Essay on Sears: A Centuries-Old American Retailer and Its Successful Evolution

Introduction

Sears is one of the oldest retail departmental stores in the United States. The enterprise was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1893 (About Sears, 2020). The business has undergone management and operation changes over the twentieth century to achieve its current face. Currently, Edward Lampert is the company’s chief executive officer (CEO) since 2013, after the company’s merger with Kmart. Sears provides a plethora of merchandise, automotive products, apparel, and services via its Sear’s-brand or affiliate outlets such as Kmart across the country (About Sears, 2020). Over the past few decades, Sears has struggled with diminishing sales and increasing debts, which led to a bankruptcy filing and closing most of its retail stores. The company has also been ranked as the worst in customer confidence, employee satisfaction, and its CEO is the least popular in the nation.

Training and Development

Performance Gap

Since 2013 when Edward lambert took leadership of the company, Sears employees have been low morale and job dissatisfaction caused by various changes in policies and employee benefits (Shoulberg, 2019). As a result, their low morale has had a colossal negative impact on their performance, which affects customer experience (Shoulberg, 2019). Low customer experience leads to loss of customers, which is directly proportional to reduced sales. Sears was among the lowest ranking in the 2019 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for its online website and retail stores. Sears scored 70 out of 100 points in 2018, which was also a 4% decline from its performance in 2017 (Ausick, 2019). The ACSI attributed the dissatisfaction with departmental stores to poor customer services, cleanliness, availability, and helpfulness of the staff (Ausick, 2019). In this case, given the poor management in Sears executive board, employees' dissatisfaction with their jobs led to the declining willingness to help customers, availability, and communication. Additionally, most Sears’ employees dislike the CEO and their workplaces due to inconsiderate working conditions and policies. For instance, Sears’s employees usually feel that they are not valued in terms of employee benefits, promotions, and salary raises (Ausick, 2019). Moreover, more emphasis on sales with little regard to customer experience also contributes to low customer confidence.

Noticeably, before the COVID 19 outbreak, the departmental stores faced a low unemployment rate, which resulted in high job turnovers since dissatisfied employees can readily get jobs elsewhere. Therefore, organizations were often left with untrained workers to fill in the vacant positions leading to poor customer service (Shoulberg, 2019). A gap is created when new employees cannot offer cannot match their performance to the expectations due to inadequate skills to carry out the tasks. Notably, the gap can be filed through appropriate employee training and development.

Developing an Effective Training Program

The first stage of designing an effective program is to conduct a training needs assessment. I would conduct a task, individual, and organizational assessments to identify comprehensive training gaps. An organizational assessment evaluates the effectiveness of a business as a whole and identifies areas skills, knowledge, and competencies required by a firm to bridge gaps (Zahra, Iram, & Naeem, 2014). Individual assessments evaluate an individual’s existing competencies, skills, strengths, and areas of improvement. A task-oriented assessment identifies key jobs and necessary skills and competencies required at the most efficient level (Zahra et al., 2014)

Secondly, I would set training objectives, which would emerge from the training needs assessment. Noticeably, gaps identified in the training needs assessment are prioritized into training goals to try and bridge the gap between existing and desired performance (Zahra et al., 2014). Thirdly, I would create a comprehensive training action plan that would include instructional designs, content, learning theories, and materials (Zahra et al., 2014). During this phase, I would also consider employees' learning styles and levels of training. Noticeably, pilot training would be necessary to collect feedback and include appropriate adjustments before commencing the training.

Fourthly, I would implement the training initiatives either through on-job or external training. Additionally, scheduling of the training activities would also be completed to ensure that the program runs smoothly (Zahra et al., 2014). Fifthly, continuous monitoring of participant’s progress is essential to ascertain the program is effective. Notably, real-time feedback between trainees and the trainer would be encouraged to facilitate the effectiveness of the process as opposed to waiting until the end. In the end, an evaluation of the entire program would be conducted by collecting feedback from all stakeholders to measure evaluate if the goals of the training were obtained (Zahra et al., 2014). If a gap still exists, revising the action plan would be indispensable to meet the expectations.

Components of Sears’ Training Program

In the case of Sears, the training would consist of communication, emotional intelligence, resourcefulness, passion, and team building. Sears’ employees, especially new hires, should be equipped with exemplary communication skills that would consist of the use of gestures, tone, eye contact, and posture (Zahra et al., 2014). Noticeably, demotivated employees are often rude to customers, which is often evident through their posture and tone. Training the workers how to use a friendly tone and improved communication techniques to enhance their communication with the customers (Zahra et al., 2014). Secondly, employees would be trained on increasing their resourcefulness to go beyond answering customers with “I will found out” or “I do not know” responses. the training would equip them with problem-solving techniques, creativity, and initiative to increase their resourcefulness (Kumar & Patro, 2018).

Thirdly, behavioral training would also be included to enhance employee passion while conducting their jobs. Currently, Sears’ employees may have lost passion for their jobs given that the company is in a series of store closures. Therefore, training them on ways to increase their intrinsic morale while performing their duties would promote delightful customer services. Customers are likely to purchase more if they are guided through the process by an excited salesperson (Kumar & Patro, 2018).

Measuring the Training Outcomes

Measuring the training results would be conducted through a 360 feedback system. In this case, employees evaluate themselves and give feedback on whether they have gained anything from the process. Additionally, departmental heads can also evaluate the performance of employees after the training in specific areas to identify the effectiveness of the training. Consumers would also be encouraged to provide evaluations based on their customer experience. The results would be used to evaluate whether additional training would be required if the performance gap persists.

References

About Sears (2020). Transformco. Retrieved from https://transformco.com/about/sears

Ausick, P. (2019). Sears, Walmart posts lowest customer satisfaction ratings again in 2018. 24/7 wall St. Retrieved from https://247wallst.com/retail/2019/02/26/sears-walmart-post-lowest-customer-satisfaction-ratings-again-in-2018/

Kumar, K. K., & Patro, C. S. (2018). The value of training and development on employees’ performance in organized retail. EPRA International Journal of Research & Development, 3(9), pp. 2455-7838. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327837044_The_Value_of_Training_and_Development_on_Employees'_Performance_in_Organized_Retail

Shoulberg, W. (2019). Lampert’s Sears shenanigans continue: Cut benefits, empty shelves and spooked employees. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenshoulberg/2019/04/03/lamperts-sears-shenanigans-continue-benefits-cut-empty-shelves-and-spooked-employees/#5cacd75a188f

Zahra, S., Iram, A., & Naeem, H. (2014). Employee training and its effect on employees’ job motivation and commitment: Developing and proposing a conceptual model. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 16(9), 60-68. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6e9d/4a5dcc8a07c52eae78a6395f717da395f933.pdf