Tag Archive for: Hiring Retail Employees

Case Study - Oil Company

Client Problem: Owner of a Convenience Store in Oman Complains of Buddy Punching among Staff across all Branches

  • Store owner discovers that his workers from across many branches practice buddy punching, causing major payroll loopholes.
  • Buddy punching happens to be practiced by Filipino workers coming from a common recruitment agency.

Rensol’s Solution: Disciplinary Action, Deployment of Professional and Experienced Branch Managers

  • The convenience store owner seeks the help of Rensol to solve their human resource issue of tardiness and buddy punching.
  • Rensol advises hiring branch managers from a separate recruitment agency who could implement store rules strictly to eliminate such unprofessional practice.
  • Rensol recruits highly-experienced branch managers for the company who undergone strict recruitment process, track record checking, and thorough deployment orientation.

Buddy Punching is a practice when one worker clocks in for another worker on their behalf when one is running late or even absent for a day. While attendance and tardiness issues are common workforce problems; breaching timekeeping records is a human resource management issue that should be addressed before this unprofessional practice becomes a norm, which may cause mild to grave consequences to your business.

Buddy punching is time theft. This also amounts to fraud for paying for work which employees did not render. In the United States, 75% of companies lose money from this malpractice.

Case in Point: Serious Buddy Punching Practice in a Convenience Store Chain

The convenience store owner, during his surprise inspections across many branches, discovers that his staff has been practicing buddy punching. Some staff apparently clock in their attendance even if the staff is running late or is in an entire day off work. Some even clock in extra overtime even if that job is never rendered by the employee.

Apparently, the practice has been a norm in many of his branches and his staff has been doing it almost one after another; and they are receiving the salary religiously as stated on their timecard. Assigned branch leaders seem to tolerate their activity as they are also guilty of being buddy punched by their subordinates. Some of them even edit time records and worse, add extra 15 minutes at some dates. All of his staff came from a common recruitment agency.

The gravity of time theft out of buddy punching surprises the convenience store owner. To knock out the unprofessional practice from existing, the owner sought the help of a Rensol Recruitment & Consulting to understand the behavior of his Filipino workers.

Rensol Intervention: Knocking Out Buddy Punching

Apart from employing technologically-advanced solutions for employee time-tracking, Rensol Recruitment suggests proper human resource management to address buddy punching and the negative ‘cooperation’ being practiced in his workplace.

Rensol understands that cooperation among Filipinos abroad is an innate value in their culture. It is a common thing that they help each other in times of need, however, if this cooperation causes harm to their employer’s business, it should be regulated accordingly.

As a protocol, committing the same violation once or twice should account for respective warning while multiple-time offenders should be given appropriate disciplinary action like temporary suspension.

Rensol doesn’t recommend dismissal or termination of any staff, instead of, suggests employing experienced branch managers who could strictly implement company rules and regulate behaviors of workers in every branch.

With Rensol’s proven competency, the owners trust them to source highly-professional and experienced branch managers to all branches of his convenience store. Rensol assures that endorsed candidates have undergone strict assessment of their track record in managing businesses with high standards of professionalism and screen them based on their knowledge of business ethics and their experience of managing staff workers’ behaviors.

Chosen branch managers are oriented with how to implement employee manuals effectively and how to employ consequences of violations. Workforce management in a smart and efficient way through effective branch managers is the most cost-effective way of addressing this serious issue.

In this way, Rensol competently helps the company knock out the practice of buddy punching and improve punctuality and honesty among workers, as well.

ABOUT THE COMPANY: Rensol Recruitment and Consulting, Inc. is the fastest growing recruitment agency in The Philippines. A career consultant that aims to go above and beyond the level of expectations of both the aspirations of the candidates and the dream team standards of employers through providing exceptional opportunities and unparalleled quality-driven recruitment services.

 

People in Retail Industry

A physical storage vs. the Cloud, paperback vs. e-book, manual vs. automatic – the battle between digital and traditional continues and has now reached even the low-profile walls of the retail industry.

The 21st-century retail, as always, runs on the art of persuading people to purchase products. However, in recent years, there’s been a gradual transition from the traditional brick and mortar stores to the modern e-tailing business. This has left many consumers, old and new, wondering whether to stick to the tried and tested path or jump on the bandwagon of the latest trends.

The rivalry between the two is growing in the recent years. The capacity of the physical stores to survive against the digital competition was questioned. This issue has risen because of the fast retail shifting; together with the positive sales growth forecasts in business studies for online stores.

On the other hand, there were a lot of researches which showed that most of the consumers still choose to go to supermarkets and other physical store outlets. These results might have given the traditional owners some good news, but still, it cannot change the fact that online stores have been perceived to be reigning in the retail industry because of its accessibility anytime, anywhere. Furthermore, people choose to buy in front of their monitors due to the convenience it offers – saving time and ease of shopping (less crowd, no long lines at the cashier’s deck), plus the impulse buying prevention, which the traditional stores cannot deliver.

Statista, an online statistic, market research and business intelligence portal stated in one of their reports, that there are an estimated 1.66 billion online consumers worldwide in the year 2017 alone, and these numbers have nowhere to go, but up. With billions of busy people opting to patronize online stores due to time constraints, who would not wonder how would the bricks go against the clicks?

Greatest Competitive Advantage of brick and mortar stores – Humanness

In this technological age, the traditional retail stores manage to exist and compete with the e-tailing through the “human feel” that it provides to its customers. This claim is supported by the scientific fact that people are more satisfied and encouraged to buy when they tend to touch and feel the product – helps them to make the purchasing decision. In addition, a survey conducted by Timetrade resulted in a positive 85% response – stating that consumers still prefer purchasing through physical stores over electronic retailing platforms. It further states that more customers prefer to buy at the stores itself with the state of humanness; that is when a storekeeper personally assists them to make a purchase. This serves as the advantage of the brick and mortar retailers against the e-tailers’.

Retail Industry

How can the traditional stores keep up?

There is no way to escape the fact – that sooner or later, the stores that do not have the capability to invest in different retail platforms will evaporate. The only option they have is to innovate, which means, they need to spend rational and financial resources to both physical and online stores. Thus, every brick and mortar retailer must start practicing the power of integration – the combined use of digital platforms and traditional retail methods. This integration will surely take time since the business owners have to learn how to capitalize on both retail channels. While the journey towards this integration is on the process, the ultimate asset of these businesses remains to be their people – people who have the social and intellectual skills, and people who know how to value customer experience.

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The struggle is real in finding good candidates who can assist you with your promise to fulfilling customers satisfaction, while you’re doing the job on preparing to adopt the omnichannel strategy. Hence, manpower providers, like us, exist to help you solve that challenge.

Our years of experience built our expertise to provide businesses with the right workforce to deliver humanness to your customers. Let Rensol support your business!

ABOUT THE COMPANY: Rensol Recruitment and Consulting, Inc. is the fastest growing recruitment agency in The Philippines. A career consultant that aims to go above and beyond the level of expectations of both the aspirations of the candidates and the dream team standards of employers through providing exceptional opportunities and unparalleled quality-driven recruitment services.