Executive Summary
A differentiated workforce is one in which talented people have been identified and supported effectively for better organizational performance. Clarin Stores Inc is a company that operates within the retail industry, and thus they have to compete vigorously in the consumer goods category. This means that they still have a lot to learn in the industry. In order to create a differentiated workforce here, the first step is to identify what the company really needs in terms of workers and skill sets that really create and add value for the company’s consumers and investors. Here, it is clear that most of the value creation takes place in the product development and marketing departments. However, the company seems to value the accountants and managers more than the product developers and marketers. Thus, the company needs to pay more attention to its marketing and product development departments if they intend to succeed in the retail market. The plan here is to strengthen these departments and ensure that the company is able to make the best out of the existing human capital, with room for expansion through recruitment and selection as well as training and development. Implementing this plan will require the support of the management and the company’s staff, thus incorporating participative and motivational leadership styles that will enable the employees to understand the proposal and its expected outcomes. It can also be appreciated that the proposed strategy will have to be evaluated. In this case, the best way to monitor and evaluate the strategy is to consider the company’s performance in terms of sales volumes and customer loyalty before the implementation and afterward as well. An improvement in sales volumes will imply success for the differentiated workforce.
Creating a differentiated workforce involves making value by ensuring that the company’s human capital potential is optimized and utilized effectively for the benefit of the organization. This implies that in order to improve organizational performance and maximize returns for the company in question, there is often a need to look within the existing human capital resource rather than seeking solutions outside the organization. One way of achieving better organizational performance is to leverage the company’s human capital and create value by developing a differentiated workforce. At this point, it means that differentiated workforce involves allocating firm’s resources in such a way that competitive advantage will be created and value will be added. Differentiating your workforce implies knowing who does what and how this contributes to the organization in general. Those in a position to alter the company’s competitive advantage favorably are then given more resources and encouraged to work harder in the organization. Therefore, workforce differentiation is mainly the understanding of the various job descriptions in the organization and ensuring that each individual within the company is assigned to a position where he/she will serve the company best. The current paper uses a fictitious company, Clarin Stores Inc., to suggest recommendations that must be implemented in order to attain a differentiated workforce and leverage the available human capital.
The Strategy
Creating customer and investor value in Clarin Stores Inc only requires looking at the product development and the marketing divisions. The individual in product development is responsible for coming up with the company’s products in order to fulfill market demand. These products are often a solution to an existing problem, and the employee in this department is able to find these solutions solely due to their ingenuity and impeccable skill sets. This is why the company is able to stay ahead of their competiti