Term paper on Recruitment, Selection, and Retention

Introduction:

KFC Corporation, has its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the world's most popular chicken restaurant chain, specializing in Original Recipe®, Extra Crispy™, Twister® and Colonel's Crispy Strips® chicken with homestyle side offerings.

Every day, nearly eight million customers are served around the world. KFC's menu includes Original Recipe® chicken -- made with the same great taste Colonel Harland Sanders created more than a half-century ago. Customers around the globe also enjoy more than 300 other products -- from a Chunky Chicken Pot Pie in the United States to a salmon sandwich in Japan to a fish fillet sandwich in Pakistan. KFC is one the world’s best known and loved brands today, but this would not have been possible without its employees. KFC’s HRM practices are the topic of discussion for this paper, and emphasis will be placed on the recruitment, selection and retention practices at KFC (KFC Official Site, 2004).

Recruitment and Selection at KFC:
Part of KFC’s recruitment strategy is to offer employees high-quality options such as potential for advancement, company reputation, benefits package and salary scale. When KFC was looking for senior executives who could run a business, for two years it scoured the management teams across various industries and offered senior executives of companies like Coca Cola attractive benefits and a better salary scale to get them on the team. These executives were promised quick advancement on their jobs, and apparently given such incentives to join that most of the people offered jobs joined KFC even though they were told before hand that at immediate present, no senior position was vacant. Hence, KFC’s attractive salary and benefits package is an effective lure for potential employees (Rigdon, 1991).

For example, among the benefits package that KFC offers, is a medical coverage and prescription benefits, dental coverage, vision/hearing coverage, life and disability insurance, a 410k plan (which helps employees save for their future), stock options, a management incentive plan (under which everyone from assistant manager to senior executive is rewarded for remarkable performance), adoption assistance, tuition reimbursement plan, college-planning assistance, employee discount, paid vacation and a group legal plan. KFC also believes in promoting from within, as it encourages employees to perform well on their jobs, telling them that they in fact can go from being just a team member to the restaurant manager and later area or region coach (KFC Official site).

As far as selection is concerned, KFC management strongly believes that hiring young people and later training them is the way to a successful organization. Hence, the age factor is definitely an issue of concern for recruiters at KFC. The company also strongly believes in diversification. According to Kyle Craig, president of Kentucky Fried Chicken's U.S. operations, “We want to bring in the best people but if there are two equally qualified people, we'd clearly like to have diversity.” From this, we can safely assert that KFC believes in eliminating the glass ceiling, and hiring and keeping female and minority-group executives. This seems to be working for the company and is an effective policy: where in 1989, not even one of the company's 17 senior U.S. managers were minority or female, the situation has improved today, with there being numerous managers either female or part of a minority group. KFC admits that it actively tries to recruit and promote women and minority members in middle and top management ranks (Rigdon, 1991).

Retention Practice at KFC:
KFC is a client of the O.C. Tanner Company, which specializes in helping companies motivate employees through comprehensive recognition solutions. According to its director, marketing and corporate communications, “KFC has the lowest turnover rate in the fast food industry because it is a fun place to work.” The company ensures that coming to work is not something employees dread by making the day as enjoyable for its workers as possible. Employees have been given the autonomy to have fun on the job: they can start standing ovations for themselves whenever they want, can sing songs for birthdays etc. (Kufahl & Agoglia, 2003).

Staff retention should be a major concern for employers because it has been proven time and again that if the company is ever in a financial mess, it has to deal with the added loss of employees resigning and leaving the company, right when their energy and work is needed the most. KFC is one of those companis which realizes this factor. It has incorporated a lot of recognition programs in its culture, like Floppy Chicken, or KFC President Charles Rawley's Bulldog Award to motivate employees and keep them happy (Serving up a bucket of recognition, 2001).

Recommendations:
The recommendations that I would offer KFC is to maintain its current low turnover rates and incorporate even more practices in its culture which provide recognition to employees and make them feel valued. As for selection and recruitment practices, age should not be a bias factor and the principle of promotion from within should be adhered to. This is because for companies like KFC, it is very important to promote a certain employee culture, hence, it is better to promote older employees rather than hiring people from external sources.

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