Assignment 1 Training & Development

Assignment 1 – Course: Training & Development Date assigned: October 21, 2020 Zappos, based in Las Vegas, is an online retailer. Its initial goal has been to be the best website for buying shoes, offering a wide variety of brands, styles, colors, sizes, and widths. The zappos.com brand has grown to offer shoes, handbags, eyewear, watches, and accessories for online purchase. Zappos’s vision is that in the future, online sales will account for 30 percent of all retail sales in the United States, and Zappos will be the company with the best service and selection. As a result, Zappos believes that it can become the online service leader, drawing customers and expanding into selling other products. Zappos believes that the speed at which a customer receives an online purchase plays a critical role in how that customer thinks about shopping online again in the future, so it focuses on making sure that items get delivered to customers as quickly as possible. In 2009, the Amazon.com, Inc. family of companies, which share a strong passion for customer service, acquired Zappos. In 2010, Zappos had experienced tremendous growth, resulting in the need to restructure the company. Zappos was restructured into ten separate companies under the Zappos family umbrella, including Zappos.com, Inc. (the management company) and companies devoted to retail, gift cards, merchandising, and order fulfillment. Zappos has received many awards for its workplace culture and practices, including being recognized by Fortune magazine in 2013 as the #31 Best Company to Work For. Zappos CEO Tony Heish has shaped the company’s culture, brand, and business strategy around 10 core values: 1. Deliver WOW Through Service 2. Embrace and Drive Change 3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness 4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded 5. Pursue Growth and Learning 6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication 7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit 8. Do More with Less 9. Be Passionate and Determined 10. Be Humble Deliver WOW Through Service means that call center employees need to provide excellent customer service. Call center employees encourage callers to order more than one size or color because shipping and return shipping are free. They are also encouraged to use their imaginations to meet customer needs. Zappos’s employment practices help to perpetuate its company culture. For example, the HR team uses unusual interview questions, such as “How weird are you?” and “What’s your theme song?” to find employees who are creative and have strong individuality. Zappos provides free breakfast, lunch (cold cuts) and snacks, and a full-time life coach (employees have to sit on a red velvet throne to complain). Managers are encouraged to spend time with employees outside the office, and any employee can reward another employee a $50 bonus for good performance. Most employees at Zappos are hourly. All new hires complete four weeks of training, including two weeks working the phones. New recruits are offered $2,000 to leave the company during training—an unusual practice designed to weed out individuals who will not be happy working at the company. To reinforce the importance of the ten core values, Zappos performance management system asks managers to evaluate how well employee behavior demonstrates the core values, such as acting humble or expressing their personality. To evaluate task performance, managers are asked to provide employees with regular status reports on such things as how much time they spend on the telephone with customers. The status reports and evaluations of the core values are informational or used to identify training needs. Zappos believes in helping others understand what inspired the company culture. The company created the Zappos.com library, which provides a collection of books about creating a passion for customer service, products, and local communities. These books can be found in the front lobby of Zappos offices and are widely read and discussed by company employees. Zappos also believes that its culture is enhanced through use of social media, including blogs and Twitter, that links employees with one another and with the company’s customers. Also, Zappos takes the pulse of the organization monthly, measuring the health of the culture with a happiness survey. Employees respond to such unlikely questions as whether they believe that the company has a higher purpose than profits, whether their own role has meaning, whether they feel in control of their career path, whether they consider their co-workers to be like family and friends, and whether they are happy in their jobs. Results from the survey are broken down by department, and opportunities for development are identified and acted upon. For example, when it was clear from the survey that one department had veered off course and felt isolated from the rest of the organization, a program was instituted that enabled individuals in the group to learn more about how integral their work was. To keep the company vibrant, CEO Tony Hsieh is spending $350 million to develop a neighborhood in downtown Las Vegas, which will be the home of Zappos.Com new headquarters. Hseih wants to provide employees with a great place to work as well as to live and socialize. Visit the Zappos website at www.zappos.com. Go to the bottom of the page under “About” and click on “about.” Review the videos, the media kit, and the information provided about customer service, the family story, the culture, and the values. Review the Tweets especially those focusing on training, learning, and development and answer the following questions: Questions 1. What challenges is Zappos facing that may derail its attempt to be the best online retailer? How can training and development help Zappos meet these challenges? 2. Do you think that employees at Zappos have high levels of engagement? Why? Which of Zappos’s ten core values do you believe training and development can influence the most? The least? Why? Ans. 1A: Challenges faced by Zappos Some of the challenges that Zappos is facing that may derail its attempt to be the best online retailer are: Product diversification i.e. to offer different varieties of products other than the ones originally offered Adoption of Holocracy, a management philosophy The threat of Globalization and Sustainability Extra shipping cost because of the free return policy Competition from the other leaders of the industry Work from home (Quarantine) Product Diversification Zappos initially started out selling various variety of footwear. Over the years, it has evolved its product selection to include clothing, handbags, and accessories. The main challenge has been to convert regular shoppers of footwear into loyal customers for their other products also. For a company to be known mainly as one of the topmost footwear sellers, it is quite a challenge to make customers believe in their other products as well. Adoption of Holocracy In an attempt to boost transparency and reorganize operations, Zappos has decided to switch over to a super-flat structure known as ‘Holacracy’, which eliminates managers and gives employees the freedom and responsibility to decide hoxagement jobs. Approximately 210 employees found the new philosophy so dissatisfying that they took three months of severance pay and left the company. Globalization and Sustainability Globalizaiton and Sustainability goes hand in hand because they would have to be able to adapt to the change when entering into these markets. The economy is changing everyday throughout the United States and internationally with how businesses run. With the pricing in these markets going international is going to also affect how their business will successfully run. The problem Zappos will face will be in continuing to use competitive pricing in international markets that may have similar products with cheaper price tags. Secondly, if the company begins to ship products abroad, will they have to abandon their policy of free shipping. Extra shipping cost because of the free return policy Another major challenge is to manage the extra shipping cost if the customer returns the product if it is not upto the mark. This can incur heavy shipping costs in these tough financial constraints throughout USA. This will further increase if the company begins to ship products abroad. Competition from the other leaders of the industry There are already several competitors in the market who also have a reputation in the market. Zappos does not only have to compete with them but also ensure that their pricing is better than them while not compromising on their quality. Work from Home Zappos recently launched “Customer Services for Anything” during the Quarantine period for their customers. Reorganizing themselves to work from home while launching Customer Services for Anything has been a very big challenge as they have to attend to numerous calls overnight while adapting to working from home. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ans. 1B: Training and Development can help Zappos overcome these challenges Training and development can help Zappos to meet these challenges. A proper training and development program will enhance the skills and capabilities of its employees to differentiate themselves from the other players of the industry and gain competitive advantage. It will help the employees to understand their customer's perception alongwith their tastes and preferences in order to provide a customer oriented service to enhance customer satisfaction. Employees will have the correct and full information about their product as well as their customers which ensures a smooth flow of goods throughout the process of delivery. The focus should be on specific training and development activities that will help employees embrace Zappos’ ten core values. Employees should be trained on how to “deliver WOW through service”, while providing opportunities for growth and learning through training and development programs. Design team building workshop to promote team building a well as train employees in “lean” quality techniques so they can “do more with less”. Socialize new employees to Zappos culture. Help employees understand career paths at Zappos and meet development needs so they can move along their career path. They should also encourage employees to frequently use “Zappos Insight” which is a department within Zappos created to share the Zappos culture with other companies. Zappos Insights provides programs about building a culture (3Day Culture Camp), its WOW service philosophy (School of WOW), the power of a coaching based culture (Coaching Event), how the human resources function protects the culture and how its programs support it (People Academy), and custom programs. Zappos Insights allows the company training function to become a profit center through marketing and selling its programs to other companies. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ans. 2A: High Levels of Employee Engagement In my view, employee at Zappos have high levels of engagement given the cultural values (e.g., fun, growth and learning, positive team spirit) free food, buyout of employees who are not happy working at the company, and use of monthly engagement surveys which provide results that are acted on. They are highly motivated and involved in the company’s activities which has enhanced their contribution towards high performance that has led to the organization winning various awards. Zappos insists upon its employees to regularly fill up the status reports on various things such as how much time they spend on the phone with customers. Managers later evaluate the reports in order to identify the existing gaps and training needs assessments. Zappos also believes in helping the employees understand what inspired the company culture and helps them in putting into practice the cultural values and needs. The company created the Zappos.com library, which provides a collection of books about creating a passion for customer service, products, and local communities. These books can be found in the front lobby of Zappos office and are widely read and discussed by company employees. This establishes high levels of employee engagement in the daily activities of the company. Ans 2b: Values that Training and Development can most influence Zappos places great emphasis on its 10 core values which they believe are a way of life. Their operations are guided by the following core values: 1. Deliver WOW Through Service 2. Embrace and Drive Change 3. Create fun and a Little Weirdness 4. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-minded 5. Pursue Growth And Learning 6. Build Open And Honest Relationships With Communication 7. Build a Positive Team And Family Spirit 8. Do More With Less 9. Be Passionate And Determined 10. Be Humble. Out of these, the core values which Training and Development can most influence are: 1. Deliver Wow Through Service Zappos emphasizes that anything worth doing is doing WOW. It is such a short, simple word, but it really encompasses a lot of things. To WOW, you must differentiate yourself, which means do something a little unconventional and innovative. Therefore it is very important to have training sessions to inscribe the 1st core value in its employees. 2. Pursue Growth and Learning Winning organizations are those that encourage the continuous learning process of employees by providing training in relevant areas that are in line with the market demands. HR managers thus have roles to identify the gaps and training needs to increase employee efficiency and encourage a learning culture. 3. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communications Communication is a vital component of successful organizations. Free and open communication among employees and managers or leaders promotes transparency and knowledge sharing. It is also a source of encouragement for the people. 4. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit Productivity in companies is more likely to be achieved through teamwork rather than individual performance. Through team building workshops, Zappos can create positive team spirit ensuring teams are effective to increase their outputs. 5. Embrace and Drive Change Change in the labor market is one of the challenges HR managers are struggling to face. The development of new technologies has forced companies to adjust and adopt new systems that will enhance their customer service operations. Zappos must have training sessions to keep its employees abreast with the latest development in order to keep up pace with the market. 6. Do More With Less Team building workshops can be designed to train employees in “lean” quality techniques so they can “do more with less” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ans. 2C: Values that Training and Development can least influence The values that are least influenced by Training and development are: 1. Create fun and a Little Weirdness 2. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-minded 3. Be Passionate And Determined 4. Be Humble. These values are more related to employees’ personality which are least influenced by training and difficult to train. These values are more focused on in selecting new employees. Interview questions are based on finding employees who are creative and have strong individuality.