Performance and Work Satisfaction

At my current job, there is little emphasis by management to ensure job satisfaction.  In the past few weeks, the store has merged its two teams (sales and stock) into one united unit.  While the staff understands the goal is to make a more complete employee that can perform a variety of functions, the concerns that we addressed were not adequately considered and has led to a drastic drop in productivity and overall effectiveness.  In addition, the store lost several good employees, and has seen a dramatic rise in call outs, as it heads into the busy holiday season.  The past Saturday, the busiest day of 2012 thus far, there were three call outs and three others scheduled who quit during the week, leading the store to having less than half the employees designated for the later part of the day and closing shift.

The staff, as a whole, has become more demoralized more a variety of reasons.  Some employees are specialists in sales and stock and the adjustment does not best utilize their skills.  Others are overwhelmed by the new tasks, which management allocated four hours for training. They feel inadequate and unprepared for the demands of both familiarizing themselves with new tasks and adjusting to the sudden increase in store traffic and expectations.  Several, including those who have left the store, have stated that they feel coerced by the presentation of the team merger and don't understand the timing.

There are several steps that the store management could have taken to alleviate the learning curve.  The clearest is to move the training and merger into a slower time of year (such as September or January) so that the staff has less pressure to get things done and can feel more comfortable with the new tasks when the busy periods arrive.  It could have also presented the new changes more as an opportunity to grow rather than a requirement to maintain employment.  If the management desired some task flexibility for the holiday season to meet the needs of the business, it could have tried out a "provisional flex team" consisting of more veteran leaders amongst the staff who are familiar with both the sales and stock so that it is easier to tweak the program as a whole and there could be more honest and professional feedback due to the familiarity of the veterans with management.

In the end, the process of integrating the sales and stock teams has created frustration among employees and led to an increase both in turnover and absenteeism.  Employees don't want to have to deal with both the new tasks after minimal training and a surge in the volume of customers in store.  The store management could have done a better job implementing the merger and allow employees to perform tasks that they do best, thus highlighting their strengths, during the busiest time of year.