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Retail Store Management

Notes How can a retailer utilize the best people to ensure that its customers have a pleasant shopping
experience? This is the problem for human resource management. HRM and strategic HRM
replace earlier personnel management theories – principal features of the new concepts in HRM
include managerial focus, the perception of employees as organizational “recourse” the
integration of all HR functions with each other and towards organizational goals and a long –
term planning orientation.
Strategic HRM models will need to be also sufficient flexible to incorporate differential social,
culture, economic and legislative conditions, and government policies. This unit deals with HR
recruitment selection training and other maintained criteria. It also focus can different laws
related to HR.
In this unit, we will study Human Resource Management in Retail and Human Resource
Environment of Retailing. We will further focus on position of retail store manager, staffing
retail store and performance management at the end.

8.1 Human Resource Management in Retail

World over, retail as an industry, employs a significant high number of people. Retail is the
largest industry in United Kingdom and employs nearly three million people. In US, the figure
is ten times the number.

However in India, attracting people to this industry and then retaining them is a challenge. The
primary reason for such a situation is the poor image the business carries. Typically seen as
“dukandari”, the perception of the industry is poor and most people would be hesitant to look
upon this industry as a career option.

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Caution With the emergence of multiple formats, the demand for manpower is increasing
and at the same time, has led to high attrition rates among most of the organized players
in the market.
Under such circumstances, the special significance of the human resources cannot be undetermined.
Retail being a part of service industry; it is the people within the organisation that can become
the source of competitive advantage. This is true in more ways than one.

Notes In any retail organisation, the people who deal with the customers at a one-to-one
level are considered as face of the organisation. Thus, people who work at store level are
important. Hiring persons with the right attitude is important as in the case of most retail
stores, the employees need to work for long hours, and they also need to work when the
rest of the people may be on a holiday, e.g., on Sundays, occasions like Diwali, Christmas,
etc. Secondly, the retailers need to have persons with the right skill sets taking care of
functions like buying and merchandising, as the product is the key in retail set-up. In this
section, we examine various aspects of human resources function in retail.

The Human Resources function in retail involves:
1. Identifying various roles in the organisation.
2. Recruitment and Selection.
3. Training.
4. Motivating employees.

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