HRM in Apparel/ Fashion Retail Industry

With a growing economy and a youth-hefty lifestyle consumer base, India is perceived as ‘most
promising land’ for the global and domestic retailers. According to a survey of IBEF, it’s expected to
increase by 60% by 2020 making it a US$ 1.1 trillion market. With increase in market share size, the
size of Fashion retail store is also increasing due to which much manpower is required to serve
customers. In any retail organization, the people who talk to the customer, when a customer walked
into your store are the face and revenue getter of your organization. Hence, managing work force in
correct order becomes key factor in profit generator of the company. BOH team called as Human
Recourse Team (HR) does this major and critical work.

HR in Fashion retail industry has got 4

basic functions, just like other areas.
But each function has its on process
style in fuctioning based on industry
level and size. Fashion itself has got
various fuctions like, designing,
production, marketing and
merchandising, Retailing etc., but
basic fuction of HR remains the same.
Only executing these process has got
different channels and methods as per
company’s requirement. Employee
selection is process of putting right
men on right job.

1) Staffing:- Most challenging job of HR in retail is to source proper manpower with basic
knowledge of fashion. As retail deals with end consumers, sells staff are representative of
brand image and reputation. Hence recruitment of peoper staff with good communication
skill matters a lot. There can be different recruitment process for different level of retail staff.
Sales staff and end operational staffing is done by appointed Store manager and Department
managers and shortlisted candidates are recomondate to company HR for fulfilling
recruitment formalities. Company HR deals for appointing higher authority of store’s staff i.e.,
Department manager, Store manager, Cash and Accounting staff (C&A), Store VM, Assistant
Department manager etc. For store management level staff, HR arranges inverview with
Culster head, and then Zonal head of retail company. Inverview proceedure varies company
to company. But finding right candidate and forwarding them for higher level of interview is
most challenging duty of HR in retail. For other operational designation, HR gets
recommendation from operational and management people.
2) Training & Development – These are actually two different operation involved in order to
refine the knowledge to employee. Again this process differs according to levels of
designations. With regards to sales staff and Customer Service executives (CSE), training is
mostly arranged in near by retail outlet of same company. For e.g., newly recruited sales staff
for manipal Reliance Trends store can be sent to Mangalore or Udupi Reliance store for
training purpose. There every operation at CSE level is been taught, from product knowledge
to service SOPs of the company. Training period can be predermined. CSE is only allowed to
attend customer once he/she clears post Training exam. CSEs who has completed 1 year or
more then that, can appear for promotion test which can be held at head office or regional
office. If executieve is well educated and passes the development program test can be
 promoted to higer level as per store operation hierarchy. Some retail companies perfer to
change location of employee after promotion, this is to create healthy relation among
colleagues.
Training for Store Manager and Department manager differs, they are made fimiliar with
company hierarchy and managements by HR and a scheduled program is arranged at
Headoffice. Normally, Induction program for SM and DM is planned as Theory training and
Onfield training. In theory training SM and DM are made familier with basic HR policies,
company’s mission/vision and values, brands, quality and company’s SOPs. Onfield training is
consisted of visiting the flagship store of the company and undergoing store operation and
VM processes. Training period is normally consisted of 2 weeks to 4 weeks, depending on
company’s HR policies.
Training for Cluster Manager and zonal manager is orgnaized by HR under the guidance of
company’s management like GM or COO. Training differs from SM and DM. Here, induction
program is consisted of introduction to higher authorities of the company face to face. On
field training is not required for such designation, as they are chosen based on their
experience in industry.
3) Motivation:- HR needs to cordinate with Operational head, zonal head and cluster manager
in order to keep retail staff motivated. Basic duty of HR is to keep employees’ salary
reimbusment ontime, introduce personal level incentive, department level incentives and
store level incentives for all the retail store level employees. Apart from monetary motivation,
HR has to look after medical benefits to employees and their family members. This will help
staff to get motivated and built trust with company and its HR policies. Facilities varies from
company to company.
4) Maintenance:- HR need to have policies to keep attrition rate down. Most of the company
perfers to eveluate performance of DM, SM, CM and ZM based on attrition rate, which plays
very important role in appraisal by end of financial year. Regular and transparent appraisal
policy of HR can help retain the employee for longer period of time and this helps in adding
goodwill to the company.

Below is the flowchart which shows common operations carried out by HR in retails organisation.
Staffing/Recruitment Process –

Recruitment and selection has got different meaning based on its level of use.

Based on above differentiation and requirement in company, management instructs HR whether to

Recruite or Select any candidate

Recruitment is the process of identifying the need for a new employee, defining the job and the
appropriate person for it, attracting a number of suitable candidates, then selecting the one best
suited to the job.
HR Challenges in Organized Retail

 Lack of skilled manpower: The organized retailing is a massive man power oriented industry
that recruits a large pool of employees. However, there is a huge scarcity of skilled retail
professionals. This can be attributed to the fact that retail has never been considered as a
prominent profession in India as there were very few retail professional courses still few years
back.
 Stress in Working Culture: The working pattern of retail industry requires employee to put in
long hours of work which generally cause fatigue and result in lower motivation among
employees. Besides this, in part-time and casual jobs there is less job security, flexible shifts,
unlimited working hours, lower salary and benefits & poor working conditions resulting into
stress and working problems.
 Lack of Formal Education in Retail Management: There is requirement of qualified and
talented manpower to look after day to day operations and cater to the wide spectrum of
customer desires. As there is lack of formal vocational institutes where students can be
trained, most of retailers in India depend on inhouse training or fulfilling their training needs
with small institutes.
 Workforce Attrition: There seems to be high level of attrition in the retail sector which is
almost 40% according to a recent study.
 Threat of Poaching: Employee poaching is also very high both in organized as well as
unorganized retail industry. Skilled manpower is scarce in this industry and as such attracting
the employees of competitors by offering them better salaries is a rather easy option.
Ambigai.shivakumar@manipal.edu