Level 5 Human Resources Management ©
(Level 5 HR)
How Evidence-Based HR Management Can Drive
Organizational Execution and Improve Financial Results
Rex Gale, SPHR, HCS
© 2007 Rex Gale. All Rights Reserved
Level 5 Human Resources Management
In the book Good to
Great, Jim Collins coined the term Level 5 Leader. In his study of enduring
companies, one of the key characteristics of these companies was the presence
of a leader who exhibited a rare combination of professional will and personal
humility. David Maxwell of Fannie Mae, Darwin Smith of Kimberly-Clark, and
Colman Mockler of Gillette all exhibited this Level 5 Leader key trait: ambition
first and foremost for the company, and concern for company’s success, rather
than for one’s own riches and personal renown. (Jim Collins, Good to Great,
2001)
The lessons of the Level 5 Leader can be applied to Human
Resources (HR) Management. “Level 5 HR” should exhibit ambition first and
foremost for the company and its success,
rather than for the respect of HR as a function, a “seat at the table”, or the
label of “strategic advisor”.
In 2005 the HR community was broadsided with the article
“Why We Hate HR”. (Keith Hammonds, Fast Company, Why We Hate HR, August 2005) It hit a
nerve. What nerve depends on your perspective. It was met with consternation by
most HR professionals, and with nods of agreement from most business leaders.
Thus, the problem. There is a great divide between
business leaders and HR leaders about the contribution of HR to the business. A
divide that HR must close.
The Business of HR
Simply stated, people execute business strategy. As
business strategies change, HR should lead the change required to enable people
to best execute the new business strategy.
How? What follows is a specific example of how “Level 5 HR”
might position a company for sustained business success.
A New Metric
In June 2006 a leadership shakeup changed not only the
structure of RadioShack Corporation, but one of the key business metrics. New
CEO Julian Day was tapped to lead RadioShack out of a business downturn that
had begun a few years earlier. Prior to Julian’s arrival, the inability to meet
growth and earnings expectations for most of 2005 had triggered a turnaround
plan that included the closing of over 500 underperforming stores and a company-wide
focus on improving average unit volume; rationalizing the cost structure; and growing
profitable square footage.
Soon after Julian’s arrival he mandated a significant
cost-cutting program that led RadioShack to shed upwards of 30% of its
corporate office staff.
Why? It would require a change in organizational behavior.
High margin merchandise is often low cost and low tech. A talking picture
frame, retailing for $18, may have a profit margin approaching 100%, or $9. Lower
margin merchandise is often high cost and high tech. The Apple iPod, retailing
for $300, has only a 15% margin. For years RadioShack didn’t sell the iPod, one
reason being its relatively meager margin. Yet seen from the dollars of margin perspective, a $300
iPod produces $45 dollars of margin, versus $9 dollars of margin for the
talking picture frame.
And these are two very different sales. RadioShack’s
selection, training, and sales compensation strategies would have to change.
The sales force would need to shift to selling more technologically relevant, complex,
higher cost, and higher dollar of margin stock keeping units (SKUs). In tandem,
marketing, merchandising, supply chain, and other corporate functions would need
to refine the assortment and distribution strategy to deliver the new high
dollar of margin assortment to the stores and to customer’s homes..
The shift to dollars of margin also would also
fundamentally improve the performance of other key retail metrics, including same-store
sales; average ticket price (average dollar value of each transaction), and profit
per square foot, all driven by sales of the higher cost and higher dollar of margin
assortment. This, in turn, would increase earnings, fuel growth, and improve
shareholder value.
So, what does this change from margin percentage to
dollars of margin mean for HR? It means that HR should take the lead in
transitioning the workforce to drive greater dollars of margin through an
integrated talent strategy that includes:
1) Planning 4) Engaging 7) Leading
2) Branding 5)
Developing 8)
Retaining
3) Acquiring 6) Deploying 9) Evaluating
Let’s take a closer look at how each of these integrated
processes would help drive dollars of margin.
Planning
HR should begin by engaging the merchandising, marketing, and
finance organizations to identify the highest dollar of margin SKUs. Once
identified, a secondary analysis should identify which of the SKUs are “technologically
relevant”, and would help to deliver on the RadioShack brand perception as “one of the nation’s most experienced and trusted consumer
electronics specialty retailers” where “knowledgeable, friendly,
conveniently located sales associates help to satisfy your most complex
technology needs.”
Let’s assume that this analysis identified 100 “targeted” SKUs
that had high dollars of margin and were technologically relevant. A talent
management and strategic workforce planning process would identify a number of
critical talent requirements. How will the
store manager and sales associate hiring profile and
competencies need to change to successfully sell the new product and service
mix? Based on the new hiring profile, what are the gaps in the current workforce,
and what interventions need to take place to fill those gaps? How will you assess
the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the current sales associates? How will
you transition out those who lack the required skills to sell the new
assortment? How will you more effectively screen new sales associates so they arrive
better equipped to sell the new assortment? Based on historical and projected
turnover, and growth projections, what volume of sales associates and store
managers need to be obtained over the next few years to meet the new staffing
requirements?
HR must also plan to roll out sales training and an
ongoing performance management process to change behavior. HR should lead the development
of content and the delivery of sales training to the field to teach product and
service features and functionality, and to communicate clearly the key value
drivers to the customer. Appropriate store and individual sales incentives need
to be tested and refined to drive the required change in selling behavior
around the new dollar of margin assortment and to drive customer satisfaction. With
the change to a dollar of margin metric, getting the reward structure and
training right will drive the behavior change required to improve sales of high
dollar of margin SKUs, build on the brand, and improve customer loyalty.
Apart from driving the execution of the new dollars of
margin strategy, HR should be front-and-center during the strategic planning
process to articulate the key human capital issues that need to be addressed as
the business charts its strategic direction for the next three to five
years.
Branding: Competitive Talent Advantage Through Employer Branding
What is your brand in the marketplace? How about your
employment brand? How do they compare to your competitors? Are you considered a
leader in your industry? A Best
Employer? Competitive positioning as an employer of choice attracts
more, and better, talent, and improves the pipeline at a time when demographic changed
are shrinking the skilled workforce.
In the consumer electronics space, RadioShack competes
with the likes of Best Buy, Circuit
City
Acquiring
Acquiring the right talent is mission critical. People
execute business strategy. Jim Collins in Good to Great talks about “First Who,
Then What”, and goes on to explain that you have to get the right people on the
bus in order to figure out where to drive it. Great vision, without great
people, is irrelevant.
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, in their book “Execution”, identified
three critical processes that are required to drive great business performance:
the Strategy process, the People process, and the Operations process. Of these
three critical processes, they found the People process the most critical. (Larry
Bossidy & Ram Charan, Execution, 2002)
At RadioShack, the high dollar of margin focus would impact
the selection of the “right people” in the sales force. From the customer’s
perspective, store sales associates must move from a product-based framework to
a more technology and solutions-based framework. It is critical to determine
required capabilities, assess the capabilities of the current sales force,
retrain for the desired competencies, and retool the hiring process to hire
only those sales associates who fit the new competency profile, and who exhibit
the specific behaviors and habits of high-performers. Examples of how the
profile might change include additional critical competencies around Problem
Solving, Personal Learning, Interpersonal Savvy, Listening, and Patience. (Selections
from the Lominger Competency Model)
Understanding your talent pool, your competition, the
competitive advantage of your business, your reputation, and your brand are key
ingredients to any effective talent acquisition strategy.
Measuring the effectiveness of your talent acquisition
process is critical. Who are your high-performers? Where did they come from?
What are the strengths, competencies, behaviors and unique skills that are
contributing to their success? Constant analysis of where you find your best
people, and understanding the critical skills, behaviors, and competencies that
make them successful, are important to continually fine-tune your hiring
profile, recruiting strategy, workforce plan, and ultimately your business
performance.
Analyzing human capital data will tell you which sales
associates are most successful. Why are they successful? Is it prior work in a
related industry? Is it a specific depth in certain competencies? Is it a
higher level of emotional and social intelligence that helps them to better
understand and interact with customers? Is it specific patterns of behavior? Go
through the analytic process to identify the most successful store managers and
sales associates. Inventory their behaviors, competencies and capabilities.
What did you learn? What attributes are most contributing to their success? Use
this knowledge as the basis for the selection of new sales associates and the
assessment of current sales associates.
Continually test and measure. RadioShack has a footprint
of over 5,000 company and dealer stores. Use the new profiles for selection in
a targeted region and measure results.
Do new sales associates hired under the new profile
outperform their peers hired under a different profile? What was the financial
impact of the new hiring profile on sales, dollars of margin, profitability,
productivity and turnover? Measure the increase in average tickets per day (converting
traffic to customers), average ticket price increase, and dollars of margin.
How did overall sales of high dollar-of-margin SKUs differ by associate,
location, geography, and region? And what was the impact on quarterly earnings
and future earnings expectations?
Technology also plays an important role in talent
acquisition. RadioShack hires about 35,000 people every year. Managing the
volume, and the quality of hire, in what is a very transactional process
requires focus on technology and assessment solutions that quickly select and
screen for the most qualified candidates.
Engaging Employees and Customers
How do you engage a workforce when a fundamental tenet of
the business is changing? No longer is profit margin king. Dollars of margin now
rule.
And, really, does an engaged workforce matter? Does
engagement really impact business results?
Research clearly establishes both a correlative and
increasingly causal link between engagement and financial results.
·
A 2004 Harvard Business Review cited Gallup ’s work with Best
Buy to quantify the ROI on what it referred to as its Human Sigma. The study
correlated employee engagement (the Gallup Q12) & customer engagement (the
Gallup CE11). (Human Sigma, Harvard Business Review, 2004)
·
According to Corporate Leadership Council
Research Data from 2005, highly engaged employees exert discretionary effort 57%
more than the non-highly engaged employee, perform at levels 20% higher, and
are 87% less likely to leave.
·
A Towers Perrin study of 50 companies found that
firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees collectively increased
operating income 19% and earnings per share 28% year-to-year. Those companies
with the lowest percentage of engaged employees showed year-to-year declines of
33% in operating income and 11% in earnings per share. In a related study over
a longer time horizon (three years), the firms with the highest levels of
employee engagement achieved a 3.7% increase in operating margins, while those with
the lowest levels of engagement suffered a drop of 2%.
·
James Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr., and Leonard
Schlesinger found that profitability and growth was driven not only by customer
loyalty and satisfaction, but by employee loyalty, satisfaction and productivity.
The strongest relationships, they found, were between profit and customer
loyalty; employee loyalty and customer loyalty; employee satisfaction and
customer satisfaction. (James Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr., and Leonard
Schlesinger, The Service Profit Chain, 1997)
·
Rolls-Royce Engine Services–Oakland implemented
a major employee engagement improvement initiative, and in about a year saw a
19% improvement in operating profit and an 18% improvement in productivity.
Bottom line...the evidence is clear that engaged employees
greatly improve customer loyalty, employee loyalty, and overall business
performance.
What do we mean by “engagement?” There are many
definitions, but most focus on the emotional state that exists when employees
are so committed to the company and what it stands for, that they exert
discretionary effort to achieve whatever it takes to make the organization
successful.
If engagement drives business performance, how to we
improve engagement? Recent Towers Perrin research (Towers Perrin Global
Workforce Study, 2007) indicates that the most critical levers of engagement
are:
·
Senior management sincere interest in employee
well being
·
The ability for employees to improve their
individual skill and capabilities, and
·
The reputation of the organization as a good
employer
Engagement also has a direct impact on retention. According to the Towers Perrin study, half of the engaged employees had no plans to leave their company, compared with just 15% of the disengaged ¾ and roughly a third of the workforce overall. Less than 5% of engaged employees said they were actively looking for another job compared with more than 20% of the disengaged employees. The Towers Perrin study also offers evidence that contradicts the widely held view that engagement is an innate trait. Rather, it is the organization itself ¾ and most particularly, its senior leadership ¾ that has the biggest impact on engagement levels. Personal values and work experience factors have less of an impact on engagement than what the company stands for. People want to be a part of something greater than themselves.
In retail, the cost of turnover is enormous, with 100%
turnover not unusual for store sales associate positions.
If we conservative
ly assume that RadioShack’s hourly
turnover is 75%; that average pay is $20,000; and that we only assume that the
cost of turnover is 1x pay, the cost of
turnover at RadioShack is conservatively estimated at $525 million ((35,000 x
75%) x (20,000) = $525,000,000).
The bottom line is significant. Reducing turnover by 10%
would result in estimated savings of $52 million, improve Earnings Per Share by
an estimated $0.39 (as of November, 2007), increase stock price by an estimated
21% to $23 (based on the Nov. 2007 earnings multiple of 11.80) and increase
market capitalization by an estimated $3 billion.
Are your employees engaged? It’s important to survey your employees
and understand what their key drivers of engagement are. What is the level of
confidence in senior management, and the perception of senior management’s
interest in employee well-being? Are employees proud of the company and what it
stands for? Do employees believe that they have been given the opportunity to
learn and grow?
Use research to set the engagement baseline. Then track
your gaps, your actions, your progress, and the accompanying financial outcomes
as you improve engagement within the company. Continue to use pulse surveys to
assess ongoing engagement within the company, and the customer base.
Dig deeper with engagement analytics. Your workforce plan
has identified critical roles within the organization. How engaged are the
people in these roles? How engaged are your high-performers? How engaged are
your next-generation leaders? Understand each pool of employees with unique and
critical skills; those who are high performers; and those who are the potential
future leaders of the enterprise. Focus you efforts on engaging and retaining the
people who are most contributing to the current and future success of the
organization.
In RadioShack’s case, what will engage customers in the
high dollar of margin world? Will it be technology-savvy sales associates who will
delight customers with their knowledge of leading technology and consumer
electronics products and solutions? Listen to your customers. What does your
customer research tell you that you need to deliver - not only to engage your
customer, but to differentiate yourself from your competitors? Engaging your
employees, who in turn engage your customers by helping the customer make the
best decisions about, and get the most out of, their increasing sophisticated
and complicated consumer electronics, will be a winning strategy in the
ever-complex consumer electronics marketplace. RadioShack has altered its
tagline recently to…Don’t just buy stuff…Do stuff. This new tagline seems
intuitively aligned with what many people seem to want. “Help me better use the
great technology that I have”. “Help me to understand what technology I need
that I don’t even know about”.
Engaging the customer also means rethinking the store
layout to maximize shelf-space, strategically positioning the high dollar of
margin and technologically relevant inventory, and “clustering” solutions in
the same spot so cross-selling opportunities and accessories are in close
proximity to the featured item.
Developing
How do you best develop people? The most effective
development approach involves a 70/20/10 formula. Seventy percent of
development comes from on-the-job experience; 20% comes from coaching and
mentoring; and 10% comes from formal training programs. While in retail there
may be a larger percentage of training due to the breadth and complexity of the
assortment mix, sales is fundamentally on the job training, centered around
each customer interaction. In RadioShack’s case, sales associates should be using
the technology that is being sold, becoming intimately involved in each
function and feature in order to amaze the customer with both the capability of
the technology, and the knowledge of the sales associate. It also means that
managers need to spend time coaching sales associates to capitalize on the
individual strengths of their team; help to strengthen the key competencies
that have been identified for individual associates; and to make sure that the
rewards system is aligned to create the desired behaviors. Product and service
training is integral to the achievement of sales goals as sales associates need
to master the products and service assortment in order to maximize the sales
opportunities to the customer. On-the-job in retail means hands-on
understanding of the assortment that you’re selling, and much of the hands-on
learning is fundamental assortment training.
Retail is a great laboratory to
master the 70/20/10 rule and the SAIC model of “see one, do one, lead one,
teach one”. See, touch and feel the critical items in the assortment; use them
to understand the key features and functions; lead a training session to share
the knowledge learned so that others, particularly new sales associates, can
benefit from the knowledge; and continue
to teach new sales associates to help supplement any formalized certification
or product and service training programs.
Later we’ll discuss the idea of a weekly RadioShack
Technology Expo that could take place at each RadioShack store each Saturday (and
Sunday) afternoon. Combined with a featured product or service, this
customer-focused and brand-building event would feature a specific technology
and offer the opportunity for a different sale associates to take the lead each
Saturday in mastering the device or service, train the other sales associates
in advance of the event, and lead the event during the Expo. In addition to
developing content and assortment mastery, it would help to build leadership
and management skills and pave the way for the more rapid creation of an assistant
manager and manager pipeline, provided that the other requisite competencies
and skills are exhibited.
One last point. It is critical to have a system in place
to measure development. Individual Development Plans should be in place to not
only track aligned sales and dollar of margin goals, but developmental goals as
well. Goals might be focused on content expertise in specific areas, such as
wireless, or on the development of specific competencies, but these plans must
be discussed, understood, documented, and continually updated to ensure that clear
expectations are set, agreed to, and that the individual and the business
continue to grow.
Deploying
Once planning has been completed to identify the relevant high
dollar of margin items, merchandisers have to determine how to obtain the
optimum assortment at the most favorable price and quantity. Supply Chain has to
determine how to best move the assortment from the source through the distribution
center to the store, and to leverage online ordering if inventory levels are
low.
In retail, the bottom line is the customer interaction.
How do you maximize the customer experience with the store sales associate?
Sales associates should be assessed to determine if they have the competencies
to sell the new mix of high dollar of margin items. If not, they should be
retrained to develop those competencies, and if they are not able to
demonstrate them, they should leave the organization. New sales associates
should be hired who already possess the desired competencies, improving their
ability to successfully sell most quickly the targeted mix, and delighting the
customer with their knowledge and friendliness. This will further strengthen
the RadioShack brand of having knowledgeable, friendly, conveniently-located
sales associates, and further broaden the brand of RadioShack as the preferred
destination for relevant, leading-edge consumer electronics. Only when sales
associates have been assessed, trained, retrained, or acquired with the right
competencies to understand and sell the high dollar of margin assortment will
the business achieve accelerated revenue growth, improved same store sales,
improved tickets per day, improved average ticket price, improved dollars of
margin, and improved profitability.
While mentioned previously, it’s worth repeating. The
deployment of talent also creates a tremendous opportunity to test and measure
the success of the deployment process. The tenets of decision science should be
used to understand the relative competencies and capabilities of individual
sales associates. Which sales associates are most successful? Why? What
specific mix of talents, competencies, and capabilities are being put to the
best use?
What is the impact of location and assortment? Retail
stores make it a habit of analyzing sales, profit, and margin data, and the
movement of fast- and slow-selling merchandise. The same discipline should be
used in the analysis of human capital data to understand why certain sales
associates are successful, and what variables appear to be driving that success.
Continually focus on ongoing testing and measuring to identify root-cause
interventions that will lead to better development of talent, retention of
talent, movement of talent across the enterprise, and improved financial performance.
Lastly, the deployment of store managers should be driven
by market opportunity. What stores have the most market opportunity?
Low-performing stores in expanding markets may offer a tremendous growth
opportunity. The same analytic discipline around broad human capital data
should be utilized in the search for high-performing store managers and
assistant managers. The right people in the right place is a fitting analogy
here. Just as General Electric identified the top talent and assigned it to the
most opportunistic markets (Execution, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, 2002),
RadioShack should continually assess their top performing store managers and
assistant managers and continually deploy them in those locations where the
greatest opportunity for growth exists.
Leading
Leadership at all levels needs to focus on the urgency of
the changing business model. RadioShack for years has been focused on margin
percentage, with pressure to improve margins above the 50% level. Wall Street
has also focused on this metric, so leadership at all levels needs to take an
aggressive approach to:
·
Clarify the need to change the financial focus
from percentage of margin to dollars of margin
·
Help financial analysts understand how the shift
will drive profitable growth and shareholder value
·
Help employees understand that this shift is
fundamental to the future of the business
In the store, managers should spend their time supporting
their sales associates, and not siphoning sales from their sales associates. In
the world of retail, turnover is high, recruiting is challenging, and quite often
highly-successful sales associates are promoted to manager and assistant
manager positions because of their ability to sell, not their ability to manage
and develop others. Store manager and assistant manager competencies should be
reviewed to assure that they are focused on the growth and success of their
store through the growth and success of the store sales associates.
Previously we shared some very compelling data on the
impact of engaged employees on sales, profitability, and productivity. Clearly
understanding the different skills and capabilities between the role of the
manager and sales associate, and an aligned rewards program, will lead to
higher engagement, lower turnover, higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, and
improved financial results.
Store managers and corporate leadership should be held
accountable for the talent and leadership pipeline. With the significant
demographic changes to take place over the next twenty years as the baby
boomers leave the workforce, the ability to retain, develop, and deploy great
talent in your most critical positions will become increasingly difficult. A
systematic process to identify top talent, understand their strengths and developmental
needs, develop them through on-the-job assignments, mentor them to further
engage them in the enterprise, and retain them should be the top priority for
leadership at all levels. Executing strategy is done through the thoughts,
ideas, minds and acts of people. Great talent will come up with the best ways
to most successfully execute your strategy. Many business models, technologies,
and ideas can be copied, reengineered, and regurgitated. How your people create
and execute your strategy, compared to your competitors, will win the day. Your
people are arguable your only true competitive advantage.
Retaining
Retention is the glue that holds most organizations
together. It’s the end result of engaging people’s minds, hearts, and hands. In
their minds they understand the business strategy and their role in the bigger
picture. In their hearts they feel that they are part of something bigger than
themselves, that they are part of a team in an industry that will accomplish
great things, both collaboratively and individually. And with their hands they
will do what it takes to not only succeed, but excel.
Retention gets back to executing all of the above flawlessly.
In RadioShack’s case, people need to understand the plan and the focus. Leadership
at all levels must communicate the vision of the new RadioShack as the local,
convenient, destination for the most relevant in consumer electronics
technologies, with the most knowledgeable, friendly, and thoughtful sales
associates who are able to understand your technology needs, assemble the right
solution to meet your technology needs, and help you get the most out of your
consumer electronics. This will best deliver on RadioShack’s most recent
advertising tag line. Don’t Just Buy Stuff…Do Stuff.
There are definite links between employee retention and
business performance. Frederick Reichheld, in The Loyalty Effect, found that in
one retail organization the stores ranked in the top third in employee
retention were also the top third in
employee productivity, with 22% higher sales per employee than the stores in
the bottom third. (Frederick Reichheld, The Loyalty Effect, 1996)
Sales associates must be acquired and deployed with the
right skills to make them the most successful in the world at selling the high
dollar of margin and technologically relevant assortment.
One this framework is in place, some of the key drivers of
retention can be addressed, such as the organization’s reputation as a great
place to work (driven by the success of the strategy in the marketplace),
satisfaction with the organization’s people decisions (based on
well-thought-out selection, compensation, and promotion processes), and good
relationships with supervisors (as managers become coaches and mentors instead
of sales competitors).
Evaluating
In retail, as in almost every enterprise, what gets
measured gets done. If you don’t measure your progress, how do you know that
you have accomplished your goals?
Let’s first evaluate a dollars-of-margin sales strategy. To
test and measure, focus on subsets of the identified high dollar of margin SKUs
in each region. For example, focus on 10 SKUs in the Northeast, another 10 in
the Southwest, etc. Track the improvement in sales by SKU in each region. What
particular SKUs are outselling the others. Why? Was it better training? More
experienced sales associates? What about local demographics? Be sure to take the
external environment in to account when selecting SKUs for focus. For example,
if current sales figures indicate greater sales penetration for Sirius
satellite radio in large urban metropolitan areas this might be an area that
merits increased focus and larger inventory. Conversely, it might be that rural
areas would deliver excellent satellite radio sales because of limited reception
of traditional AM and FM bands. Rely on the data. In urban areas, commute times
are longer, and satellite radio sales may be driven by the perceived ability to
ease the commute. What does customer research tell you? Similarly, perhaps a
separate training regiment is appropriate in rural areas where the Sirius solution
isn’t about the commute, but is about bringing the world to the fingertips of
people where conventional radio doesn’t. Use the 5,000 store footprint to track
successes and failures. Quickly drive successful practices through the
organization. What assortment combinations sell well together? Wal-Mart found
that banana sales peaked when positioned near the dairy case. What’s the banana/milk
formula at RadioShack? What product, price, promotion, and placement mix is
driving the greatest increase in sales and dollars of margin? Quickly expand
those that are successful. And stop those that fail. Try other approaches to
improve upon what’s working today. Customer preferences change quickly, and
keeping up with them will be a true competitive advantage. Try different sales
and training approaches. Different compensation structures. Reward for improved tickets per day, average ticket
price, and dollar of margin growth. Measure what works, and what doesn’t.
Quickly spread what works to the rest of the appropriate stores, and stop doing
what’s not working..
But how can you even further accelerate growth now that
the plan is in place? By accelerating traffic.
Driving Traffic: The RadioShack Technology Expo
Remember RadioShack’s brand promise as the specialty
consumer electronics retailer where you’ll find knowledgeable, friendly,
conveniently located sales associates?
How do you make this brand promise come alive to both a
new generation of twenty-somethings, the key 26-45 marketing segment, and the
core RadioShack baby-boomer customer who may not, in fact, be getting the most
out of their consumer electronics?
Imagine a RadioShack Technology Expo. Every Saturday and
Sunday, rain or shine, from 1pm
to 4pm , in every RadioShack
store, coast to coast. Each weekend, one or two high dollar of margin and
technologically-relevant items are highlighted during the Expo. This week it
may be Bluetooth. Explaining what it is. How it works. What’s the latest in
Bluetooth technology. The limitations of some wireless handsets and
alternatives. Or home networking. Or a host of other leading, relevant consumer
electronics products and solutions.
Think again about our key talent functions, and how a
focus on improving each of them will drive traffic and improve performance:
·
Plan: What
will be the schedule for the Expos for the next year? What seasonal issues
should be considered, and what timing will maximize sales? How will we tie each
Expo to marketing and circular production, and how will planagrams be tested to
maximize placement within the store? What product-specific training will need
to be prepared to be sure that the sales associates are experts on the featured
Expo items.
·
Acquire: Increased
traffic, accentuating the latest in consumer electronics, and offering a
learning environment focused on relevant technology will improve the brand
perception of RadioShack to both the consumer and the potential employee. The
employment brand proposition will be improved, and current RadioShack customers
will consider RadioShack as a possible future employer of choice.
·
Engage: Sales
and corporate office associates will be engaged by the improved traffic, sales,
and image of RadioShack as a destination that will more rapidly extend and
improve the brand promise. Top engagement drivers, including senior management
interest in employee well-being, the organization’s reputation in the
community, and the ability to improve skills and capabilities, will all be
heightened by the Expo, and leadership’s commitment to helping people learn not
to just buy stuff, but “Do Stuff”.
·
Develop: In
conjunction with each weekly Expo, the item or items to be highlighted will be
used to develop content-specific training programs to maximize the knowledge of
each sales associate. One sales associate can take the Expo lead one week,
while another prepares for the following week. Knowledge about the high dollar
of margin and technologically relevant assortment is accelerated, which will
accelerate sales, profits, and customer satisfaction.
·
Deploy: What
lessons can be learned from the Expo? Perhaps successful Expo store managers
and sales associates could visit other locations to help imbed best practices
related to the execution of the Expo. Growth opportunities might be available
for new sales associates who might be teamed with more experienced associates
to co-lead an Expo.
·
Lead: The
Expos would energize corporate and stores sales associates each week.
Highlighted sales from featured high dollar of margin items would be
top-of-mind, and the collaboration of marketing, merchandising, supply chain,
finance, HR and other corporate functions would instill a collaborative environment.
·
Retain: The
Expo would help to focus on some of the key drivers of retention. The Towers
Perrin 2007 Global Workforce Study identifies having excellent career
advancement opportunities, satisfaction with the organization’s business
decisions, and good relationship with supervisor as the three key drivers of
retention. The Expo would help to let store sales associates shine as they
organize and lead the Expo (leading to career advancement); the Expo would be a
business initiative focused on improving financial performance, improving
learning and development, and improving the corporate brand (satisfaction with
the organization’s business decisions); and close interaction with the store
manager would further improve relationships (good relationships with
supervisor).
·
Evaluate:
At the end of the day, it’s all about improving sales. Some ideas
related to the Expo might be focused on regional deviation. Segment the country
in to 10 market segments. Highlight 2 separate items each week in items each week.
In a month, 80 SKUs would have been tested across the country. What was
learned? What specific items were the most successful sellers? Take your
learnings and roll them out to the other stores to accelerate traffic and
success. Finally, what was the impact of
the Expos on traffic? Did it increase? Where? Why? Continually analyze data to
understand the implications of the actions you’re taking.
A Business Leader, Not Business Partner
We started with the premise that “Level 5 HR” would
exhibit ambition first and foremost for the company and its success, rather than for respect for the HR function, a “seat at
the table”, or the label of “strategic advisor”.
When HR starts to speak in terms that the business,
shareholders, and customers understand, there will be no need to focus on the
function of HR. Or a seat at the table. Or improving the reputation or
perception of the HR function.
HR will have improved the execution of the business
strategy, and ultimately business results.
Simply stated, people execute business strategy. HR needs
to take a lead in how people are attracted, deployed, rewarded, developed,
engaged, retained, and continually redeployed to execute the business strategy
and enable the success of the business.
Executed flawlessly, and evaluated intensively, the
changes described would move RadioShack quickly toward a focus on selling a
high dollar of margin assortment, improving the underlying same-store-sales
metrics, and increasing shareholder value.
