Solutions to improve ineffective supervision at FPT digital retail joint stock company

However, this research illustrated that factor of supervision had been mostly influenced which led to the very alarming consequences such as high turnover, low job performance and employ

SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE INEFFECTIVE SUPERVISION AT FPT DIGITAL

RETAIL JOINT STOCK COMPANY

TRUONG THUY QUANG

MBA THESIS

INSTRUCTOR: Dr Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que

Feb 6, 2017

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement 4

Executive summary 5

CHAPTER I PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 7

1.1 Company background 7

1.1.1 Industry overview 7

1.1.2 Market share and competitors 8

1.1.3 Company history and structure 9

1.2.Background of problem 11

1.3 Problem Justification 17

1.3.1 Potential central problem 17

1.3.2 Justify the existence of problem 19

1.3.3Jusify the importance of problem 21

1.4 Identification of potential causes: 23

CHAPTER II ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS 27

2.1.Causes validation 27

2.2.Solution design 30

CHAPTER III SELECTED SOLUTION AND CHANGE PLAN 37

3.1.Introduction to selected solution 37

3.2.Details plan 37

3.3.Change plan and counter measures: 41

CHAPTER IV SUPPORTING INFORMATION 42

4.1.Questionnaire development to justify central problem 43

4.2 Questionnaire development to justify causes 44

4.3 Transcript of all interviews 46

REFERENCE 77

List of Tables

Table 1: Asia retails sales volume growth from Economist Intelligence Unit, 2016 7 Table 2: Electrical appliances and housewares: Market demand growth from Economist Intelligence Unit, 2016 8

List of Figures

Figure 1: FPT Corporation structure from FPT Retail Human Resources, 2016 10 Figure 2: Staff growth at FPT Retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources, 2016 11 Figure 3: Turnover rate at FPT retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources, 2014

to 2016 11 Figure 4: Initial cause and effect map 16 Figure 5: Final cause and effect map 26

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Nguyet Que, who always stands by me and motivates me to complete this Without her full support, this master thesis cannot be fulfilled Needless to say, her guidance helped

me in all the time of writing this thesis In addition to that, I want to show my sincere gratitude to Prof Nguyen Dinh Tho, who are always dedicated and patient to us in every single moment

Besides my advisors, I would like to thank my family and friends for encouraging

me spiritually throughout writing this thesis

Executive summary

This thesis of “Solutions to improve ineffective supervision” had been composed and completed in four main chapters: problem identification, alternative solutions, selected solution and change plan, supporting information

Chapter I included company introduction which is FPT Digital Retail JSC, main features about FPT as well as some recent issues that illustrated from a wide variety of secondary data To make it clearer and convincing, in depth interviews were conducted to explore problems further to see what was really going on in this company A problem mess had been created to show out all symptoms, organization outcomes and problems as

a general picture Specifically, a central problem of ineffective supervision was selected

to be solved as a core problem of company with the justification of its existence and importance

After validating and selecting the central problem of organization, three causes of central problem listed as supervisory relationship, soft-skill training, gender-related leadership were investigated to verify and determine so as to give out alternative solutions which were presented in chapter II

In this thesis, there were two solutions proposed for short-term and long-term to tackle problem with evaluation and comparison between these two solutions to best out the most relevant and suitable for organization which were discussed in chapter III

The last chapter was named as the supporting chapter to support all information and information source for the above three chapters It composed three sections of

questionnaire development to justify central problem, questionnaire development to justify causes and transcript of all interviews

In-depth interviews were widely used at different levels from staff to manager to collect data and to diagnose various aspects of the problem with the methodology of design-oriented and theory-informed from a wide variety of fields such as retails, service industry, management etc

After collecting data and information to analyze, it was believed that employee satisfaction had been greatly affected by lots of factors such as nature of work, pay and benefit, motivation etc However, this research illustrated that factor of supervision had been mostly influenced which led to the very alarming consequences such as high turnover, low job performance and employee satisfaction

CHAPTER I: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

1.1 Company background

1.1.1 Industry overview

In this constantly changing world, Vietnam is one of the most actively emerging markets Particularly, despite the world economic slowdown, retail sector of Vietnam is highly considered as high level of attractiveness

As being illustrated in Table 1, over the past 4 year, Vietnam had a pretty low growth rate in comparison with other developing countries such as China, Hong Kong However, recently from 2016, it is predicted that the second-highest growing country

belongs to Vietnam though these figures varied slightly

Table 1: Asia retails sales volume growth from Economist Intelligence Unit,

2016 Needless to say, retail competition of electric device market is getting gradually aggressive and expansive Follow the very similar pattern with the growth rate in the first

table, this second table illustrates the rapidly growth of Vietnam in term of electrical appliances and housewares Since 2014, Vietnam won the second-highest place in market demand growth just after China as presented in table 2 below:

Table 2: Electrical appliances and housewares: Market demand growth from

Economist Intelligence Unit, 2016

1.1.2 Market share and competitors

Several biggest mobile phone retailer listed must be Thegioididong Joint Stock Company, FPT Digital Retail Joint Stock Company, Vienthong A etc During the past 5 years from 2010 to 2014, Thegioididong drives the position of one of 500 leading retail companies in Asia Pacific area and won the first place of mobile retail business (according to doanhnhansaigon.vn) “The Vietnam mobile phone retail market is heating

up with an enormous expansion of the largest retailers such as Thegioididong, FPT and VienthongA Therefore, smaller retailers in the mobile phone business need to adapt in order to survive in this competitive market

Vietnam’s largest mobile phone retailer, Thegioididong has accounted for 40% share of mobile retail market in Vietnam and its revenue in 2015 was reported to increase 60% compared to the previous year from 15,800 billion VND to 25,250 billion VND

“The market share of Thegioididong is up to 40% and not stoppable; It is really not easy for anyone who wants to penetrate into this market to compete with Thegioididong” Nguyen Duc Tai, the CEO of Thegioididong, said.”

The strongest rival of FPT Shop must be Thegioigidong, the first comer in this playground with more than 688 stores, 16.969 employees in all regions of Vietnam It accounts for 30% market share followed by FPT Shop 10%, Vienthong A Viettel 20% and the remaining belongs to small and medium sized shops

Nevertheless, due to this strong competition, it is confronting with one another giant competitor named FPT Shop whose number of shops sharply rocket in all around Vietnam To reach out this target, retail staff has made great contribution though this company is under threat of high turnover rate which is the result of low job satisfaction, working time, competition between staff etc

1.1.3 Company history and structure

On August 28, 2007 FPT Digital Retail JSC was established with the store chain named [IN]Store nationwide After that, in 2008, [IN]Store changed its name to FPT Shop And since 2009, FPT brand name has become popular with customers Three years later, FPT Retail JSC changed its name to FPR Digital Retail JSC and this name has been widely used until now

Regarding the structure, FPT Digital Retail JSC (FPT Retail) operates under FPT Corporation as one of its subsidiary People in Vietnam witness this familiar name FPT Shop Until now, there are approximately 300 stores in around Vietnam mainly in Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Noi, Hai Phong, Can Tho, Da Nang and Hue Predictably, Year 2016 witness a sharp increase up to 400 shops

Figure 1: FPT Corporation structure from FPT Retail Human Resources, 2016 FPT Shop provides huge ranges of products from Mobile phone, Laptop, Accessories to Service, used mobile phones

For staff, there is a dramatically increase in staff growth with career path from newbies to Regional Shop manager In 2015, the number of staff reached 4500 people and increase to around 5000 staff in 2016

FPT CORPORATION

0 1000

Figure 2: Staff growth at FPT Retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources,

2016 Even the significant development in staff growth and turnover go up very noticeably, symptoms of high turnover rate and products return, customer complaints are

“real and urgent threat” to the sustainable long-lasting development FPT retail

1.2 Background of problem

There is no doubt that retail industry has witnessed a high turnover rate from some sources of secondary data According to a survey in 2016 of Mercer and Talentnet(1), big companies in Human Resources consulting, the top three industries with a high turnover rate were retail (39%), life science (17%) and technology (16.2%) and staff turnover rate

in 2015 was slightly lower than 2014 In particular, FPT retail JSC held a high turnover rate from 2014 to 2016 as being seen in figure 3 follow:

Figure 3: Turnover rate at FPT retail JSC from FPT Retail JSC Human Resources,

From the external sources of information as secondary data, In the Corporation, FPT Retail is still the growth-leading company in profit before tax and revenue (2) FPT Retail is now calling for big investors to invest into this area of retail With the rapid expansion of shops in 63/63 cities and provinces, this company put a very high pressure

on their staff especially for sales group to be more competitive and stronger To explore this problem further, interview has been conducted with 8 people who are from 3 groups mentioned below:

The first group of 3 people including those who are currently working at FPT Retail JSC: Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa – currently a staff in HR department of FPT Retail ; Mr Huynh Quang Long – Head of Training Department of FPT Retail ; Ms Le Thi Bich Ngoc – Shop Manager of 344 Le Van Khuong, Dist 12, HCMC

The second group has 03 participants who used to work at FPT and then left for another organization : Mr Vu Thanh Tung , he is currently working

as Shop Manager in Vinpro+ and used to work at FPT Retail for more than 4 years with various positions; Ms Nguyen Ngoc Thanh Hieu 24 years old, she used to be

a salesman at FPT Shop and now working for Hoa Thien Phu Company; Mr Ly Quoc Tien who used to work at FPT at 3 different positions : salesman, technical staff, taskforce member

The last group of 2 customers: Mr Ho Nhut Khuong – 25 years old,

a regular customer of FPT Shop; Mr Le Dinh Qui (33 years old), rarely buy product at FPT Shop

Conducting these initial interviews with all group members listed above; there are different features for each group The key reason for choosing these people to interview

is that, various perceptions and perspectives have been marked and collected With the first group, they are all currently working at FPT Retail JSC but different department and level from staff to shop manager and training manager The second group is ex-employees at FPT retail, who used to engage with company and left for different reasons, they understood what was going on inside the company The final group is various kinds

of customer with different aspects and gives out different viewpoints with their real experience

Most of people in the first and second group all emphasized that there was a high turnover rate recently which create crucial impact to company productivity, customer satisfaction and affect product returns

“The average working time of 1 salesman in FPT Shop is only from 4-6 months Overall, the rate of turnover in 2015 is high (around 50%)’’ sayings from Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa Alongside with the same perspectives, Mr Huynh Quang Long shared FPT Retail JSC was facing the fact that huge number of key persons left FPT with different reasons From the view point of Ms Le Thi Bich Ngoc, salesmen came to work without energy, they did not want to work which could lead to lower productivity of Shop, they did not want to work anymore With high turnover and turnover intention, a number of new and inexperienced salesman has been recruited, a new salesman surely don’t know how to sell products, which can lose customers and lower productivity Moreover, product returns can be increased due to new less experienced salesman “this happened for

many reasons, but one of them come from new salesman’ consultancy related to knowledge” confirmed by Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa

Behind the symptoms of high turnover rate and alarming consequences, there are a wide range of causes Employee satisfaction is the core element that heighten turnover rate up Employee are not happy and satisfied due to a plenty of reasons listed like lack of promotion opportunity, ineffective supervision, poor pay and benefit, lack of motivation, competition between co-workers, stress and pressure, lack of motivation or burnout

Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa stated that regarding sales force, due to selling policy in FPT with low base salary and quite attractive incentives, it can stimulate selling productivity but tough competition between salesmen happened which has led to stress or unfair competition between co-workers With some other salesman cannot sell products well will be very much under high competitive pressure and quit the job

Sharing the same perspectives, Ms Le Thi Bich Ngoc confirmed that she and her staff had to work overtime like road show, leaflets sending…very often and without any extra payment from company After work, she had other things to do at home as well As far as she’s concerned, there is no satisfaction regarding pay and benefit From the sayings of Ms Le Thi Bich Ngoc who is currently Shop Manager of FPT, she confirmed that she can see the current situation of increasing turnover rate, some salesmen are not happy to come to work and feel like energy loss status, then they quit the job And she also shares the same view points with others that there is a high rate of turnover in FPT Shop which can impact on company productivity On the other hand, when being asked about current status of FPT retail, Mr Huynh Quang Long – Head of Training

Department of FPT Retail showed his opinion that what he can observe recently is higher turnover of salesman especially key persons such as ASM, SM leave company and move

to another similar company called Vingroup Because of the market competition, FPT shop is trying to build the best image to be more attractive FPT Shop push stronger and higher target for each shop, which make sales person here stressed From the opinion of

Ms Nguyen Ngoc Thanh Hieu “there is a high and tough competition among salesmen which makes me really stressed”

During the time doing the interviews with the first group and the second group, they mentioned that the employee satisfaction greatly cause high turnover rate which indirectly lead to customer dissatisfaction That is the reason why the third group of 2 customers is also involved to be interviewed to explore problem further The result after interviewing two customers are regarded as similar

To sum up, initial cause and effect map has been showed as below

Figure 4: Initial cause and effect map

Products return increase

New and less experienced salesmen increase High turnover

Strict selling

policy Stress Job

Work pressure

Low employee satisfaction

Nature of Work

Burnout

Failure to reach target

Poor pay and benefit

Ineffective supervision

Lack of motivation

Supervisory relationship

Soft-skill training

Gender-related leadership

The success of one company doesn’t only mean this company makes money or not, that’s how they make their employees drive passion and desire towards their current job As well, effective supervision is considered as very important element from the prospective of maintaining and retaining appropriate employees For a company, greater level of job satisfaction can result in greater level of job performance and meaningfully reduces turnover rate

1.3 Problem Justification

1.3.1 Potential central problem

As being showed in Figure 4 initial cause and effect map, a plenty of consequences have been found out from various source of data which are high turnover and turnover intention, low level of job performance, customer dissatisfaction, product return increase These organization outcomes have been led by many issues, one direct problem of them is low employee satisfaction In addition to that, whereas, the factor of low employee satisfaction is contributed by a wide range of issues collected from interviews and other secondary data as well Among all, in terms of factor nature of work, high sales target, competition between co-workers, poor pay and benefit, in the current situation of the company that FPT Retail JSC have to build up their images and make effort to attract big investors, so if one of them has been chosen as central problem, it cannot be changed or improved Regarding the promotion opportunity and factor of motivation, not so many people find them the main problems that impact on organization outcomes Moreover, if job stress or burnout are selected as the central problem, it will

take too much time and effort, resources to solve which is impossible in the limited scope

of work

More importantly, when being interviewed, people mostly mentioned the problem

of ineffective supervision which is the most influential factor to consequences which is regarded as a solvable central problem in this context Most of interviewees mentioned and emphasized problem of supervision, they are not satisfied with their supervisor; leavers also decided to leave company due to their supervisor’s behaviors and the way they supervised

Mr Ly Quoc Tien – one of the interviewee joining the initial interview shared that

he left FPT because of his supervisors, he believed that they were really selfish and thought for their benefit only, he and his supervisor did not have a good relationship, they did not listen and accept constructive opinions from him Agreed with Mr Ly Quoc Tien,

Mr Vu Thanh Tung who was also an interviewee in the first interview shared that, there was a plenty of reasons that made him leave company, but among all of them, problem of supervision is the key cause to this issue From his perspective, employees did not leave their company, they left their supervisors or managers From perspective of Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa, she had 2 managers She was not happy with the way her managers supervised, they did not understand staff’s feelings and she didn’t receive any good support from her managers

To conclude, after collecting information and analyzing all the factors, problem of ineffective supervision is highly considered as root cause or central problem that needs to

be tackled in the scope of this thesis

Definition of ineffective supervision

According to Morgan, Michael M(3),supervision seems to involve a structured relationship between a supervisor and supervisee with the goal to help the supervisee gain the attitudes, skills, and knowledge needed; but simply to point out that for many people; supervision is concerned with a variety of objectives Pell, Arthur R (4) showed that a good supervisor knows the strengths and limitations of each team member In planning how to present information to the team it is important to keep this in mind By building this knowledge into the approach used, the supervisor can tailor the manner in which the instructions will be given to what is best for the person involved Watkins(5) suggested that ineffective supervisors are intolerant, non-empathic, discouraging, defensive, and uninterested in training or consultation to improve their supervisory skills “Any sales supervisors are ineffective because they don't know how to be managers” said McSparran, Kent(6)

1.3.2Justify the existence of problem

This section aims to validate whether ineffective supervision is a real central problem in FPT Digital Retail JSC

There is a variety of theories that gives out the dimensions of ineffective supervision Various dimensions of ineffective supervision have been discussed in lots of research previously McSparran, Kent(7) stated many sales supervisors are ineffective because they don't know how to be managers These fellows generally fall into two groups The first type of ineffective supervisors are the worker-bees who feel guilty and unproductive if they are not moving cases, hanging signs or making emergency

deliveries Though wonderful employees, these guys make poor supervisors because they fail to recognize that they can accomplish more by increasing the output of eight subordinates than they can by their own hard work The second type of ineffective supervisors are those with the "I've-paid-my-dues" attitude These people interpret a promotion to management as meaning that they have done their time on the streets and have earned the right to coast for a while Situated on the easy side of the inverted accountability equation, these supervisors fail to see that their paycheck is justified only

by the effect they have on the productivity of their crew According to Nicholas Ladany1, Yoko Mori2, and Kristin E Mehr3(8), the effective and ineffective supervisions were differentiated based on the supervisory working alliance, supervisor style, supervisor self-disclosure, supervisee nondisclosure and supervisee evaluation using supervisee evaluation of supervisor form, working alliance inventory/supervision-short form, supervisory styles inventory, supervisor self-disclosure index, trainee disclosure scale, evaluation process within supervision inventory

Besides that, semi-structured interviews with closed-ended questionnaires were designed to collect data Details and content of questionnaire will be displayed in section 4.1 chapter IV based on characteristics of ineffective supervision that are supervisory working alliance, supervisory style, supervisor self-disclosure, supervisee nondisclosure and supervisor evaluation

Three respondents out of eight people in the first interview attended the interview

to help validate the existence of ineffective supervision at company Having deeper talks with Mr Ly Quoc Tien, he stated that he was not satisfied with his supervisor’s skills and

techniques or behaviors which couldn’t help him grow up He learned by himself There was no agreement on the goals of supervision between his supervisor and he Supervisor asked and assigned to him, and he just followed About the emotional bond between supervisor and he, his manager also created high pressure on him, everything was imposed by his managers

Result of this justification process illustrated that ineffective supervision does exist

in this organization which had been supported by both theories and data

1.3.3 Justify the importance of problem

As validated above, the problem of ineffective supervision really exists in FPT Digital Retail JSC, this section aims to justify whether and how this central problem important to make big impacts to organization outcomes by determining the cause-effect relationship of ineffective supervision to employee satisfaction, turnover rate, and job performance directly or indirectly

Definition of employee satisfaction, turnover and job performance

Ambreen, Uzma(9) stated that employee satisfaction is the terminology used to describe whether employees are happy and contented and fulfilling their desires and needs at work or not Employee satisfaction is a factor in employee motivation, employee goal achievement and positive employee morale in the workplace According to Saif-ud-Din*, Khair-uz-Zaman** & Allah Nawaz,(10) job satisfaction of academicians is well documented across the literature where certain leading factors of satisfaction have been researched over and over indicating that work, pay, supervision, promotion, co workers and environment collectively determines the total satisfaction of a worker/officer

The term “turnover” is defined by Price (11) as: the ratio of the number of organizational members who have left during the period being considered divided by the average number of people in that organization during the period Chou, Rita Jing-Ann Author Information(12) stated the fact that when turnover is high, there are not enough workers to perform tasks, causing a situation that affects quality of outcomes Furthermore, high turnover also creates a constant inflow of new workers, who tend to be less experienced

Yang, Cheng-Liang; Hwang, Mark(13) stated that job performance measures an individual against his or her goal, with an emphasis on whether outcomes match the expected goal or is how an employee performs his or her tasks using time, techniques and interactions with others

Ineffective supervision to employee satisfaction as a direct impact by theory

Thacker, Rebecca A(14)showed significant, positive correlations for satisfaction with quality of supervision, and with company/agency as an employer, which means an ineffective way of supervision and results in low employee satisfaction

Employee satisfaction and turnover rate, job performance by theory

According to Becker and Huselid(16), when discuss about the potential impact of job satisfaction, it is said that job satisfaction is seen as a potential route to high performance Yang, Cheng-Liang; Hwang, Mark(13)showed that if job satisfaction influences job performance, then attention should be given to factors that contribute to high job satisfaction, which, if present, can then lead to high job performance

Wei (Amy) Tian-Foreman(16) showed that the most studied work/job-related antecedent of turnover has been job satisfaction, which has typically been treated as an intervening variable

To justify that ineffective supervision and employee satisfaction, turnover rate, job performance are in the cause-effect relationship, in-depth interviews again were used to explore whether ineffective supervision directly or indirectly causes organization outcomes

With the same respondents as section 1.3.2, Mr Vu Thanh Tung and Mr Ly Quoc Tien shared their opinions that they felt really disappointed, unhappy and dissatisfied with their supervisor’ ways for different reasons They made decision to leave FPT Digital Retail JSC due to their supervisors, they found hardly contented with their job For Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa, she confirmed that she used to think of leaving company because she was uncomfortable working with her two supervisors When she felt unhappy, she did not want to go to work and couldn’t perform well at work

Central problem of ineffective supervision is really important which can greatly impact directly satisfaction and indirectly influence turnover rate and job performance Therefore, whenever there have been solutions to ineffective supervision, all the remaining outcomes of employee satisfaction, high turnover rate, lower job performance will be improved

1.4 Identification of potential causes

It is said that a problem is always caused by different reasons, some factors are seeable but some are not When interviewing two persons from group 2 which was

already introduced in the first part, Mr Ly Quoc Tien and Mr Vu Thanh Tung also agreed with three main causes listed below which are supervisory relationship, soft-skill training and factor of gender-related leadership In addition to that, these primary data are

fully informed by theory

Supervisory relationship

Bernard and Goodyear(17)broadly define the supervisory relationship as including all interactions between a supervisor and supervisee and according to Bordin, the supervisory relationship collaboration for change involving mutual agreement and understanding of the goals and tasks of supervision as well as the bonds between the supervisor and supervisee necessary to sustain the relationship

Next, we review the literature that substantiates what supervisees are asking of supervisors and highlights that the relationship is an essential element in supervision efficacy and effectiveness according to Patton & Kivlighan(18) We also explore what has been written about ineffective supervision and participants find it meaningful that their own experiences with ineffective supervision are congruent with this literature

When being asked about supervisory relationship, Mr Ly Quoc Tien and Mr Vu Thanh Tung all shared the same view points that they didn’t have good or strong relationship with their supervisors No or very limited rapport, trust or caring has been created Mr Huynh Quang Long also stated the fact that there was no time for feedback,

listening, getting opinions from salesman or employees

Soft-skill training

Trainings are not only for new hires or low level employees Even top management also needs trainings (including technical and soft-skills training) According

to Santucci, Phillip J(19) traditionally, training lies within the realm of human resource management It seems logical to let the people ho hire, process, and orient new employees also train them before turning them over to their supervisors The supervisors might or might not conduct further training, depending on what they feel is necessary or comfortable Make training the responsibility of supervisors (put it in their job descriptions) and use the training staff to provide training support to the supervisors Sayings of Mr Vu Thanh Tung, most of upper level managers in FPT recently lack of interpersonal skills, they are not emotional, attractive in terms of their supervisory style

Gender-related leadership

There is no doubt that 90% member from Board of Director of FPT Retail JSC are female Comer, Lucette B(24) revealed that women are relative newcomers to the industrial sales force, which traditionally was staffed almost exclusively by men The study showed that Male sales force members were most responsive to leaders who displayed individualized consideration and used a transaction style (contingent rewards or management by exception) Saleswomen preferred charismatic leaders and those who were capable of intellectually stimulating methods Therefore, gender factor also make an impact on supervision style Doughty, Elizabeth A(20)pointed out that supervisees may have different expectations of male and female supervisor There is an expectation female supervisors might be more nurturing or communicate a greater sense of caring than their male counterparts The expectation of male supervisors is they will rely less on

relationship variables and focus more on the appropriateness or fairness of the supervisee's actions Males are often viewed as experts and treated as such by their supervisees When these traditional expectations are not met, some supervisees may become resistant to the supervision process, or show bias toward their supervisor For example, males might become resistant if they feel they must be "subordinate" to their female supervisor In terms of leadership style, Mr Ly Quoc Tien also shared his opinions that, female managers in FPT Retail JSC also make decisions on their emotion and shortage of equality

To put it in a nutshell, final cause and effect map is presented as below:

Figure 5: Final cause and effect map

Low employee satisfaction

Low job performance Ineffective

supervision

High turnover

Supervisory

relationship

Soft-skill training

Gender-related leadership

CHAPTER II ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS

This chapter is to validate all causes to see what causes do exist and important, then to provide alternative solutions to central problem of ineffective supervision which had been discussed in previous chapter

2.1.Causes validation

There are three main causes that result in ineffective supervision at FPT Retail JSC which are identified in previous part In this section, causes will be validated by the method of combination between interview and theory-informed Method to be used in this section is in-depth interview with semi-structured and open-ended questions to the same respondents in previous part who are Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa, Mr Ly Quoc Tien and

Mr Vu Thanh Tung Questionnaire were designed to collect data from three respondents which will be presented in part 4.2 of chapter IV

Cotter Mena, Kristin Marguerite(21) stated that the supervisory relationship functions to provide support and guidance to social workers and frontline workers The quality of this relationship can either enhance or detract from the worker's performance or effectiveness In the supervisory relationship, the goal is to provide the worker with the guidance to aid in effective and efficient service to clients Besides, consequently, the supervisory relationship that supports worker satisfaction and prevents burnout is essential

(3)

The concept of supervisory relationship even today remains one of the most influential in supervision Supervisory relationship includes the collaboration for change involving mutual agreement and understanding of the goals and tasks of supervision as

well as the bonds of supervisor and supervisee to sustain the relationship Muson (21)also mentioned trust within supervisory relationship as a requirement to effective supervision Shulman also included rapport and caring as elements to a positive supervisory relationship

When being asked about the relationship between supervisor and supervisee, the result showed that all respondents agreed that there was a low level of trust between them and their supervisors In term of rapport and caring, the same answer was received that there was almost no caring and rapport from their direct supervisors

Secondly, training is also a cause that leads to effective or ineffective supervision especially soft-skill training Training in supervisory behaviors can be listed as soft-skill training including head-nodding; smiling; minimal encourage; frequent eye contact; warm, encouraging, and approving voice tone; and use of hand gestures In reality of FPT, there is high shortage of soft-skills trainings for supervisor which impact effectiveness of supervision Data collection from interviews with Mr Vu Thanh Tung,

he said that very few people in FPT have strengths in soft-skill such as communication, and do his direct managers This is a root cause from training issue, too At this moment, there is no training in terms of listening skill, understanding and communication skill And you know, it is not true that everyone can communicate well Therefore, soft-skill training issue should be included to be given priority to be solved

Thirdly, gender-related leadership issue is also mentioned as one of three causes to ineffective supervision Comer, Lucette B(22) confirmed that female sales manager is still

a relative rarity Therefore, management of the industrial sales force is an important

target for women's achievement if they are to break through the "glass ceiling" and gain access to top management positions To accomplish this, women must first demonstrate their ability to supervise the activities of field sales personnel Rosen and Jerdee's(22) stated that subordinates of both genders were more satisfied with a contingent reward policy when supervised by males than they were with a similar program managed by females Watson(22) also found out that in one organization, men were found to be significantly more receptive than women to female managers who emphasized a participative, warm, informal supervision style

When being asked, Mr Vu Thanh Tung and Ms Le Thi Ngoc Hoa all agreed that most of managers in FPT Retail JSC are female but it cannot affect their supervision effectiveness On the contrary, among three interviewees, Mr Ly Quoc Tien shared that female managers usually make decision on their emotions and feelings

However, factor of gender-related leadership was not emphasized too much to be a cause which needs to be tackled urgently Besides, to improve gender-related leadership issue, it is related to a long process of recruitment which cannot be solved in the limited time and resources of this thesis

Among three causes listed in the previous part and clearly showed in final cause and effect map, the factor of supervisory relationship is emphasized to be the underlying cause which mostly influenced supervision issue Due to the lack of communication, experiences to build up the relationship between management level and staff, supervisory relationship is not maintained and tied

To sum up, all three factor of supervisory relationship, soft-skill training, related leadership issues are existing and important to the central problem of ineffective supervision Nevertheless, in the scope of thesis, factor of supervisory relationship and soft-skill training will be selected as causes to the central problem

According to Britton, Paula J (18) Techniques to enhance the quality of the supervisory relationship As the import of a positive relationship in supervision is underscored, we explore how this kind of relationship emerges We reflect on what counselors do to facilitate the therapeutic relationship and promote a discussion as to what is different about supervisory relationships Included in this section is information about properly setting up supervision, developing a working contract, assessing the supervisee, and goal setting

Mr Huynh Quang Long said “Our Company needs to reschedule and allocate suitable time for feedback, listen and understand each other more We need time for supervisors and sale staff/employees” Currently in FPT Retail JSC, supervisors and

supervisees focus too much on their daily tasks, they don’t have the mutual goal setting, usually the management style here is top-down or “command and control’’

Short-term solution: Solution to build and reinforce supervisory relationship

The first action should be from Human Resources Department They must be person in charge to fulfill and build up this supervisory relationship better It cannot be a simple meeting, it will be a face to face meeting, to for reviewing what has been done monthly, exchange opinions on how to foster or enhance skills of sales, soft-skills…This will be an internal meeting and exchanging ideas on how to improve supervisory relationship and enrich the internal communication In addition to that, to enhance this supervisory relationship, regardless the effectiveness of internal communication and exchanging ideas, teambuilding and outdoor social activities should also be reinforced and strengthened. Ellis(23) already specified that the supervisory relationship was identified as the most important element in supervision by the supervisee Theoretically and conceptually, it is presumed that the supervisory working alliance contributes to supervisee growth and development Therefore, creating a strong working alliances with mutual agreement based on the goal setting, assessing supervisee, not only receiving orders or request from top to down

Having short talks with Mr Huynh Quang Long who is Training Manager and discussed with him this solution and we all shared the benefit cost analysis as below

Benefit:

• Supervisor and supervisee can bridge the gap in communication, in order that the

supervisory relationship must be reinforced

• Supervisors have more time to care the individuals than before, listen and

understand them clearly

• Employees have more time to talk, then learn and gain experience from their

supervisors

• Have greater chance for employees to perform better

• Managers as supervisors can really understand and look into the true potentials for

assigning and proposing right

• It is high time for supervisors to redesign the way of leading and supervising

which is really suitable and effective for employees

• With greater supervisory relationship, strong and mutual agreement on goal

setting, employee satisfaction and performance will be on the rise

Cost

• The entire cost (including team building and social activities) consists of transportation cost, room/hotel reservation fee, catering cost, materials and

facilities fee and depends on the time length (usually 2 days)

• The amount will be calculated by Human Resources Department of FPT Retail

JSC as below:

Long-term solution: Comprehensive solution to training and communication issues

Provide frequent training quarterly to manager’s level Topic of training will be discussed between Sales Team and Human Resources Department prior to the training, mainly in soft-skills trainings but not limited to listening skill, interpersonal skills The trainers will be senior voluntary expert from various countries working for Government-Office under the projects This solution will be more comprehensive with the combination of the teambuilding activities as series of actions Trainers also join this series of actions as an underlying part of FPT Retail JSC And time by time, trainers can

be very familiar with activities, get familiar with management level at company to become a consulting groups of company

The problem of ineffective supervision is also caused by training issues at FPT Retail JSC at this moment According to Lindo, David K(24) : A training program can help supervisors learn how to oversee the work of others and make the effort necessary to meet subordinates' needs A good training strategy should help supervisors make the transition into management, encourage supervisors to develop important supervisory skills, and provide continuing direction for career development A supervisory training program that begins prior to management appointments will pay off by increasing the productivity and quality of supervisors Mr Huynh Quang Long shared that at FPT now, they usually train new hires from technical to soft-skills techniques, however, because they are facing the fact of high turnover rate, they have to recruit very regularly, then they provide training in a quite short time then get them on-board For some cases, new hires

failed in their tests, and after many times they also have to get them on-board, because they need them However, for manager’s level, it rarely provides regular soft-skill training due to their workload and time management Training team just update them new products, how to use, which mean technical skills Soft-skills training is really importance which decides supervision style Jain, Samta(25) indicated that soft skills have become an essential quality for managers to effectively manage their team and job in the corporate world irrespective of the sector Along with professional qualification and domain knowledge, today's professionals need to possess a high soft skills quotient in order to succeed in this competitive era

After talking with Training Manager of FPT Digital Retail JSC, cost and benefit analysis was discussed as below:

Benefit

• Both combine actions in one as a very comprehensive solution for training and

supervisory relationship issue

• Create not only stronger relationship inside the company, but also trainers from

outside to make a further cooperation

• Saving expense from hiring senior voluntary experts working and living in

Vietnam who are very experienced and helpful, dedicated

• An open environment has been created that challenges management level to

improve their English ability

• Learn practical things from international trainers and get experienced

Cost

• Expense is allocated to training material cost, interpretation fee, accommodation

and transportation cost, team building activities fee

• The quotation for 1 course (2 days)built by HR department as below:

Solution evaluation by design requirements

Design requirements are compared and analyzed between the first and the second

solution as below

Functional requirements This solution can help to solve central

problem at FPT Retail JSC but in short-term only, this is certainly usable and effective at the beginning time to connect people in company

This solution will solve current problem as a business problem at FPT Retail JSC and the analysis of benefit-cost shows that the benefits exceed the costs

User requirement Management level has to take high

responsibility to raise voice and guild everyone to follow There are also penalties to management level

Managers’ level at FPT will have time to get used to new regulation of training section and penalty regulation if needed

Boundary condition This new training program totally

complies with legal requirements, including those on health and safety It also complies with present business policies of the company and fit the

present company culture

This new training program totally complies with legal requirements, including those on health and safety

It also complies with present business policies of the company and fit the present company culture

Design restrictions This project should take no more than

12 months (shorter term) and the reality of this solution will change the

present business system

The project should take no more than 24 months (longer term)

The reality of this solution will change in the present business system

CHAPTER III: SELECTED SOLUTION AND CHANGE PLAN

3.1.Introduction to selected solution

With the hope to develop and build FPT Retail JSC as a stronger brand name and more attractive company in the eyes of foreign investors FPT now is trying to solve the existing problems inside the company And, ineffective supervision at company currently must be addressed and tackled as an urgent need which produces more company productivity and reduces turnover rate In addition to that, implementing the solution to solve this center problem may help management level in adjusting and look back to themselves to give out the better way of supervision As well, it provides opportunities to see their employees clearer and truly For employees, they have time and opportunities to raise their voice, share and understand their supervisors Since that, they can find a better way to make greater contribution to the development of company instead of stress, burnout and dissatisfaction Form that, the management and leadership style can also be changed, from the top-down to bottom-up management One more important thing is that, gender-related leadership is highly considered as a cause as well So, training topics also focus on this issue as an alarming concern in organization mainly managed by female And the longer-term solution should be selected

admin team, training team, logistics team This activity of teambuilding and training will

be taken three times a year

Criteria set to do this plan :

• This plan should take no more than 24 months

• There must be the strong cooperation between employees and management level

• Must be effective and doable

• After first 6 months applied, supervisor relationship must be enhanced

The actions to implement this solution is a step by step action

Firstly, Admin team proposes an assessment form to the management level and gets approved from that

The assessment form will contain the information below

• Name of supervisor/supervisee

• How long of working and supervised by supervisors

• Evaluate based on measuring scales from none to very good

• The final part will be the comment or contributing opinions and their opinions on this new plan/project

Next, Training team prepare proposals to introduce company and project in training managers to all municipal and Government Office to look for suitable International trainer who are now working there

After that, management level at FPT Retail JSC will select a group of 3 trainers as

a potential consulting group for company

Once the selection finishes, trainers and sales managers at FPT will unify to select the topic for trainings After every training section, there will have a test and managers have to pass or else they get a minus in KPI monthly report

Once manager finishes the training, they must commit to work for FPT in at least one year more If they quit the job and leave company, they have to pay money of

a full training course

The details plan will be shown in the table:

03/2017 – 04/2017 Admin team proposes an

assessment form to the management level and gets approved from that

team

04/2017 – 06/2017 Assessment carried out by all

sales members from staff to management level

team

03/2017 – 06/2017 Training team prepare

proposals to introduce company and project in training managers to all

Logistics team and Training team

Supervised by management team