Performance

MANAGING PERFORMANCE AND REWARD

CASE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT:

HRM AND ORGANISATION TURNAROUND AT SELFRIDGES & CO

BACKGROUND

The Selfridges story is one where human resource management has played a vital role in delivering high performance, enabling the company to emerge in the late 1990s as an expanding and very successful. up-market retail department store, Formerly part of the Sears Group, Selfridges was widely described as the embodiment of the 'Grace Brothers" having acquired a rather old-fashioned, stuffy image in the 19805 and early 1990s and become, in the words of one senior manager, 'an organisation headed by senior managers with no logistical support, no idea of supply chain relationships, no use of technology and extremely hierarchical'. A process of renewal and growth began in the mid-1990s with the appointment of a visionary chief executive, Vittorio Radice (formally with Habitat) and a new senior management team, Almost three-quarters of senior managers left the organisation (then just a single site store in Oxford Street, London], to be replaced by a younger, predominantly female team. In 1998 Selfridges de-merged from the Sears group and was launched as a public limited company investing £100 million in the Oxford Street site and opening a second store in Trafford Park, Manchester. Further stores subsequently opened in Manchester City centre (2002) and Birmingham (2003).

The vision of the company was 'to become the best and most exciting department store chain in Europe, by meeting the needs of customers in a unique and theatrical way whilst maximising operational efficiency' '(Mission statement, 1999]. Staff, especially staff associates who serve customers, were seen to be central to creating and achieving this ambience and experience, As the Commercial Director explained 'Selfridges see themselves at the upper end of the price market with customers prepared to pay a little bit more so the service must...