Tanglewood Case Study

Tanglewood Case Study

Organizational background

Tanglewood is a chain of retail stores that provide items such as clothing, appliances, home décor, and electronics. It has created a niche in the retail market by offering outdoor clothing and equipment to middle and upper-income class clients. Tanner Emmerson and Thurston Wood established Tanglewood in 1975. At present, the chain store owns 243 stores across the western part of the United States, makes annual sales of about $3 trillion and employs approximately 23 million people. The major competitors are Kohls’ and Target department stores.  

According to it financials, Tanglewood is a moderately sized firm that has a huge potential for growth. Its mission is to remain focused on its vision of providing customers with a small, personable shopping experience while observing their core values and commitment to their customers, employees, and shareholders. Tanglewood's organizational structure has evolved over time to adopt a hierarchical organizational structure. Tanner Emerson is the CEO while Thurston Wood is the President of the company. Additionally, the organization has 12 managers in various regions that supervise 20 store managers. The individual structure of a store entails a store manager, three assistant managers, and 12 departmental managers. On average, a store averages 215 associates.

The firm beliefs in the essentiality of core workforce to its values and corporate culture that they seek to establish and maintain. Tanglewood's regional managers encourage and support Human Resource practices that differ from the company's philosophy. For this reason, the organization is considering a Human Resource management plan that centralizes Human Resources in the company. The ethics and corporate strategy of the company differ from those of its major competitors. Since its formation, Tanglewood has been emphasizing on employee participation and teamwork. Their vision concerning employee-relations is to provide them with space to make decisions and take part in the daily running of the store.

Tanglewood set the pace through direct "Straight Talk" in all aspects of the business. They motivate the employees to think like managers and give them the necessary tools to accomplish it. In addition, issues dealing with company shares and profitability are discussed in open quarters without withholding any facts. The company gives its departmental managers financial incentives to help them successfully develop and implement new policies and procedures. This reinforces the concept of participatory management in the company thereby improving its performance. It is also believed that teamwork is core, and the company goes further to evaluate the performance of employees based on their functionality as a team. The company believes in potential and takes every employee as a potential manager.

The simple structure of Human Resources at Tanglewood entails both corporate and store-level elements. A vice-president of Human Resources who is charged with the mandate to oversee training and development, staffing services, employee relations, and compensation and benefits heads the corporate level. On the other hand, an assistant manager heads the store level, and overseas operations and Human Resources. He also has the responsibility to execute recommendations from the corporate level such as staffing, training, equal employment opportunity policies, and performance management. Human resource departments in individual stores directly supervise the recruitment, planning, and initial screening of employees of Tanglewood. The assistant and department managers play key roles in the hiring processes of the company. Nonetheless, store or regional managers conduct upper management selections. The role of corporate Human Resources Department is to play an advisory function for the local stores. This shows that there are so many associates involved in the HR of Tanglewood; therefore, it is vital that a centralized planning body is formed to preserve the company’s philosophy and mission.

Recommendations

Staffing policies require making the right decisions concerning the recruitment, selection and retention of workforce in an organization. Tanglewood is inclined towards the future, and its management team recognizes the need to make over their central body of planning in relation to the following levels of planning:

1. Acquire of Develop talent – developing talent via training and planning would be an ideal strategy for Tanglewood stores. The company should sacrifice the time and effort to develop its current pool of talent in a bid to preserve its culture and impart its philosophy. Developing talent from within its current pool will lead to the formation of a solid foundation of employees that comprehend and appreciate the mission, vision and philosophy of the company. Consequently, the employees will be motivated to work harder because they will know that there are opportunities for growth and progress within the firm.
2. Hire yourself or outsource – internal recruiters should conduct most hiring because they know the organizational culture and its needs. External recruiters know their clients well and provide to their employee needs adequately, but internal recruiters are much better because they know the organization much deeper. Tanglewood should hire employees themselves because they would be able to control the process given their wealth of values. The company knows the talent deficiency inside its workforce, thus, would be best hirers because they know what they want and possess the ability to find the best matches.  
3. External or internal hiring – Staffing strategies of both external and internal hiring are good for Tanglewood. It would be ideal for Tanglewood to form a succession management strategy. Part of this strategy would entail uncovering, identifying and developing internal candidates, as well as, identifying posts that could be filled by external candidates. This would help ensure that business operations continue as planned while depicting the realistic picture of the company’s strength. Additional, this approach would boost employee-retention
4. Core or flexible workforce – Tanglewood views core workforce as being close to the values and culture of the organization. As such, the workforce must comprise of qualified and committed individuals capable of carrying on the company's philosophy. It may be difficult for the company's philosophy to live on if it uses a flexible workforce. Therefore, to develop corporate values and culture, the company should continue using a core workforce. As indicated by Kammeyer-Mueller, “Tanglewood does not extensively use a flexible workforce, such as temporary employees.” Tanglewood is a “team” company (Mueller, 2012, p. 7). For this reason, it will be very difficult for the company to have a team of employees that consists of temporary or contract workers.
5. Hire or retain – Tanglewood should concentrate on retaining its current workforce. This is because it is expensive for a company to have a high employee turnover rates. This proposal is based on the idea of developing internal talent, internal hiring and utilizing a core workforce. These elements are related and work together to create a team-based environment with everyone working towards the similar objectives.  
6. National or global – Tanglewood should exploit a national strategy. At present, the company is based in the United States, thus expanding globally would be expensive and difficult. It is important that the company focus on issues affecting it at hand such as competition. Later on, when a well spelled, strategy has been put in place; the company may make a move to expand its operations to other countries. However, it seems more feasible and profitable for Tanglewood to concentrate on the domestic market and exploit it fully.
7. Attract or relocate – Henneman III et al indicates that would be cheaper and better if an organization induces a greater number of qualified employees for employment (Henneman III et al., 2012). It is difficult for firms to attract valued candidates for positions in today’s job market. However, hiring qualified employees is important because it increases the quality of human capital in firms. Therefore, for Tanglewood to succeed, it would be better if it brings qualified labor to the company instead of taking the company to the labor.
8. Overstaff or understaff – individual Tanglewood stores should rely heavily on overstaffing. This is because lower level retail positions are projected to have a high employee turnover. Overstaffing will create room for error thus; give the right employees an opportunity to proceed to higher managerial levels.
9. Short or long-term focus – Ideally, short-term or long-term focus is a major factor in any organization. Tanglewood ought to assess its budget and point out areas worth investing. The short-term point of focus for the organization is to centralize its planning and HR docket. They can get rid of some top management positions that are not necessary for some branches. Similarly, they can train their employees through seminars, workshops or virtual classes to impart them with the knowledge to become the most skilled in the industry. On the contrary, long-term objectives are those that take three to five years. For example, going global should be preceded by intensive and extensive research through a consultant or a staffing agency in the country of interest.
10. Person/Job or Person/Organization match – The Company has an exact mission and a set of values that all its employees should share. This is why the company encourages its employees to work as an associate first before becoming an employee. Normally average store associates have broad job descriptions while most upper-level positions concentrate the focus a little on person/job relationship. The best focal point should be person/organization as it fosters employee engagement, career growth and productivity.
11. Specific or general KSAOs – Because store associates normally have broad job descriptions, it would be difficult if the company decides to use specific KSAOs for them. The store associates should be vetted for the character to ascertain that it is in alignment with the company mission. Specific KSAOs should be applied to higher-level positions.  
12. Exceptional or acceptable workforce quality – It is not always possible for a firm to hire an extraordinary workforce. Nevertheless, it would be the best selection when matched with the values and mission of the company. The company is not establishing itself in the market as a low-cost service provider; rather, it is positioning itself as a premium customer service-provider. Encouraging employee training would help compensate when an extraordinary quality of the workforce is not available.
13. Active or passive diversity – Diversity of workforce is ideal for any organization. If Tanglewood does not embrace diversity, seeking diversity now would be going against the company’s culture. This means that the company may be inclined towards passive diversity. Nonetheless, allowing the penetration of diversity gradually can help the company to monitor the changes in culture and its reception among existing employees. The company should integrate a diversification strategy gradually.

Conclusion

Tanglewood has a great potential for growth because it has created a strong workforce through internal promotions, developing talents and utilizing a core workforce. The company's philosophy and culture have enabled the company to attain its competitive edge and be a leader in the sector. One of their objectives is to increase their operations nationally and globally. It is important that they centralize their HR plans and bring in a workforce of qualified employs that is capable of embracing the vision of Tanglewood. This is paramount to ensure the continued survival of the company to facilitate the necessary transition required to develop and sustain the organizational culture of Tanglewood. This would work best if served with the centralization of key aspects of the firm mixed with decentralization where necessary. This will eventually manifest itself through customer satisfaction, employee productivity, motivation, and performance. Amid global expansion concerns, a similar organizational structure coupled with corporate value and philosophy has to be simulated to exploit the company's success.