Nordstrom: Dissension in the Ranks

726 Words3 Pages
The case study “Nordstrom: Dissension in the Ranks?”questions the compensation policies, practices and motivation of Nordstrom employees, which were linked with its high focused customer service culture. Nordstrom’s policy was to pay employees for time but its practice was something different. Compensation is driven by sales per hour, so if an employee does any work that is not ringing up the register, he or she was effectively penalized. The problem was the implementation of the performance evaluation mechanism - sales per hour. The integral part of the problem was also identified in poor differentiation of “non-sell” and “selling” time. The company also used sales per hour ratio as the leading factor in performance evaluation and work compensation. This performance indicator was not properly balanced by other factors, such as customer satisfaction, in actual work compensation. My suggestions for designing a motivation program for Nordstrom would include a system to reward the employees for the work they do and not hurt them for time spent in meetings and shelving. They should set up a system that encourages the employees to “go the extra mile” without penalizing them on their hours. Also, employees would be paid accordingly to work extra time, which it was not the case based on the reading. I would also change the commission system so that slow hours of work get a better commission rate than the busy hours. That way working the slow hours would not be so bad and the SPH’s of both different times of day will even out. Additionally, I would suggest a more centralized management since mid-managers had too much freedom, and sometimes focused on their own personal goals and not the team or corporation goals. Performance evaluation and compensation of sales associates and mid-level managers were in conflict, instead of being complementary to achieving the company’s
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