Our client is one of the pioneers in organized retail in Middle East and South Asia, operating across 30+ countries with more than 2000 stores, with nearly one twentieth of the world’s population shopping in these 2000 stores. There is a multitude of nationalities, ethnicities, and linguistic identities of the customers shop in these stores. The need for managing each of these stores and their growth well is the key to success of the business.
The company wanted to select the best of the talent available in its employee pool to become the Store Managers, Area Managers, and Country Managers. People Metrics was entrusted with this enormous task which was of vital importance to the company’s future.
We designed an assessment centre that factored in the critical competencies for success in this ultra-competitive industry with widely varying degrees of customer sophistication and service expectations layered with rapidly changing fashions. Our competency framework encompassed the need for agility in decision making, the skill of managing, and leading multi ethnic workforces, sensitivity to varying customer expectations apart from operational aspect of manging and growing retail store business. Our assessments were especially created after understanding the business dynamics and typical customer interactions.
The entire exercise was an eye opener for both the company as well as the participants in terms of the rich data and self-realisation respectively that came out of the assessment centres. The company was able to identify a number of young talent which was ready to take on larger responsibilities with a bit of training.
This gave the company visibility for the next rung of organisational leadership and prepare a career path for talented individuals in the company and put in place a succession plan for critical stores across its network. The employees also got reassurance of the fair and equitable approach of the company in selecting local and regional leaders in its operations.
