Fun & Learn, Inc. is a national chain of retail outlets specialising in creative toys and innovative learning materialsfor children. The company caters to the upper end of the market and focuses

on customerservice for a competitive advantage. Fun & Learn plans to expand and to open five

new retail outlets in the coming quarter. This may mean up to 200 new hires, and the executive

team wants to make sure that the best people are hired and retained. It has issued a challenge

to its retail management personnel to design a staffing process that will accomplish these goals.

The children’s market in which Fun & Learn operates demandsservice personnel who are

endlessly patient; knowledgeable about children, toys, and learning; and, perhaps most

important, sociable, enthusiastic, and engaging. Excellent customer service is the top priority at

Fun & Learn, and obtaining the desired performance from personnel has meant a major

investment in training.

Unfortunately, new workers often leave within a year of being hired. This means that the

company barely gets an adequate return on the training it has invested in its new hires.

Apparently, turnover is due (at least, in part) to the demanding nature of the job.

Recently, Fun & Learn has been emphasizing the establishment of work teams to improve the

quality of its services, identify and fix any problems in service delivery and brainstorm new

opportunities.

This approach has yielded better than anticipated results, so the team concept will be central to

the new outlets.