Needs Analysis:  Braga Wear Retail

The Braga Wear shop located in Toronto has had performance issues and has not met its desired outcomes and goals and there are a few indications and causes for it. The main concern raised by the Braga Wear’s company is that this location has not met its budget sales and are not performing to the extent they are expected to. This concern is very important as it is essential for the success of the business and the issues that are causing this problem should be addressed as soon as possible. This location is not reaching its goals because of performance issues with the employees. The performance issues have been created because of multiple factors such as employees that have been hired not having the right kind of experience for the job and the lack of proper training. These factors were created because the opening of the location was hastened for reasons as upcoming events that would potentially help the growth of the company if the shop was opened at the time. Solving the performance issues of the sales associates is important for the Braga Wear Company because their products are high quality and expensive and a lot of their profit comes from the marketing and presentation of their product. If the sales associates do not present the product for what they are they will not be able to sell the product.

Person Analysis: The desired outcome is for the sales associates to be able to meet the budget sales in a specific period, the actual performance of the sales associates will not achieve this goal. There is a significant gap to be filled so there needs to be a program in place that will make it possible for the sales associates to get the information needed to fulfill the sales budget goal. One of the obstacles to creating such success is going to be time, the shop in Toronto has been opened and has customers coming in so all the changes that are to be made should be actively happening and the transition should be as smooth as possible. Knows as transfer climate and continuous learning culture (Needs Analysis Process, page 89, 8th ed)

Task Analysis

1.Identify the target jobs: the job that has a performance problem are the position of a sales associate and may potentially be the managerial position of the store. The sales associate position has shown to be the problem because they are responsible for the sales of the store and they have shown a lack of knowledge and established motivation.

2.Job description: Sales associate have duties such as welcoming customers to the store, helping customers with their purchases, advising on enquiries, and managing financial transactions. The gap between actual and desired performance is mostly found on their ability to properly present products and closing customers on their purchases. (Needs Analysis Process, Page 82, 8th ed)

Reason of Braga Wear’s performance issues

Human: There are a couple of in this compartment of the huma barrier of effective performance. First is lack of knowledge of the employees of the Braga Wear’s in the Toronto store, they have not met their budget sales because they do not have the proper knowledge to make enough sales. These employees have previously worked in retail stores where products are much cheaper and easier to sell in larger quantity whilst Braga Wear’s have products that belong to a niche customer base responding to a different approach. The second barrier in this section is lack of skills to perform the job, this is directly caused by the lack of knowledge inherently caused by the nature of the job position of a sales associate.

Technical: In this compartment the biggest barrier is the lack of standardized procedures, caused by the rushed opening of the store a lot of procedures were not properly followed. The sales associates did not receive proper training, and this is most likely why they could not complete their sales goals. Also, a lot of procedures like finalizing sales strategy and budget, merchandising mix, the operations, and HR related activities were not conducted properly again caused by the rushed opening of the store.

Information: Raw data was completely absent in the Toronto store and so there was a barrier formed, the sales associates do not have any idea of their customer base and their preferences so naturally they can not help the customer as they should. Even though there is plenty of data to be considered there should also be data that is particular for the new location of Braga Wear’s considering changes in demographics. (Needs Analysis Process, Figure 3.2, 8th ed.)

Solutions

Fundamentally the performance issues in the Braga Wear’s Toronto Sales lies on the sales associate and their lack of ability to meet enough sales/quality sales to meet the budget needs. The improvement of these employees is worth pursuing minding the fact that these employees have proved that they can produce sales but not for the products of Braga Wear’s. The sales associates have proven to have a genuine skill deficiency for selling Braga Wear’s products so first we analyze this task and try to deconstruct it. There are a few obstacles to take in mind of the task as how often is the task performed, in our case it is the most essential skill of the job so it is most often used and is not removable and the task can not be made much easier considering the importance. We have accepted the fact that these employees can be successful so there is one obstacle present and that is the lack of training for the employees to achieve the companies desired outcome. The issues can be resolved by implementing two solutions: a training program specially created for the location of Toronto Braga Wear’s taking into consideration the experience and a new program of rewards.

Training objective

a) The training objective for the Braga Wear’s sales associate team is providing training so that the employees are able to makes the sales of the companies high ticket products and providing training on how to approach the customer base of Braga Wear’s. An important training objective should be creating a workplace of continuous improvement meaning the employees catching up to the latest clothing trend and knowing how to access data and effectively rely on it for future references.

b) To fix the problem of the Braga Wear’s sales associates I believe two solutions should be implemented: a new training program for all employees and a new system of rewards to remotivate the employees. The training program should be created so it fits the situation at hand, since the sales associates have sales experience but not the right one they should be trained and taught on how to sell luxury items and how to treat the customers that purchase such high value clothing articles. The training should also include teaching the sales associates on how to compile data and as we know these employees have not created a customer database so they cannot review it and conclude results for issues that may appear. 

For the employees to be remotivated and be ready for the changes to come there should be a contingency management program put in place. This type of program is based on a belief that every act has a consequence and if that consequence is good it results in a reward and so the action that brought the reward will happen again. A form of this idea can be a commission meaning that for every sale the sales associates get a percentage on their payroll, this will make it so the employees will push high price sales that fit the goal of Braga Wear’s. A lot of clothing stores implement commission because it pushed sales and it shows employees that good performance is rewarded and should not disappear. (Needs Analysis Process, Page 96, 8th ed.) I believe implementing these changes can resolve most of the issues of the Toronto location Braga Wear’s store and it is key for the success of the location the continuous work on following fashion trends and having the right approach they their customer base.