Riordan Manufacturing Benchmarking

Riordan Manufacturing Benchmarking

Employees are a large part of any corporation and are essential in the success of any industry. A loyal employee is hard to find in the world today but some companies have maintained dedicated and longstanding employees due to employee motivations and incentives. Building employee performance and developing a budget plan takes time, but without some form of incentive industries will lose highly skilled workers and create opposition and encourage turnover due to job dissatisfaction (Dreher, Dougherty, 2001, pg 1). Several companies are making a difference in the ways employee are rewarded and recognized. The Home Depot a large retail home improvement store recognizes the customer’s needs and the vital basics that are needs for the company’s growth. Training the staff to assist with the customers needs and incorporating restructured awards programs encourages the employee. Managers should be aware of the possibilities for employee reward and compensation then is able to select the correct practices that fit the job for the companies (Dreher, Dougherty, 2001). Starbucks best known for specialty coffee includes their part time workers in the stock option plans and subsequently has reduced employee turnover because the company is attentive to all the employees and their needs and has created a leadership servant training program that places the employee’s needs before others. Strategy refers to the fundamental directions than an organization has chosen (Milkovich, Newman, 2004). Lowes is a well established appliance and retail store with thousands of employees across the country. Loews implements performance awards and encourages the employees by cash incentive spurts and full benefits for the employees. Recognizing an employees worth and fostering personal satisfaction in work accomplished, security, advancement opportunity, and means to share the company’s success (Milkovich, Newman, 2004). Construction companies like Fabik Cat places employees based on innate talent and by placing people in the correct jobs revenue can grow, employees are satisfied and the job dissatisfaction decreases. Enterprise Rental empowered their employees by granting them creativity to make customer impacted decision which positively affected the revenue and the employees because the need of the customers were a priority.

This paper will demonstrate the many ways industries incorporate strategic perspectives and establish reward and compensation systems that assist to compensate the employee and maintain the excitement and interest for the employee’s job or career.

Synopsis

Home Depot, Inc. by Patron

“The Home Depot, Inc. the largest home center retailer in the United States, operates 478 warehouse stores and sells more than 40,000 items to both the rapidly growing do-it-yourself home improvement market and construction professionals” (Answers Corporation, 2008).

Bernard Marcus, Arthur Blank, and Ronald Brill (founders of Home Depot) realized that recognizing customers' needs was one of the most important elements in a company's growth. “They were aware that do-it-yourselfers made up more than 60 percent of the building supply industry's sales volume, but the majority of them did not have the technical knowledge or expertise to accomplish most home repair or improvement projects” (Answers Corporation, 2008). The major problem that had plagued most cut-rate retail operations was poor service at the operations level. They would hire unskilled and low-paid employees to keep costs down.

The Home Depot management team set out to solve this problem in two ways. First, they made sure that all Home Depot stores were large enough to stock at least 25,000 different items, and the second solution was to train the sales staff in each store to help consumer’s home improvement projects. “Marcus and his partners believed that, with the education provided by knowledgeable sales staffers, Home Depot customers would gain the confidence to take on more projects at home, coming back to Home Depot outlets to purchase what was needed and get additional advice from sales staff” (Answers Corporation, 2008).

Overall, CEO and founder of Riordan Manufacturing, Michael Riordan understands that “…organizations with better talent will be more successful than those with lesser talent” (Brockbank and Ulrich, 2005). By benchmarking Home Depot, Riordan Manufacturing can create a system big enough to evaluate and correct deficiencies in its performance evaluations, recognition programs, and monetary compensation including pay scales. Not only will this restructure their rewards program, but in order for Riordan Manufacturing to improve its employee morale and turnover rate, increase motivation, and be successful with its customer-relationship model, they will have to close the gap between its current practices and its end state visions to allow employees to help their consumers.

Starbucks Corporation by Patron

“Starbucks Corporation is the leading roaster, retailer, and marketer of specialty coffee in the world” (Answers Corporation, 2008). “Starbucks also developed a reputation for treating its employees well. In 1991 it became the first privately owned company in history to establish an employee stock option program that included part-timers” Answers Corporation, 2008). Starbucks also offered health and dental benefits to both full- and part-time employees, which as a result, the company had a turnover rate that was very low for the food service industry. The strive for balance between work/life issues is present with many groups such as sports, parenting, partner connection, partners table and even a choir. Engaging the employee for a healthy lifestyle and a sense of community does have its benefits for the organization. Not only did employees had benefits, they were given training included the history of coffee, drink preparation, and how to brew a perfect cup at home. This allowed employees to learn and expand with the company in different ways to creating leadership with employees. “Leadership derives naturally from a commitment to service. You know that you’re practicing servant-leadership if your followers become wiser, healthier, more autonomous-and more likely to become servant-leaders themselves” (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2004, p.34).

Servant-leadership is thriving at Starbucks and has proven highly profitable. One may call it an innovative idea but this form of leadership was seen in 2007. CEO Schulz had a mission