Critical Evaluation of the Human Resource Strategy of Goody's LLC

The word 'strategy' has been derived from the Greek noun 'strategus' which refers to the 'commander in chief'. In the management view, the word 'strategy' has been used to refer to a lasting planning, that is a specified pattern of decisions and practices that are taken by the upper management of an organization to achieve some goals that have been set by the organization. Wheelan and Hunger (1995) define strategic management as the collection of management choices and activities that affect the long-term performance of an organization. Strategic management can also be viewed as the set of activities that drive the organization to better results (Hill & Jones, 2014). This is the general view of management strategy, and therefore management strategies involve decision making, planning which will be reflected in the long-term performance of the organization.

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Armstrong (2006) defines human resource management strategy as the intentions and arrangements that an organization of how it is going to achieve the business aims that should be achieved through people who are employed in the organization. HRM strategies are based on three principles; first, the human resource is an essential basis for competitive advantage in the industry. Second, it is the human beings who put the strategic plans on an action, and finally, logical principles should be used to come up with the destination that the business wants to reach and the means to get there (Rao, 2014). Therefore, Armstrong views human resource management strategy as the blueprint that shows how an organization intends to achieve its general goals using its employees. Human resource management strategy is also defined by Fottler et al as the complete collection of managerial practices that are associated with coming up and maintaining a credible workforce (2010). The human resource managers have been observed to take strategic views of their job and to acknowledge the important relationship between the strategies of the organization and the human resource strategies. Fottler et al view are based on the principles of coming up with an employee base that can achieve tasks that are allocated to them (2010).

Human resource strategies define what an organization has planned to do about its human resource management in terms of policies and practices and how they will be put in line with the objectives of the business. Richardson and Thompson (1999) suggest that there are two crucial components of Human Resource strategies: there should be strategic objectives which the organization intends to achieve and two, there should be a laid out plan of how the objectives are supposed to be achieved. No universal strategy that can be applied in various organizations since they are different in nature, this is shown by Armstrong and Long (1994) and Armstrong and Baron (2002) which show that the human resource strategies vary from one organization to another.

This paper is divided into sections to enable easier navigation of the paper. The first section is the background. The background provides a brief history of the Goody's LLC; the founders the year it was founded and a brief description of the evolution that the organization underwent. The section describes the line of business that the organization undertakes, the nature of the business products and the financial status that the organization has. The background section also describes the other general properties of the organization such as the vision, the number of employees, and the market share that the organization possess. The second section is the main component of the paper, which is the analysis. This is an analysis of the human resource management strategy of Goody's LLC. This section mainly involves evaluating the significance of managing the human resource as a key part of the organization with reference to the Goody's LLC organization. In the analysis section, we also discuss the responsibility that every employee carries out in an organization, look into the human resource activities in the organization such as recruitment, selection, and retention of employees, and provide some recommendations on how the human resource management activities may be carried out in a better way.

Background

The Goody's LLC is a family clothing company that is situated in Knoxville, Tennessee, the United States of America. The company's mission is to be the first choice of customers who value aware, for affordable family wear, to be identified for the best selection, the best value, the best customer services, and the best shopping experiences. The company is has a chain of stores located in over three hundred and thirty-five location including; Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The stores are majorly located in malls providing the market with a variety of clothing and accessories for women, men, and children (Advameg Inc., 2018).

In 1953, Mike Goodfriend and his family open a two thousand square foot small discount-clothing store, which was the first Goody's store. The store was located in Athens, Tennessee and was majorly a family business. The store had a big "G" over the door as the logo and mainly sold clothes whose styles had been outdated. The store had poor customer service and poor lighting but got continuous customers due to the great prices that they offered. The store experienced slow growth for the following twenty years. In the mid 70's, Goodfriend got a breakthrough and the chain grew to twelve stores and generated an estimated $12 million annually. Despite this, Goodfriend still faced a challenge from the national stores that had outlets and discounters who offered more and more discounted prices. Goodfriend turned to his son, Bob for help. Bob joined the business in 1972, bringing a change to the line of business that the store had. The store now offered popular fashion names and latest trendy apparel at modest prices. The focus of the store change from targeting families seeking discounts to a modest family looking for the latest trendy apparel at good prices. The store was then renamed to Goody's, which was the college nickname of Bob. After this shift, the company grew to have twenty-one store by the year 1979. Bob also took over the control of the company becoming the president and the CEO (Advameg Inc., 2018).

The company designed a new corporate headquarters in 1990 when the company left the town of Athens and moved to Knoxville. The headquarters contained an office complex and a custom-made 344,000 square foot clothing distribution center. The center enabled the company to receive new fashion apparel in a day and pack them into transport trucks for distribution to the stores the following day. This ensures that there is little or no delays in the getting the latest trendy apparel to the consumer. The distribution center could process 350,000 garments daily without stretching and had computer links to every chain. The company prospered experiencing tremendous growth mainly due to the technological advantage. In the year 1991, the company recorded returns of $273 million in annual sales and had ninety-one stores. The company had a public offering October of the same year, having elected conformist board of directors it was able to grow its base of capital. In a period of three years, the company had expanded to one hundred and seventy-one stores. The company also changed its look, remodeling its interiors and changed from discount house to department store. The prices of Goody's remained relatively lower compared to the other department store (10 to 30 percent lower) (Advameg Inc., 2018).

Everything was well in the company until the traditional board of directors started conflicting with Goody's management. The management desired to follow a more aggressive purchasing strategy, keep the stores more updated to latest trends, and better stocked. These conflicts lead to Henry call and Tom Kelly, the chief operating officer, and merchandising executive respectively to leave the company in 1992. Bob Goodfriend was also removed from the board. He, however, was absent for only three months has sued the company and got compensation of $1.24 million in legal settlement and fees. The conflict leads to the decline of the company's returns by 5.6 percent of sales before tax. Goodfriend was reinstated back to being company board chair, Henry Call and Tom Kelly returned to the company as president and executive vice president in 1995. The store had not yet returned to its normal profit margin, in 1996, it was still at 3.4 percent (Advameg Inc., 2018).

Previously in 1993, Goody's decision to create its own private label products. Having the private label meant that the company would have a wider control over its stock, for brands that were manufactured by other companies were largely under the control of the manufactures. This meant that the company could directly address customer needs and tastes. One of the labels that were manufactured was Ivy Crew for men that become a familiar collection of clothing for the company. The company contracted overseas manufacturers in Southeast Asia and Central America and was able to grow its private labels and distributed them to all its clothing departments. Goody's remained committed to the national brand name fashions but encouraged its customers to buy its own house labels. The political environment in 1996 was calm and hence favorable for Goody's to thrive. The company opened twenty new stores that year and only closing one. The new management team had been selected and the policies were shifted from reducing prices quickly on apparel with low demand towards having stable and moderately priced stock. The management made huge investments in inventory and moved to the suburbs. The company's sales grew by seventeen percent compared to 1995 ($819.1 million) and the stores ended the year without having any long-term debt. In the same year, the company introduced gifts and accessories into their inventory which ended up being successful and profitable (Advameg Inc., 2018).

In 1998, the company achieved its $1 billion sales and expanded to Texas, despite this, the profits began to depict signs of weakness. The warm weather condition in the other quarters of that year resulted in the reduction of profits by 17 percent in 1998 and the revenue continued to go down in 1999. In 2000, Call resigned from his position. The management decides to restructure the company in order to encourage more sales. In 2001, the terrorist attacks and unpredictable weather negatively affected the sales and inventory levels. The company recorded a loss of $20.2 million in the same year. 2002 was another poor year for the company has just expanded by two stores and closing other 6. In 2003, profits started climbing up. Goody's acquired Duck Head brand for $4 million. The company currently has a workforce of approximately ten thousand people (Advameg Inc., 2018).

Analysis

Goody's has a human resource department that is in charge of taking care of the basic human resource activities. The basic roles of this department are outlined below each accompanied by an in-depth evaluation.

The first human resource core activity is staffing or recruitment. Recruitment is the basic human resource activity since it determines the workforce that the organization will have hence has a great impact on organizational performance. Goody's staffing criteria seem to have a basis on performance related HRM strategies approaches of human resource strategies. The recruitment process is mainly focused on getting a workforce that has a high-performance capability. This principle is the...