HRM924: Career

Management and
Retention – Case Studies
Submitted to:
Prof. Sherif Eid
Prepared
By:
Mohamed
Khaled
Marwa
SaeedAhmed
Mohamed
Zakaria
SedhomZein
Christine
Ahmed Ahmed
Mostafa Ismail
Youssef
Tawfik
Zein
Objectives

• Giving A real-life Examples while illustrating the following points:

• Career Management.
• Employees Engagement.
• Turnover & Retaining Employees.
• Employee Life-Cycle Management. (Promotions, Transfers and Dismissals)
• Job Withdrawal.
• Managing dismissals.
• Corporate downsizing.
Career Management – Hotel Paris
• Competitive Strategy: Superior Guest Service to differentiate the Hotel properties.
Accordingly, increase the length of stay and return rate of Guests, and thus boost
revenues and profitability.
• Lisa Cruz (HR Manager) knew that, as a hospitality business is uniquely dependent upon
having engaged, high-morale employees.
• In a factory or small retail shop, the employer may rely on direct supervision to ensure
that employees are doing their jobs. But in a hotel, just about every employee is “on the
front line”. (Example: Limousine driver, front-desk clerk & housekeeping)
Career Management – Hotel Paris Contd.
• Lisa knew, Hotel Paris had to make it clear that the company was also committed to its
employees beside the clients.
• From Her Experience, she knew that one way to do this was to help her employees have
successful and satisfying careers, and she was therefore concerned to find that Hotel Paris
had no career management process at all.
• Supervisors were not trained to discuss employees’ development needs or promotional
options during the performance appraisal interviews.
• Promotional processes were informal.
Career Management – Hotel Paris Contd.
• The firm made no attempt to provide any career development services that might help its
employees to develop a better understanding of what their career options were, or should
be.
Actions:
• In two hotels she began encouraging supervisors to at least engage in career-oriented
appraisals with their subordinates on a pilot project basis.
• The employees who had been working under the new career management directive were
more engaged, received more complimentary letters from guests, and received higher
performance appraisal ratings than did employees who did not have career plans.
Career Management – Hotel Paris Contd.
• The CFO therefore gave the go-ahead to design and institute a new Hotel Paris career
management program.
• The new system required that the supervisor appraise the employee based on goals and
competencies that were driven by the company’s strategic needs; and the appraisal itself
produced new goals for the coming year and specific development plans for the
employee which had to make sense in terms of both the company’s and the employee’s
needs and preference.
• In addition to the new Performance management elements already in place, Lisa and her
team created an online “Hotel Paris Career Center” with links to a choice of career
assessment tools.
Career Management – Hotel Paris Contd.
• The site also provided wizard-based templates for developing one’s own career plan.
• The site went toward providing the Hotel Paris’s employees with the career assistance
that they required.
• Also on the site, a new “international Job Openings” link made it easier for Hotel
employees to identify positions for which they might be qualified.
• The Results exceeded Lisa and the CFO’s expectations. Virtually every employee
produced a career plan within the first 6 months.
 • As such, Walmart’s human resource
management is focused on ensuring that its
compensation packages are minimized, but not
to the point that it compromises performance.
• The Company also has career development
Career strategies that aim to minimize turnover by
maximizing the level of fit between employees

Development and their jobs.

• Career Development at Walmart:

– Walmart 1. Individual-Organization Matching: Direct

Method, By collecting information
regarding employees' perceptions about
the company. Such information
represents employees’ point of view
about the appropriateness of their jobs
and Walmart’s strategies.
 • Indirect Method, By Involving organizational
variables as indicators of person-organization fit.
• Still the direct method is more readily applied

Career
because it is easier to implement, such as through
the involvement of store managers.

Development
2. Career opportunities and requirements: which is
based on different variables, including:
• Job analysis results (indicates the requirements
– Walmart for jobs and career paths).
The company uses employee-selection criteria,

Contd. employee interests and KSAs to evaluate the

level of person-job fit between employees and
the available opportunities. Hence, ensuring
that employees are on the right career path
while minimizing turnover among promoted
workers.
 • The identified Employee-career matches are
used as one of the bases for promoting
employees to higher positions in Walmart’s
corporate ladder.
Career 3. Assessing Employee Potential: Store
managers may use different criteria and
Development methods of assessment. However, in
general, the following are the most used
– Walmart criteria for assessing employee potential in
Walmart:

Contd. • Employee Knowledge, skills and abilities.

• Results of performance appraisals.
This aspect related with the fact that about
70% of Walmart’s managers started as hourly
sales employees with leadership potential.
 4. Instituting career Development initiatives:
Career Approaches:-
• Coaching, Walmart’s HRM aims to using
Development coaching to facilitate the sharing of
leadership insights and ideas.
– Walmart • Training.
• American Public University (APU)
Contd. Partnership. (Supporting KSAs which in
return supports the career development).
 Basic Pay: Walmart is known for low prices and
low wages. These low wages are frequently
criticized for inadequacy in supporting
employees’ needs. By 2017, the company had a
Engagement minimum hourly wage ($7.25), which was
significantly below the national average of $9.93.
& Retention
– Walmart However, Walmart is reforming its HRM. As such,
the firm increased its minimum hourly wage to
contd. 11$ comparing to the national average of 11.29$.
(Statista).
 These changes improved the workforce,
especially with regard to employee retention.

Engagement Benefits: Walmart has a considerable list of

benefits, overview of these benefits:
& Retention • Company- matched 401(k) contributions, up to 6% of
salary.
– Walmart • Associate stock purchase plan with company match
(Discounted Price).
contd. • Associate discounts.
• Comprehensive health insurance plans.

These benefits address the human resource

management goal of employee retention.
 Incentives: Company gives recognition to high-
performance employees. As well as the optional APU
credits are also incentives to motivate workers to improve
their knowledge, skills and abilities.

Engagement Walmart employees can improve their performance and

plan a long-term career though continuing education with
& Retention APU.

– Walmart These Incentives aiming for promotion and contributing

more to Walmart’s success.
Contd.
Walmart discovered it could significantly reduce voluntary
turnover by providing aggressively realistic previews about
the job’s demands and work hours.
 • One study analyzed the cost of turnover in a
call center with 31 agents and 4 supervisors.
• Tangible Costs: (recruiting, screening, costs
Turnover and of wages while new agent oriented and
trained…etc.)
Performance • Intangible Costs: Lost productivity and
– a Call supervisory cost for coaching the new agent.
Center • The estimated cost (Tangible + Intangible) of
an agent leaving at about $21,551.
• This call center averaged 18.6 Vacancies per
year (about 60% turnover rate).
 • Therefore, the estimated total annual cost of
agent turnover is about $400,853.
Turnover • Taking steps to cut this turnover rate in, say,
&Performance half could save this firm about $200,000 per
– a Call Center year.
contd. • The bottom line is that HR Practices can have
a big influence on employee turnover, and
thereby on the company’s profitability.
 • Cindy is a 54-year-old nurse. Once
Cindy earned a degree in nursing, she
immediately got a job in a local
emergency room working the 11pm to
7am shift. she often worked overtime
and weekends.
Withdrawal • For years this schedule worked well for
Cindy, but then she began to feel stressed,
Case Study tired and run down. Then decided
that she needed a schedule change in
order to alleviate these feelings.
• She temporarily changed the time of her
shift, believing that this would reduce her
stress and exhaustion. Cindy worked the
3pm to 11pm shift for several years, but
again was subject to overtime and
weekend work.
 • After having 20 years of nursing behind her,
she began to be late for her shift on a daily
basis. She also began calling in sick because
she was feeling down and did not have the
energy to go to work.

Withdrawal • Several months later she became

overwhelmed with stress, and as a result,
Case Study – Cindy began to suffer from burnout. As time
went on, she lost more and more of her
Contd. enthusiasm for nursing after losing the lives
of several patients. Cindy’s burnout was
affecting her in several ways. She was tardy
and absent more and more frequently from
work.
• She also lost her sincere love of caring for
patients.
 • Eventually the stress began
impacting not only her professional
life but her personal life as well, and
this caused Cindy to leave her
Withdrawal position as an emergency room
nurse. Cindy now works as a clinical
Case Study – nurse in a more laid-back and
stress-free environment. She only
Contd. sees patients who have no
immediate health concerns. She is
happy with her current position and
plans to continue working at the
clinic until she can retire.
 • She realized the reality of the career; the
hours and sacrifice were high, and she
couldn't save everyone's life. This
negatively impacted her commitment to
the organization, which led to tardiness,
Withdrawal absenteeism and burnout.
1. Physical Withdrawal Behaviors:
Case Study – • Tardiness: This was the start of her
Contd. withdrawal behaviors - she had little or no
motivation to report to work on time.
• Absenteeism: She was feeling down and
drained due to high work demands, which
caused her to call in sick.
 2. Psychological Withdrawal
Behaviors:
• Burnout: She became increasingly
stressed from the long hours and
Withdrawal demands of her position.
(overwhelmed by stress)
Case Study – 3. Withdrawal Behavior Impact:
Contd. • Turnover: she left employment
voluntarily after over 20 years due
to overwhelming stress and
exhaustion.
 • Walmart told to pay woman with Down’s
syndrome $125m for unfair dismissal.
• Wisconsin employee Marlo Spaeth wins
discrimination lawsuit but Walmart says
Dismissal – amount will be reduced to $300,000.
• Marlo Spaeth, who began working as a sales
Walmart Co. associate in 1999, was fired by the retail
giant in 2015 for what they said was
excessive absenteeism after she repeatedly
asked Walmart to return her to normal work
hours.
 • Spaeth, who consistently received positive
performance reviews, originally worked from
noon to 4pm. But after Walmart
implemented a computerized scheduling
Dismissal – system in November 2014, she was required
to work from 1pm to 5.30pm.
Walmart • The new schedule caused Spaeth difficulty
owing to her disability and she struggled to
Contd. keep up with the new routine. Because of
Spaeth’s need for a rigid schedule, her
lawsuit said, if she did not have dinner at the
same time every evening, she would get sick.
• According to her lawyers, Spaeth asked for
her start and end times to be adjusted back
to her original schedule. Despite her pleas,
Walmart fired her in July 2015 for excessive
absenteeism.
 • Though Spaeth’s termination letter said she
could be rehired, Walmart refused to do so
when she requested it. The jury found that
Walmart turned down the request “because
Dismissal – of her disability or because of their need to
accommodate her disability”, according to
Walmart the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC).
Contd. • “The jury here recognized, and apparently
was quite offended, that Ms Spaeth lost her
job because of needless – and unlawful –
inflexibility on the part of Walmart,” said
Gregory Gochanour, the EEOC’s Chicago
regional attorney.
 • In addition to the $125m in punitive
damages, the jury awarded Spaeth $150,000
in compensatory damages for emotional
pain and mental anguish. Walmart said the
Dismissal – verdict would be reduced to $300,000, which
under federal law is the statutory maximum
Walmart for punitive and compensatory damages.
• Walmart spokesperson Randy Hargrove said
Contd. “We often adjust associate schedules to
meet our customers’ expectations and while
Ms Spaeth’s schedule was adjusted, it
remained within the times she indicated she
was available.”
• “We do not tolerate discrimination of any
kind, and we routinely accommodate
thousands of associates every year,”
• Since the coronavirus pandemic began, the
telecoms giant AT&T has announced
permanent closures of hundreds of retail stores
around the US and laid off thousands of
workers.
• The closures and losses include 320 company-
Corporate
owned retail stores announced in November
and December 2020 and 250 stores announced
Downsizing -
in June 2020, including an estimated 3,400 cuts
in technician, clerical, managerial and executive
AT&T
roles.
• The moves come despite the company’s keen
support for a major corporate tax cut under
Donald Trump, which it claimed would spur it to
create jobs – not cut them.
• AT&T lobbied aggressively in favor of the
2017 Trump tax cuts, promising to create
7,000 new jobs and invest $1bn in capital
expenditures if it passed. AT&T saved an
estimated $21bn when the tax cuts passed
Corporate
and the company saved an estimated $3bn
annually due to the lower corporate tax rate
Downsizing -
from 35% to 21%. AT&T
• Since the tax cuts, AT&T eliminated more
than 42,000 jobs even before the first retail Contd.
store closures in June 2020 went into effect.
• AT&T is also closing dozens of retail stores this
spring around the US, including three stores in
the Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota, area
where workers and their union, the
Communications Workers of America Local
Corporate
7250, are pushing back against the cuts.
• When AT&T first began rolling out the store
Downsizing -
closures during the pandemic, they cited the
cuts as part of a $6bn cost-cutting plan that the
AT&T
pandemic gave AT&T a “head-start” in
implementing it. The CWA has noted retail cuts
Contd.
and an emphasis on an authorized retailer
model were part of plans proposed by the
hedge fund Elliot Management before the
pandemic.
Any Questions