Problem
A global fashion sportswear retailer, Lalacado, is reviewing its strategic workforce plan and the future critical skills and competencies that will be aligned to its new business strategies. With a strong headcount of 12,000 employees worldwide operating in 35 countries, it is expanding fast with its new sportswear concepts of quality and stylish designs using sustainable materials.
Since its inception in 2012, Lalacado has dominated the fashion sportswear market for the high-end consumers with its sleek designs and quality materials which also command high price tags for its products. It operates through boutique stores and strong social media marketing to capture its consumer base. With the start of Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, many people have turned to exercise as a form of mental outlet and physical mobility to maintain work life balance. Fashion sportswear become a comfortable and casual wear even at home since many are working from home during the pandemic.
Lalacado has increased its concept and designing unit to ramp up its series of new designs every 6 months to refresh its range of products. It is using data analytics to analyse and predict the preferences of its current more fashion conscious and affluent consumer base to possible extension to the mass market consumer segment with different cultural influences. Lalacado is also a strong advocate of environmental sustainability and investing into research to use sustainable materials with a circular economy in mind to reduce wastage. With its heavy use of social media as its marketing vehicle and emphasis on consumer reviews, it is gaining appeal to the younger population with its e-commerce shopping platform.
With the exponential increase of online purchase and delivery due to the pandemic, the need for physical stores has shrunk drastically. Lalacado has closed its concept stores from its 180 stores in 2019 to 120 stores by end 2021. It has also consolidated its concept and design units into 4 large regions namely North America, South America, Europe and Middle East and Asia Pacific regions. Each of the region will focus on the unique cultural, economic and climate differences to suit the region's taste and functionalities to fashion sportswear. With each concept and design unit, there is a strong team of data scientists and analysts to use data to understand the consumer preferences and evolving changes in fashion trends in each of the region. There is also a centralised team for each region on its e-commerce operation from merchandising, payments to warehousing and logistics.
The key shifts in workforce planning will be the reduction of manpower in the concept stores and possible deployment of employees with relevant skills according to its expansion plans in the concepts and design units, data analytics teams and e-commerce operations. Lalacado is looking to increase its concepts and design units by 20% worldwide, data analytics by 30% and e-commerce operation by another 40%. While Lalacado is hiring talents during this pandemic, it is also concerned on the retention of its critical employee groups such as the concept & design units and data analytics units which are potential candidate targets for its competitors in the fashion retail industry.
Task
A. With Lalacado's business expansion plan in its e-commerce operation and its reduction in physical retail stores, recommend three staffing decisions that its management team needs to consider.
B. Discuss the steps of workforce planning process that can be applied by Lalacado's management team to support its new business strategies. Examine the considerations with regards to demand and supply of the labour market to support the expansion plan.
C. Examine the need for an updated job analysis for a store assistant in the physical store to one of customer experience agent in the online shopping platform of Lalacado. Recommend one type of job analysis technique that is appropriate to be used for this case.
D. Recommend two (retention strategies that can be implemented to retain Lalacado's critical employee groups.
References:
• Phillips, J. M., & Gully, S. M. (2015) Strategic staffing (3rd ed.). US: Pearson Education
• Dessler, G. (2015). Human Resource Management (14th ed.). US: Pearson Education
• For all answers, please provide DEFINITIONS for each keyword used and to include EXAMPLES related to the case study.