Sample Essay on Managing Employee Performance of a Clerk

Job Description Revision Form

Company:  Happy Times Greeting Cards

Location: Corporate Owned Stores

Job title: Sales Clerk

Current Job Description:

 

This is an entry-level hourly position that handles the following tasks:

• Compute charges for merchandise or services and receive payments.


• Prepare merchandise for display or for purchase.


• Recommend and provide advice on a wide variety of products and services.


• Answer telephones to provide information and receive orders.


• Greet customers and discuss the type, quality, and quantity of merchandise sought for purchase.


• Keep records of transactions and of the number of customers entering an establishment.


• Explain company fees, policies, and procedures.

 

Future Job Description /  Recommended Changes:

 

• Explain company fees, policies and procedures in a contingent way depending on the current situation on hand.


• Assuring that sales or customer visit quota is achieved within a specific period of time (day, week or month)


• Greeting customers at all times but discuss the type, quality and quantity of merchandise to asking, regular or bulk-buying customers.


• Solicit customer feedback through simple service evaluation sheet located in front of the cashier


• Prepare merchandize for display or for purchase according to the clerk’s assessment


• Maintaining inventory, sales and customer records and other pertinent store data for weekly report to the general manager.

 

Examples of How Changes will Impact the Job:

• There may be busy days which can limit the responses and actions of the clerk like answering phone, recommending products and organizing displays.  Attaching quotas can lift pressure and over-stress to clerks.


• There may be customers that are just making excessive “fun” and interference with their product queries.  Keeping the subjective judgment of clerk in tact will not only defer waste of time but also will make clerk more efficient.


• Clerk effort like smiling, greeting and assisting customers may not reflect in store quantitative quotas.  Evaluation sheets will not only provide the platform to evaluate clerk behavioral performance but also may serve as the company’s way of trusting the clerk (as if the clerk will not forge the evaluations sheets).


• Current inventory may not sell very well. Giving clerk the freedom to solve this difficulty through self-assessment can induce confidence of oneself and selling skills.


• Multi-tasking can provide the needed challenge and hedge the repetitive nature of the job.   

 

Reasons for Changes:

 

           According to Herzberg, these changes can stand as real motivators unlike the mere prevention of the sources of dissatisfaction from salaries and supervision (Accel-Team, 2005).  Job enrichment will create greater opportunities for individuals to increase variety, responsibility and accountability.  Thus, achievement and recognition is embraced in clerk performance due to autonomy and identity derived in the revised job design.

 

            Every week, the general manager should give time to check the status of the store and actual job execution of the clerk.  Managerial behavior in conducting this strategy is very important to impress and get the interest of the clerk.  The manager should treat the clerk as a friend and should emphasize the importance of clerk performance to corporate results.  If possible, salary should be received hand-by-hand every week including cash incentives that can automatically create subordinate relationship of clerk to manager.  The manager can also help in arranging displays, posting new posters, aiding in accounting problems and even cleaning the shelves. He should assure that the clerk will not fear inferior rather should stress that “people have only different roles”.  All this managerial set-up is intended to provide the platform for oversight and authority to be enforced.  Since staffs located in the lower-end of the rank-in-file showed the lowest scores and satisfaction with regards to growth, achievement, value, job itself, organizational design/ structure/ processes and personal relationships (AMSA 2006), it will be helpful for non-compensatory factors to be injected in leadership styles.  For the company to optimize the imposition of motivational changes suggested above, clerks should feel that they belong to an organization in a friendly environment.  The frequent visit of a manager can not only give this need but more importantly to support the probability of such changes to increase variety, responsibility and accountability through managerial control.

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