Tanglewood Stores and Staffing Strategy

CASE ONE: TANGLEWOOD STORES AND STAFFING STRATEGY

Staffing Levels

1. Acquire or Develop Talent

From the case, there is an inconsistency in the management styles between the original and the newly acquired stores.

Acquisition Strategy: This ensures that the newly acquired stores abide by and follows the right path without resistance.

Develop Talent Strategy: This would entail in motivating its employees and make them more productive. As Tanglewood want the employees to be self-sufficient and think like managers, this strategy would aid its vision.

2. Hire Yourself or Outsource

Hiring would bring in fresh and new ideas and this might be helpful in improving processes and technique.

Outsourcing on the other hand might turn out to be disadvantageous as they might not be aware of the real experience of the stores/region. Thus, their lack of lack of knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses might not be helpful to the stores.

3. External or Internal Hiring

For entry level positions, they should hire externally.

For top level management positions, they should hire internally because they are aware of the value and culture of the region and the stores.

4. Core or Flexible Workforce

Tanglewood should concentrate on core workforce while selecting the employees. As it is based on 'team' based philosophy, it will be attained through core workforce.

Also, with flexible workforce it will be difficult to maintain a cohesive workforce.

5. Hire or Retain

Tanglewood should focus on retaining their employees and work towards developing their talents and skills instead of hiring new ones. Also, if they plan to go for internal hiring and maintain core workforce, then they should focus on retaining their employees. High turnover rate of employees would be difficult to maintain a consistent culture.

6. National or Global

The product range of Tanglewood is same as that of its competitors like tools, clothing, equipment, electronics, etc. Thus, they need to be present in both national as well as global level by hiring top talents to be the market leader.

7. Attract or Relocate

Tanglewood is present in 12 geographic regions and 20 stores per region. Thus, they have to establish locations closer to their distributors. This implies the regional managers have little experience on human resource policies about the 20