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Essay / Nordstrom: Dissension in the Ranks
The case calls into question Nordstrom's compensation policies and practices, which are tied to its culture of high-quality customer service. Nordstrom has been publicly lambasted by unions and the media for its practices, which led employees to underreport their actual work hours in an effort to maintain both their high commissions and top floor hours, as well as to gain favor with management. The biggest problem Norstrom faced was how to implement a compensation structure that effectively satisfied store employees, kept costs low, and kept sales and customer service at an all-time high. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The first key problem was that there was no clear distinction between selling and non-selling hours. All hours worked by the employee were considered sales hours and therefore the employees' SPH was lower than it should have been. This fear of having a lower SPH forced employees to report unsold hours, resulting in employees losing both monetary and recognition for extra effort. To alleviate this problem, there should be a clear distinction between hours that would be classified as sales hours and non-sales hours. Additionally, Nordstrom should keep track of these hours for each of its employees. However, the hourly rate of pay for sales hours and non-sales hours may differ. Since the time spent by the employee outside of sales hours does not bring any immediate benefit to the company. This would allow employees to clearly report their hours and reduce costs. The other key issue is using SPH as the sole metric to judge sellers. This made the employees work outside the clock hours in order to get better SPH and as a result they worked outside the clock hours, they were paid less and also brought the employees with high SPH to be scheduled at good times. In my opinion, other measures such as punctuality, behavior with the customer, etc. are important. should also be part of the employee's evaluation and bonus structure. Additionally, the caliber of Nordstrom's salespeople seemed to withstand the pressures of rapid growth, but apparently the company did not have a strong selection program or on-boarding training. More importantly, he didn't really seem to care about treating employees well and providing them with fair rewards. An executive memo outlined tasks such as writing acknowledgments or attending a “sales” meeting. But writing a thank you to a customer does not guarantee that the customer will make their next purchase from YOU! This should not be considered a sales activity, but rather an after-sales activity. The company should pay for this, not the employee, since it is the company as a whole that will most likely benefit from the next purchase. Bruce Nordstrom compared this non-sales time to an advertising salesman or an insurance salesman. But there is a big difference in business models: the next sale will likely go DIRECTLY to that person at these companies. There have also been cases where employees have been misdirected. Employees were lied to about the distinction between sales and non-sales hours. For example, during Saturday morning meetings, they were repeatedly told that the time clock was broken or that the?