Company Organization

Blog Entry
Men’s Wearhouse is a men’s specialty retailer that has over 1,200 stores across North America.  According the Men’s Wearhouse website they carry a full selection of designer, brand name and private label suits, sport coats, furnishings and accessories.  The Men’s Wearhouse will also rent tuxedos. 
The management philosophy is also outlined on the website.  The company put together a code of ethics that is used by all senior management in the company.  The highlights of the code is that the company will always conduct business with highest standards of honesty, integrity, and with compliance with all applicable laws.  With this in mind the company’s objectives are to maximize sales, provide value to their customers, and deliver top-quality customer service while still having fun and maintaining their values.
If I was going to conduct a needs assessment for the Men’s Wearhouse to see if future training is needed,  I would want to get stakeholder feedback from management, customers, and employees.  In the organizational analysis I would want to ask the following questions to employees:

1.  How might training help your relationship with customers?

2.  What might customers, employees and management need to know about a training program done by Men’s Wearhouse? 

3.  How does this training program align with the objectives outlined by Men’s Wearhouse?

4.  What do you need from managers and peers to make training work?

I would want to ask management the following questions:

1.  What might the company, management, customers, and employees need to know about the training program?

2.  How would a training program align with the objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

3.  What features of the work environment might interfere with training?

4.  How will employees perceive a training program offered by Men’s Wearhouse?  For example, would they see it is a  reward, a punishment, etc.

The biggest objectives with company would deal with customer service.  I would want their feedback on the following:

1.  Do you feel like you receive good customer service from the employees at the Men’s Wearhouse?  Please explain.

2.  Do you feel like you are purchasing quality merchandise from the Men’s Wearhouse?  Please explain.

In the Person Analysis piece of the needs assessment I would need the following questions answered on the part of management:
            1.  Why types of situations call for training from you?
            2.  What keeps you from being a good trainer?

3.  What common types of performance problems to all employees have?  New hires?

4.  What are the basic skills needed for an employee to do a good job at Men’s Wearhouse?

For the Person Analysis I would want the following information from employees:

1.  Do you feel like you have been offered or had proper training to successfully perform your job?

2.  Do you feel that there are incentives for you doing a good job at the Men’s Wearhouse?

For the task analysis piece I would need to work with subject matter experts (SME) to do a task analysis to identify skills, tasks, and duties that employees of the Men’s Wearhouse use, should be using, and what would help them in the future.  Part of this is asking employees the following questions:

1.  What tasks do you do on a daily basis? What should you be doing on a daily basis that would make your job successful in meeting the objectives of Men’s Wearhouse?

2.  Do you feel the job you are doing help’s to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

I would want management to answer the following questions:

1.  What tasks should employees be doing on a daily basis, what is required on a daily basis?

2.  Do you feel the job you are doing as a manager is helping to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

In order to get a feel for the way training has been done in the past and for how training, if needed, should be done in the future I would want to look at the company strategic plan, study previous customer satisfaction surveys, employee satisfaction surveys, previous employee/management manuals or handbooks, and any previous training programs that have been implemented within the company. 


I would use the following techniques to acquire the information needed for the needs assessment:

1.  I would use observation so that I can perform task analysis to identify skills, tasks and duties done to perform the job of manager, employee at Men’s Wearhouse.

2.  I would use questionnaires and interviews to do the organizational analysis and person analysis, plus with a company as large as Men’s Wearhouse this is a cheap, efficient way to collect data.

3.  Interviews of all levels of management to get an idea of previous training.  To also learn what they feel the causes of any problems are and what they think could be possible solutions.

4.  I would want to see previous documentation.  I want to see previous training manuals, previous employee handbooks to get a sense of how things have worked in the company in the past.

5.  I would also use online technology.  This is a national company with over 1,200 stores.  This would be the most efficient and cheapest way of communication and data collection.

This is a tall task for company such as the Men’s Wearhouse to take on.  If done well, a good needs analysis could save a company such as this a ton of money.  Training is not always the answer.  A needs analysis could turn up that the company is doing a great job and that there just needs to be a few tweaks here and there.  On the other hand, the needs analysis could open up the eyes of management and employees alike on to what the company can do to improve relations with employees and customers to meet the needs of all of those involved.  A plan of improvement can be developed to create training so that that all stakeholders can perform better in the future. 
References:
www.menswearhouse.com
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.