 1,850,000 102,778 3,9004 Southern Oregon 16 1,710,000 106,875 3,4005 Northern California 23 3,000,000 130,435 4,9006 Idaho 17 1,366,000 80,353 3,7007 Montana and Wyoming 18 1,418,000 78,778 3,9008 Colorado 23 4,550,000 197,826 4,9009 Utah 19 2,351,000 123,737 4,10010 Nevada 19 2,241,000 117,947 4,10011 New Mexico 18 1,875,000 104,167 3,90012 Arizona 22 5,580,000 253,636 4,700

Total 243 52,300Table 2: PCs is the population of the area covered; the abbreviation PC for Tanglewood means “potential customers.” The PCs/S is the number of potential customers per store. Employee figures are rounded to the nearest hundred.

Store Manager (about 20 per region)

Assistant Store Manager for Hardlines

Assistant Store Manager for Operations and HR

Assistant Store Manager for Softlines

6 Department Managers(Sporting goods,

electronics, kitchen, bath, outdoor, domestics)

12 Shift Leaders (Two per Dept. Manager)

12 Shift Leaders (Two per Dept. Manager)

6 Department Managers(Women’s, men’s, misses,

children and infants, shoes, perfume and jewellery)

5 Department Managers(Security, Administration,

Warehouse, Cashiers, Maintenance)

Operations associates(About 50 total—10 security, 5 admin, 10 warehouse, 20

cashiers, 5 maintenance/custodial)

Store associates(About 60 total—10 per

department manager)

Store associates(About 60 total—10 per

department manager)

Regional Manager (12 total)


Organizational Culture and Values

Tanglewood has a culture and values that are quite distinct from most of its major

competitors. The company places great values on employee participation. At

orientation, every employee hears the philosophy that Wood and Emerson proclaimed

as their vision for employee relations, “If you tell someone exactly what to do, you’re

only getting half an employee. If you give someone the space to make their own

decisions, you’re getting a whole person.”

Most retail stores have a traditional hierarchical structure with assistant store

managers directing their subordinates and most associates’ primarily follow orders. In

contrary, Tanglewood allow each department manager to formulate distinct methods

for running their departments in coordination with the employees they supervise.

Employees still have well defined job responsibilities, but efforts are made to involve

employees in the decision process when possible.

One of the most unique cultural of Tanglewood is the “straight talk” strategy used in

all areas of the business. There is transparency in its financial performance. The

company provides employees with information on the company’s share price and

overall profitability for each quarter, along with other details about company

activities. Profit-sharing for all employees is part of the company’s push to encourage

employees to think like managers. In addition, there is a mandatory weekly store

meetings (one meeting for each shift) to allow employees the time to voice their

suggestions for in-store improvements. Suggestions that are implemented by

management will receive financial bonuses. Department managers are also given


financial incentives for successfully developing and implementing new policies and

procedures, further reinforcing the participatory management style of the company.

Each shift emphasizes team spirit. Although the most senior associate is a shift leader,

the other members are also given the space to freely provide ongoing suggestions.

Work is distributed equally among employees. Employees are also expected to help

each as a team. Quarterly performance evaluations include several items specifically

reflecting the associates’ interactions with other team members and initiative to

improve the department.

Since employee suggestions are given importance by the management, Tanglewood’s

upper managers have ample opportunity to observe the leadership and decision

making qualities of their associates. This easily identifies good staff for promotion

and career prospect. New employees without retail experience, even those with

college degrees who are targeted as having management potential, spend a period of

time working in the store as an associate. This is seen as a way of preserving the

company’s unique culture and values over time.


Human Resources at Tanglewood

Diagram 2: The various HODs within the Human Resource Division of Tanglewood

The basic structure for human resources at Tanglewood involves both corporate and

store-level components. The Staffing Services Director supervises three managers (for

the areas of retention, recruiting, and selection), plus an Equal Employment

Opportunity Coordinator. The corporate Staffing Services function performs data

analysis and design of staffing policies and programs. Data collected that assist

Tanglewood’s recruiting practices, methods for interviewing, testing and selecting

employees, and employee turnover are sent from the individual store to the corporate

headquarters. These information is used by Tanglewood to form recommendations to

the stores.

The management of each store is responsible for each recruitment, staffing, training

etc based on the recommendations of the corporate staffing service. This includes

staffing in terms of planning, recruitment, initial screening and hiring. Department

managers interview the finalists and the final decision to hire is left to the manager

after discussing with the store assistant. Promotion decisions are also done within that

Vice President for Human Resources

Staffing Services Director

Employee Relations Director

Retention Manager Recruiting Manager

Selection Manager EEO Coord.

Communications ManagerLegal

Compliance and EEO Manager

Benefits Manager Salary Manager Labor

Market Analyst

Executive Coach Development

ManagerTraining Manager

Compensation and Benefits Director

Training and Development Director


store department which is the department manager. Regional managers conduct the

hiring for store managers, and work with each store’s managers to determine

promotions to the assistant store manager.

Problem Statement

Having said all that, there are still some flaws in the system of Tanglewood that

requires rectification. The corporate staffing function has not been strong. The

corporate HR acts only as an advisor to the store-level managers. The company

wishes to expand and there is a need for a central planning body in staffing rather than

two different staffing process taking place. There is the assumption local leadership is

inefficient with the large number of growing stores and centralization will rectify this.

Staffing Strategy


Staffing strategy requires making key decision about the acquisition, deploying and

retention of the organization’s workforce. Thirteen such decisions are identified and

discussed below referring to Tanglewood Stores.

Staffing Levels

1. Acquire or Develop Talent

According to the text, if Tanglewood wants to achieve a full acquisition

strategy then Tanglewood is going to have to acquire new talent. This seems to

be the best strategy for Tanglewood because it is already evident judging from

the case that there is an inconsistency in management styles between the

original stores and the newly acquired stores. The argument for acquiring new

talent is that new employees hit the ground running and are at their peak the

moment they arrive. This is the kind of performance Tanglewood needs during

and acquisition period. It assures that the newly acquired stores start on the

right path without resentment or employees, particularly managers who resist.

For existing stores, Tanglewood should take on a talent development

approach. Acquiring from within is always a good way to maintain a

productive workforce. When employees believe that there are opportunities for

advancement they are usually more motivated to achieve the organizational

goal. This approach could be beneficial because Tanglewood wants its

employees to be self sufficient and think like managers.

2. Hire Yourself or Outsource


This is a unique and tricky decision for any company because it may lead to

advantage or disadvantage of the company process decision for two reasons;

a) By hiring someone to be an outside consultant for Tanglewood will

include the lack of knowledge to the human resource function in reality

and determine their result based off the papers presented by

Tanglewood retailer director to the consultant.

b) The consultant is not fully aware of their strengths or weaknesses of

the internal region director because the consultant is not one of them.

Personally, we will not encourage out source consultants because of their

lacking in the actual experience of that region. However, there are several

advantages for hiring an out source such as giving a new plan or idea, a new

technique and a new opinion to improve certain things at Tanglewood human

resource department.

3. External or Internal Hiring

If we look deeper to Tanglewood culture and values we can find that all

employees are working as one family and we think external hiring will affect

this strategy because people coming from different culture or perspective

value will affect the family atmosphere workplace. We will encourage internal

hiring more because of the people culture and value from each region; this is

due to the similarity between the employee and their society.

For upper level management positions, Tanglewood should hire internally. As

stated in the case, “Organisation feels their absolutely must be a workforce for


committed, qualified individuals who will help carry Tanglewood philosophy

into the future.” Then for entry level positions they should obviously hire

externally.

4. Core or Flexible Workforce

On page 6 of Tanglewood case book (under “Organisational Overview and

Mission”, paragraph 1) interview with Business Monthly, “Tanglewood really

needs to slow down and take a hard look at our corporate culture. Right now

we need to consolidate and make sure we’re as close to the company’s original

mission as we can be. Our success is due entirely to our strong culture-this

something we need to hold on to”.

In our opinion, Tanglewood should focus on Core Workforce during the

selection of employees. This business is based on a “team” philosophy that

will be easily accomplished through core workforce. It will be difficult to

maintain a cohesive employee and company culture with flexible employees

throughout the year as opposed to full and part time employees working year

around.

5. Hire or Retain

In our opinion, Tanglewood should focus on retaining their employees and

develop their talent and skills instead hiring new ones. If they plan to follow

an internal hiring strategy and maintain a core workforce as per our

suggestion, then they must focus on retaining these employees. It would be


difficult to maintain a consistent company culture if they have high turnover

rate of employees.

6. National or Global

Tanglewood is a retail store known all over the region and overseas. Each

region enjoys its own culture and values, which distinguishes from others. The

pattern and the processes of Tanglewood has to be similar, however, internal

department method will run depending on the regions culture. On page 12 of

Tanglewood case book (under “Organisational Culture and Value”, paragraph

1) its states that; “If you tell someone exactly what to do, you are only getting

half an employee. If your given someone the space to make their own

decisions, you are getting whole person”. We encourage this philosophy to be

spread and worked with among all the regions.

Tanglewood like other stores has the same tools, clothing, equipment,

electronics and much more. These retailers have to be engage in both overseas

out-sourcing and off-shoring by hiring high tech and talented, sufficient

employees to deal with this globally and locally that will help Tanglewood

reach and exceed competitive levels among others.

7. Attract or Relocate

The main idea that most of the organization is following to be more successful

that is to bring labor to a company rather than taking the company to the labor.

Tanglewood retailers, have to establish locations closer to their distributers,

this is because Tanglewood has 12 geographic regions and 20 stores per


region. This mean the regional managers have little experience on how human

resource runs throughout the 20 stores. Tanglewood needs external and

internal training for these managers and continuously update them with new

policies and guidelines, to keep Tanglewood with the other competitors.

Another way to attract employees to Tanglewood is there high education

quality that is expected of them when applying. This will lead to our last factor

of quantity exhibit the short or long term focus.

8. Overstaff or Understaff

In our opinion, Tanglewood Company is overstaffed. Eventhough,

Tanglewood managers are more cooperative with all its employees’

suggestions regarding the company’s operations but still it needs to decrease.

We really think that by decreasing the number of employees and increasing

the responsibility staffing, training in each department will make the work

atmosphere stronger and job performance will be done in a shorter time and

also saving money for the company.

9. Short or Long-Term Focus

Setting a goal is easy for a company, however, balancing and how to achieve

that goal is challenging. Tanglewood’s goal is to expand their company further

and attract more clients. The human resource functions for Tanglewood

among the regions has less experience because they are not connecting with

each other very well. The short focus plan has to improve the human resource

function and develop and increase the knowledge of their department.


This will lead to the long term focus that will help them understand how to

reach their long term focus. Most talent management program is focusing on a

long term focus and this is the only way human resource can be successful in

Tanglewood. Expanding and well staffed will be the result of the human

resource doing a good job.

On the four staffing quality after Tanglewood human resource managers and

employees have been trained well, need to start excepting new applicants that fit in

the right correct position. Any successful staffing design has to start with the job

attraction from its employee to perform the job successfully. With the large staffing in

Tanglewood human resource has to put a plan to distinguish the good from the bad

employees.

Staffing Quality

1. Person/Job or Person/Organization Match

Diagram 3: Person Job or Person / Organization Match

Work preferencesPersonalityDemography

Task requirementsRewards for this jobAuthority for this job

Group

Job

Culture and valuesReward systemsAuthority/decision making

Organization


Diagram 3 that there are three kinds of job match for a person and they are by

job, group and organization. A person is matched with a job during

recruitment and selection if the particular task requires specific knowledge to

do it, will rewards and authority attached to it. Person is matched with a team

(group) when the preference of the job demands a person to fit the group

perhaps in terms of personality, demography, target market etc. Lastly a

person is matched with needs of an organization when the company is looking

for people who can jive with their culture and values. People choose the

organizations when there are rewards attached to the organization. The job

also offers leadership and authority to the person when attached to the

organization.

Diagram 4 : An overall view of how the organization recruits a person who fit the job

and the impact on human resources division.

OrganizationValues

New JobDuties

MultipleJobs

FutureJobs

Job

RequirementsRewards

Person

KSAOsMotivation

Match Impact

AttractionPerformanceRetentionAttendanceSatisfactionOther

AttractionPerformanceRetentionAttendanceSatisfactionOther

HR Outcomes


Having explained the above diagram 3 and 4, we can conclude that for

Tanglewood, we would recommend the organization matches the person with

the organization. This is because specific or expert knowledge is not required to

do the task. Graduates are also placed in stores as associates to learn up the

skills and experience needed. Plus Tanglewood employs the method of

employee participation which is more like working together as a family. So

finding for a staff that fits the organization is suitable for this company.

Matching a person to job would be more preferred for a higher position but

nevertheless, employees working at Tanglewood are going up the ladder with

training and promotion.

2. Specific or General KSAOs

We would go for the second choice more than the first. Staff that have a

variety of knowledge and experience will serve best at this company.

Tanglewood needs someone who can adapt to the agile requirement of the

company and changing business world. As the company expands, many

changes will take place. Someone who can fit both now and future will be

perfect if the candidate has a general KSAOs.

3. Exceptional or Acceptable Workforce Quality

The first is the best choice for the organization. The employees are an asset for

Tanglewood. The company cannot settle for cheap labour or average staff

which could threaten the success of the company built over the years. Plus

Tanglewood does not believe so much in a flexible workforce like temporary


workers. Staff turnover is not so healthy for a company. Tanglewood should

continue its culture of valuing its employees and ensuring core good

workforce is always maintained over the years.

4. Active or Passive Diversity

A diverse workforce is good for today however the question is whether the

workforce understands the local need of the place, the demand patterns,

customer expectations and culture to name a few. We would recommend a

passive workforce for Tanglewood to maintain the close relationship shared

among employees.

In Chapter 5 there is a case on Tanglewood for not being active enough its in

diversity. Employment in US follows EEU of America. Have to check that before

writing the above our lecturer said.

Recommendation and Conclusion:

Since the aim of Tanglewood is now to expand, their management must understand

KSAOs and motivation to its employees, how to attract, retain, perform and satisfy

customers. Though we have given the explanation based on the information from Mr

Penchiala and Ancheley, both must be careful and prudent while implementing

changes to the policy and processes. It is important to retain a strong workforce with

skills, qualifications, education and knowledge, which will surely lead Tanglewood to

have the competitive advantage to stay ahead of its competitors and be a price /

product leader.

tanglewood answer for case study chapter1

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