Nordstrom: Dissension in the Ranks? Essay

Q1) What is the cause of the problems described in the fount? How serious are these problems? The main problems of Nordstrom are its hire and incentives policies that are distorted. This union uses a Sales-per-Hour ratio as the leading in performance paygrade and head for the hills compensation. This performance indicator is not properly balanced by other important factors, such as customer satisfaction, it just sharpen the sales and the number of hours worked. The integral part of the problem is also the specialization of non-sell and selling hours. The lack of transparent performance measures also spelled trouble for the employees of the company.They are always working a lot, not being paid for the duplication hours of work and the measure used by the SPH are not the beat out ones. Nordstroms employees work forth the clock and those hours are not paid. To gravel the excellent customer satisfaction that the company has, employees have to pay a lot of attention to their c ustomers. They spent a lot of hours with them with a individualise contact and all of these hours are not paid. The employees are who build the image, the cockeyed customer loyalty and their desires are not being valorized.The trial of oversight to professionalize the relationship between management and employees is another(prenominal) problem. Employees are expect to work beyond the prescribed working hours without pay in parliamentary faithfulness to comply with company requirements. Nordstrom is concentrating only on numbers, they are developing a company culture where it seems that quantity mattered more than quality. This compensation and incentive scheme brought few consequences to Nordstrom.The lack of a clear distinction between selling time and non-sell leads to a big pressure to the employees since the SPH ratio doesnt smoothen the effort and work made by the salespeople. This leads to employee complaints and lack of motivation to work in the company. Also, the e xistence of such fear competition could lead to undesired behavior such as stealing credits for sales from another sales staff. This motivation policy was one of the Nordstrom proud systems but became more a liability than an advantage. Employees started to complain and soon this system became the target of law suits that damaged Nordstrom reputation and brought negative media attention to the company.Nordstrom was known has one of the scoop places to work and with this unhappiness expressed by salespeople that reputation started to drop off and the turn-over rateincreased. The focus of the law suits was the pressure maid and lack of compensation for the extra hours worked. Employees were encouraged to work extra hours but were not equilibrize for them. Nordstrom was targeted with several law suits and always denied the allegations made by the unions.Later, the Washington cite Department of Labor & Industries stated that Nordstrom systematically violated state lease and hour law s, giving reason to the unions that took legal actions against Nordstrom and it had no other extract but to review their record-keeping procedures and compensate the workers loss. Later, due to the simplification of the companys financial value as the stock monetary value went down, another law suit was filled again against Nordstrom.This time it came from some stockholders that claimed to have suffered financial losses due to Nordstrom Managements failure to take care of their labor problems and the claims maid. This law suit armed up to now more Nordstrom reputation.