Tanglewood Case Two

Daryl Perrone After analyzing the data and performing an environmental scan it is clear that the demographics of Spokane, Washington will present you will problems filling vacancies based on the Equal Employment Opportunity requirements. Spokane is the second-largest city in Washington and according to my research, 84% of these people are white. The next largest minority group, Hipic, is only at 5% and the third largest group is mixed races which are just 3. 8%. As you can see Tacoma, Washington is not very diverse, and finding enough competent employees from minority groups may be difficult given the fact that there are not that many, to begin with. According to the Census Bureau, Tacoma’s percentages of non-white employment in both the fields of retail salespersons and first-line supervisors for retail are low in comparison with the available workforce. This tells me that it is not just Tanglewood that is failing to hire minorities; the whole city of Tacoma needs to do a better job of increasing their minority incumbency percentages.

Incumbency is a term used to describe that a position is being held and is often used by the human resource department to determine where and how demographic shifts are needed. Although your minority incumbency percent is well above the required 80% for department managers finding more minorities for positions with higher volumes of vacancy is going to be a huge problem. Your store associate minority incumbency percent is only at 65. 8% and in order to meet the requirements you need to do a better job of recruiting minorities to fill these positions. The percent of minority incumbency for shift leaders is also too low. As far as female incumbency percentages are concerned, the department manager position needs to be improved more than anything. It is quite clear that Tanglewood needs to hire more females for managerial positions and more minorities for entry-level positions. According to my gap analysis, next year you are going to be extremely short of store associates, and filling these positions according to the EEO will be a difficult task. Tell your managers that they need to get busy and prepare to hire 3,995 people for store associate-level positions. You will also need to hire quite a few department managers; a total of 156.

As far as shift leaders are concerned, only 90 people are needed for this position. There will be staff overloads for both assistant store managers and store managers. This means that perhaps some people will need to be let go and when doing so I recommend that you keep in mind the low incumbency percentage for females in the manager positions. Also, remember that more minorities are needed for both store associates and shift leaders. In order to balance out your employment structure more, I have come up with a simple statement of action for hiring for Washington next year. The most important thing seems to be solving your problem of maintaining store associates. This year, 41% of your store associates left your company and in order to decrease this percentage, you need to make sure that the employees are being taken care of properly. Some methods to retain more employees are by giving them more opportunities for advancement within the company, increasing their benefits package, proving higher wages, etc. Too many people at the entry-level are giving up and this improving your ability to retain employees will prove to be beneficial to the company.

Another major plan of action is to fill in more of the entry-level positions with minorities. Your incumbency percentage for this category is really low and if you don’t fix this problem you are going to be facing a load of issues with the EEO. Unlike your problem with promoting women to management positions, your problem with providing low entry jobs for minorities is one that will require restructuring and time. Although there are not a lot of minorities in the area to fill these positions it is your company’s duty to do a better job of recruiting minorities. This means that you will need to change your recruitment practices and perhaps extend beyond Tacoma to find talent. Realistically I don’t see Tanglewood meeting the demands for minority incumbency for the store associate position in a single year. Hiring internally gives the current employees more hope and will improve the problem you are facing with keeping your employees loyal to the company. Although focusing primarily on internal promotions decreases the chance of finding a stellar employee, it will solve a lot of the current problems your company is facing. I recommend that you promote current females and minorities internally.

This will keep more low entry-level employees motivated to stay and also improve your problems with incumbency percentages as well. Wood himself mentioned in a recent interview with Business Monthly that, “Tanglewood really needs to slow down and take a hard look at our corporate culture”. He goes on by saying, “Right now, we need to consolidate and make sure we’re as close to the company’s original mission as we can be”. Taking this quote into consideration it is clear that the recent expansion increases have destroyed the relationship between the low-level employees and Tanglewood. This does not merely apply to the Washington stores, but to rather the entire store as a whole. People are running in and out of this company and the only way to stop the large percentage of people quitting is by doing a better job of taking care of their needs. On a personal and professional level employees, especially at the low entry-level, need to be Tanglewood’s top priority.