Blinds to Go: Staffing a Retail Expansion

In 1954, from Montreal, Canada, Blinds to Go (BTG) business began as a retail fabricator of window dressings. Mr.Shiller was the sole operator of the company and until his son joined in 1970s, He persuaded his father to focus on selling blinds. The new business plan generated positive customer responses and by year 2000, the business has expanded widely across North America. The business continues to grow.
Even though they were growing fast, they faced few problems which include staffing and decrease in sales. Staffing has become a major issue in the company, since there were locations that have buildings but no employees. This problem in hiring the right employees that meets criteria of the …show more content…

This type of motivation system seems to be good and available to all of the serious minded individuals. The close contact between in-store management and the sales representatives helps to develop a more team-like feel within each store which would suggest that a store to store competition would be very health and would help to determine the team-working dynamics of each store. 4. For each of the following, provide at least one idea for improving BTG’s ability to meet its staffing needs. Explain how the idea could be implemented, and why you believe it may help.

a. Employee referrals
a. If sales were improved by commissions, wouldn’t a cut of the referral’s sales for a set period of time increase not only the number of referrals coming in but the quality of each referral? I suggest that BTG would give a portion of the total profits of the new referral’s sales to the referring employee.

b. Newspaper ads
a. I feel as if a newspaper ad, confined to the other classifieds would be as effective as it ever will be. However, it is not as expensive compare to other methods, and should be left to be run.

c. Walk-ins
a. Every single store should have a ‘Help Wanted’ sign up. Also, every current employee should be polled to determine who and how many of them would have a willingness to relocation. The new stores would definitely need “experienced” employee’s help.

d. HR recruiting
a. The job fairs at various University/College campuses provide two benefits