Reference no: EM132908407

Question

Aloha Zang, affectionately known as Zee, started a small clothing shop 6 years ago which has grown to eleven shops in Toronto, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver. As she began with second/gently used high end clothing, she stuck to naming her shops 'Rags'. She has since developed a unique brand and a loyal client base across all her locations.

Her tag line; 'everyone deserves the best' has become her company vision statement. She began by having well off friends and now clients, donate their gently used gowns, suits, coats, accessories and even shoes. Best case she loves to share is that she had an original Prada (dress), worn once by Carol Pope, valued at $800, donated, and sold for $120 to a woman reentering the workforce. She has continued creating many such stories for her customers over the past 6 years.

Her locations are run by 5 - 7 employees (approximately, 2 - 3 full-time and 3 - 4 part-time) for a total of 68 employees. Zee has an old friend who used to be a VP of finance, donate her time and assist her as an accountant/tax lawyer. Zee does not have anyone in her line of business with Human Resource (HR) capabilities and she handles everything from payroll, recruitment, branding/marketing. Zee operates like a capitalist, yet is you ask her, she feels she is more or a non-profit philosophy. Often jokes saying she's Robin Hood. Her performance management process consists of informal feedback given to staff with on-boarding new employees through informal mentoring from himself or experienced staff.

Her customer service approach is that both her suppliers and buyers are customers and that all her employee's honour each of them as they play a vital role in her self-professed eco-system.

Recently Zee has begun to worry that she may be missing the mark on being more strategic from a Human Resource perspective. Over the last few weeks she has had one part-timer fall off a ladder while building a display and although not seriously hurt, it scared her.

Some of her suppliers/donors have alluded to the thought that he may be in violation of several legal HR requirements such as safety, diversity and harassment.

For the first time, she received a complaint regarding the lack of respect an employee demonstrated to one of her suppliers. And recently, two of her full-time staff have lightly threatened to look for work elsewhere as they feel they are not being compensated fairly.

Zee pays all her staff the same base salary of $14.00 per hour without any benefits. She feels that this approach promotes equity and eliminates any perceptions of favoritism between employees regarding compensation. Since receiving the negative complaints and the threats of some of his staff leaving, Zee is questioning this compensation philosophy. She is aware that diversity may be an issue and is interested in the employment equity conversation as she feels it may very well align with her company's vision.

Zee has decided to obtain some Human Resource advice and support and as a result conducted a competitive bid. Your team was successfully selected to addressing this issue. Zee is looking from your team to provide her with a proposal, which aligns with her style and approach, on what she could do moving forward.

-Provide some advice on how she may approach his Human Resource challenge more strategically