Human Resources

In a retail world focused on omnichannel strategies, product and service innovations, IT investments and technology-enabled stores of the future, winning retailers are taking a new look at their store labor models and budgets. Store associates represent one of the biggest contributors to the success or failure of brick-and-mortar stores. In many ways, they are a retailer’s most powerful asset.

Lessons in Leadership is the name of a new documentary film profiling the life and contributions of Food Lion co-founder Ralph Ketner who turned 95 this month.

Amazon.com is certainly known for its expertise in integrated fulfillment, and Sears Holdings Corp. is now tapping into that knowledge base.

Sears has appointed Girish Lakshman, who most recently served as VP of worldwide transportation strategy, technology and customer returns at Amazon, as president, fulfillment.

His new role will support the company's continued efforts to fulfill member and customers' needs and advance its integrated retail strategy.

A little over a year into his tenure as Target’s chairman and CEO, Brian Cornell has added new responsibilities as a member of the board of directors at KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell parent company Yum! Brands.
 
Cornell’s appointment to the Yum board comes 13 months after he was named to the top job at Target and just three months after Target sold its pharmacy business to CVS Health for $1.9 billion. The latter is noteworthy because two executives with strong ties to CVS Health serve on Yum’s Nominating and Governance Committee.
 

Flipkart, a leading Indian online marketplace, is naming three new technology executives with experience at some major global retail and IT firms.

The workforce at Macy’s will swell by 50% in the coming month as the department store retailer looks to elevate service levels during the holiday season.

Macy’s said it plans to hire 85,000 workers, versus 86,000 last year, for temporary positions at its Macy's and Bloomingdale's stores, call centers, distribution centers and online fulfillment centers. The company had roughly 167,000 employees at the end of its fiscal year on Jan. 31, 2015.

In the two months since the Department of Labor announced its proposed new overtime standards, much has been written about what it may mean for employers both big and small.

For business operators, the ramifications are still being assessed and significant impacts will be felt not only in labor costs but also in how their businesses will operate moving forward. There’s a larger and more important effort underway, however, and the overtime regulations are just one piece of the puzzle.

Don’t assume that the layoff of 275 IT employees in August 2015 by Target Corp. means the retailer is reducing its focus on in-house technology operations. According to the Wall Street Journal, the layoffs actually set the stage for a big push away from IT outsourcing and toward hiring 1,000 new global technology workers.