A leading fashion and retail brand builds a talent retention strategy

A leading fashion retailer was facing the dual challenge of front line attrition and escalating fixed salary costs and was keen to explore a mechanism that provided identification of key talent and an appropriate allocation of financial resources to retain the talent. The organization which was part of a large business conglomerate traditionally did not believe in differentiation and the reward structures were centralized and homogenous across different business divisions.

The Inqubex team worked with the HR leadership to define the key determinants of talent based on their criticality of jobs, demographics of the staff and a performance & potential analysis of the workforce. Weightages were defined for each individual factor and the employee population analyzed on the defined framework to cull out the top quartile talent and bottom quartile flab. A detailed retention plan involving communication, growth, reward and development based interventions, was designed to appropriately motivate and ring fence this critical employee base. Care was taken to not disturb the overall group reward strategy and the funding for the interventions was generated through productivity enhancement and reduction in wage costs through suitable actions for the bottom quartile staff.

The client has been able to implement the framework in a phased manner, using the communication strategy to deliver key messages to the key talent and provide suitable career and development interventions.