Thesis (DTech (Marketing))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2012. / Secondary data sourced from the Kronos Time Keeping system and Human Resources department indicate that absenteeism amongst Pick n Pay employees are constantly increasing and it seems that management has adopted a laissez-faire attitude in response to rectifying absenteeism. This study has endeavoured to establish if staff absenteeism is rife in supermarkets, which employment status has higher absenteeism figures and does it affect customer services. The objectives of this study were to answer and find solutions to the research question and the multiple questions arising from the research problem: do the supermarket employees understand the impact of absenteeism to the organisation? Is management aware of the causes of high employee absenteeism? Do management have solutions to reduce the absenteeism rate? Do management know which employee status has higher absenteeism figures? What procedures can be adopted to reduce absenteeism? The overall effect of any solution should focus on creating a more absent free and customer orientated organisation. The empirical investigation was carried out through quantitative as well as qualitative research methodology. Absenteeism statistics were collected from the five participating supermarkets in the Western Cape human resources departments and were made available to the researcher as secondary data. Four different data collection methodology were used to conduct the enquiries in the five participating supermarkets.

Thesis (MTech (Human Resource Management)--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2009 / This thesis explores the barriers/constraints that the SMME may experience whilst attempting to recover their skills levies from the wholesale and retail SETA (W&RSETA). Skills development legislation was introduced in South Africa to address the previous disparities in education and training. The Skills Development Levies Act (SOLA) of 1999 established the introduction of skills levies. The SOLA stipulated that all companies with an annual payroll in excess of R 500 000 would be required to pay skills levies to the South African Revenue Service (SARS). SARS then distributes the funds to the relevant sector education and training authority (SETA). The company would then have the option of recovering up to seventy percent of its skills levies, provided that it had implemented various skills development and training initiatives throughout the year. While larger companies may be more attuned in terms of recovering these levies, small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) may experience difficulties in doing so. The research design included a descriptive study of both qualitative and quantitative components. The investigation was conducted by interviewing twenty stakeholders within the wholesale and retail sector. The stakeholders were divided into two categories, namely SMMEs and the assistants to SMMEs. The information was analysed within the context of the twenty stakeholders interviewed who were located in the Westem Cape area and registered with the W&RSETA. The findings indicated that the main constraints that SMMEs may be experiencing whilst attempting to recover their skills levies from the W&RSETA included: a lack of understanding of the grant recovery system; lack of time; burdensome administration; a lack of finance; and a lack of communication and support from the W&RSETA This research would be a pilot study that would provide a basis for a future study which may seek to provide practical recommendations to policy makers both in govemment and the private sector, in terms of assisting levy paying SMMEs within the W&RSETA to recover skills levies.

The correlation between employee theft and various employee attitudes is investigated with 489 subjects from a large discount store chain located in the southeastern United States. Subjects completed two tests: Personnel Decisions, Inc. 's Employment Inventory/Customer Service Inventory which measures employee reliability and orientation toward providing customer service; and the Organization Responsiveness Questionnaire which measures satisfaction and perceived store security. Individual scores on the tests were correlated with a performance rating form completed by the subject's supervisor. Scores were computed for each store and correlated with inventory shrinkage rates. Results revealed relatively weak correlations for some variables. The multiple regression analysis was unable to significantly predict any of the criterion variables.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur upplevelsen av olika arbetssituationer predicerar arbetstillfredsställelse och arbetsmotivation hos handelsanställda. Arbetssituationerna utgjordes av hygienfaktorerna ledarskap och tidsupplevelse samt motivationsfaktorerna individuella inre upplevelser och autonomi från Herzbergs tvåfaktorteori. I studien deltog 83 anställda inom branscherna butik, lager, e-handel och frisör. Studien konstruerades med en kvantitativ ansats, och data samlades in via en elektronisk enkät. Enkätformuläret konstruerades med hjälp av mätinstrumenten Short Index of Job Satisfaction (SIJS), Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale (WEIMS) och Work Experience Measurement Scale(WEMS). Två multipla linjära regressioner genomfördes för att besvara studiens frågeställningar. Resultatet påvisade att variansen i motivationsfaktorn individuella inre upplevelser bidrar till störst del för att predicera både arbetstillfredsställelse och arbetsmotivation. Variansen i hygienfaktorn tidsupplevelse påvisades även bidra signifikant för att predicera arbetstillfredsställelse. Resterande variabler visade inga signifikanta bidrag för att förklara arbetstillfredsställelse och arbetsmotivation. Slutsatsen är att variansen i individuella inre upplevelser hos handelsanställda inom branscherna som undersökts bidrar mest till att förklara variansen i både arbetstillfredsställelse och arbetsmotivation. Detta stöds till viss del av Herzbergs tvåfaktorteori, och annan tidigare forskning. Avslutningsvis diskuterades förslag på framtida forskning, styrkor och svagheter med studien samt praktiska implikationer från den kunskap som givits.

This is a qualitative case study which encompasses a thick description of an organization's workplace training programme and how it relates to the National Qualifications Framework and Skills Development. The organization in question is Imana Foods (Pty) Ltd. The purpose of conducting this particular study is to take a close look at the workplace training programme of a particular organization and to see how it has embraced the implementation of new legislative acts such as the South African Qualifications Authority Act, the Skills Development Act, the Skills Development Levies Act, and the Employment Equity Act into its education and training policy . These legislative acts are interrelated in the sense that they have one very significant common goal, and that is to improve the South African economy. By implementing these acts, the government hopes to increase the amount of skilled labour, which in turn should lead to better job opportunities for those employees who already have jobs, and also to promote education and training to those people who are unemployed. The government hopes to keep a watchful eye on the labour market with the intention of providing training in the areas where there is a shortage of skills. My intention for wanting to examine the workplace training programme of a single organization is to determine whether or not the training programme under study is serving its purpose which is to provide equal opportunity for all the employees within the organization. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the employee perceptions towards outsourcing of HIV/AIDS services in a retail working environment. Thirty participants were included using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire assessed attitudinal disposition through questions aimed testing knowledge, preferences and environmental factors influencing perception towards alternative HTC service centres. Results show employees have positive perceptions towards the utilisation of external HTC and welfare services compared to those offered on-site. On-site employer initiated HTC services through mobile testing facilities are perceived as failing to offer privacy, anonymity and security of continued employment as testing outside the employer’s premises would provide. Outsourced services such as public hospitals or clinics are seen to offer better testing environment because of their natural health settings and non-association with the employer whose motives for providing testing services in the workplace are held in suspicion. Ninety four per cent of the employees expressed desire to have HTC services provided in the workplace. Potential utilisation level of such services dropped to 33% among these employees with 50% indicating a desire to use external health services providers. This disparity is explained by the negative environmental and social factors prevailing in the workplace which make access to HTC difficult. Recommendations for improving employee attitudes towards on-site HTC services include implementing educational programs to reduce peer stigma, scepticism to employer motives for initiating health intervention programs and demonstrating fair employment practices which do not associate HIV status with different treatment in the workplace. There is also a need for companies to plan around facilitating employee use of public health facilities even when they have on-site services to promote a perception of holistic care towards employees. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Nie beskikbaar.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a ethod of identifying unique items using radio waves that communicate between RFID tags and readers without line-of-sight readability. RFID technology provides great potential in many industries and a wide spectrum of possible uses. Areas of application include person identification, logistics, pharmaceutical, access control, security guard monitoring and asset management. One of the areas where RFID is being used and where it promises excellent results is the retail industry. While RFID systems have the potential to revolutionise the way products and goods are tracked and traced in the retail supply chain, barriers to its widespread adoption exist: for example; technical constraints, return on investment constraints, a lack of awareness and education and as well as privacy and security issues. The research aims to identify the barriers to the adoption of RFID and to investigate the perceptions of RFID held by members of the retail sector in South Africa (SA). Current research and available literature are used to identify RFID adoption barriers and a conceptual framework on this subject is proposed, which is then verified by SA retailers’ perceptions, established by means of a survey. Initial barriers to widespread adoption include a shortage in skills, a lack of standards, high costs associated with RFID devices, the difficulty of integrating with current legacy systems, and a lack of familiarity with the system. Finally, an enhanced framework is proposed, describing RFID adoption barriers within the South African retail sector. In summary, the framework is an outline of the barriers impacting RFID adoption in the SA retail sector that need to be considered and addressed. The framework identifies six categories of RFID adoption barriers, with each category containing two or more barriers relating to that particular category. These categories are Technological, Cost and return on investment, Privacy and security, Implementation, Organisational factors and People.

This research investigates the relationship between leadership and internal customer satisfaction, also called employee satisfaction in this document. The research is conducted within an automotive manufacturer situated in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. The Service Profit Chain forms the foundation on which this research is based as it suggests that the various factors within the service delivery system of an organisation ultimately affect the success of an organisation. From the Service Profit Chain, it is established that a factor that affects employee satisfaction is the leadership within the organisation. The Full Range Leadership Development Theory provides the backbone for analysing the leadership style of each manager by using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. The company’s employee satisfaction model provides the theoretical construct against which the employee satisfaction of the managers’ subordinates is measured using the company’s employee satisfaction questionnaire. Information was gathered from the managers who rated their leadership styles as they perceived it; and from their respective subordinates who rated the managers’ leadership style as they perceived it and also their satisfaction as employees as they perceived it. Data obtained from each instrument, for the respective managers, was then statistically analysed. The reliability of the data could not be proved for some of the factors of the 2 research instruments. However, this research found a statistically significant relationship between transformational leadership and some factors of employee satisfaction, albeit a weak relationship. The null hypothesis was rejected and the alternate hypothesis accepted. A statistically significant relationship exists between leadership style and employee satisfaction levels within an automotive manufacturing organisation.

The labor movement's groundswell in the 1990s accompanied a period of intense competition and conglomeration within the retail book sector. Unexpectedly, the intersection of these two trends produced two dozen union drives across the country between 1996 and 2004 at large retail bookstores, including Borders and Barnes & Noble. Historians have yet to fully examine these retail organizing contests or recount their contributions to the labor movement and its history, including booksellers' pioneering use of the internet as an organizing tool. This thesis focuses on the aspirations, tactics, and contributions of booksellers in their struggles to unionize their workplaces, while also exploring the economic context surrounding bookselling and the labor movement at the end of the twentieth century. While the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) auspiciously announced a national campaign in 1997 to organize thousands of bookstore clerks, the only successfully unionized bookstore from this era that remains today is the Powell's Books chain in Portland, Oregon with over 400 workers represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 5. Local 5's successful union campaign at Powell's Books occurring between 1998 and 2000 is at the center of this study and stands out as a point of light against a dark backdrop of failed union attempts in the retail sector during the latter decades of the twentieth century. This inquiry utilizes Local 5's internal document archive and the collection of oral histories gathered by labor historians Edward Beechert and Harvey Schwartz in 2001 and 2002. My analysis of these previously unexamined records demonstrates how Powell's efforts to thwart the ILWU campaign proved a decisive failure and contributed to the polarization of a super majority of the workforce behind Local 5. Equally, my analysis illustrates how the self-organization, initiative, and unrelenting creativity of booksellers transformed a narrow union election victory to overwhelming support for the union's bargaining committee. Paramount to Local 5's contract success was the union's partnership with Portland's social justice community, which induced a social movement around Powell's Books at a time of increased political activity and unity among the nation's labor, environment, and anti-globalization activists. The bonds of solidarity and mutual aid between Local 5 and its community allies were forged during the World Trade Organization (WTO) demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 and Portland's revival of May Day in 2000. Following eleven work stoppages and fifty-three bargaining sessions, the union acquired a first contract that far exceeded any gains made by the UFCW at its unionized bookstores. The Powell's agreement included improvements to existing health and retirement benefits plus an 18 percent wage increase for employees over three years. This analysis brings to light the formation of a distinct working-class culture and consciousness among Powell's booksellers, communicated through workers' essays, artwork, strikes, and solidarity actions with the social justice community. It provides a detailed account of Local 5's creative street theater tactics and work stoppages that captured the imagination of activists and the attention of the broader community. The conflict forced the news media and community leaders to publicly choose sides in a labor dispute reminiscent of struggles not seen in Portland since the 1950s. Observers of all political walks worried that the Portland cultural and commercial intuition would collapse under the weight of the two-year labor contest. My research illustrates the tension among the city's liberal and progressive populace created by the upstart union's presence at prominent liberal civic leader Michael Powell's iconic store and how the union organized prominent liberal leaders on the side of their cause. It concludes by recognizing that Local 5's complete history remains a work in progress, but that its formation represents an indispensable Portland contribution to the revitalized national labor movement of the late 1990s.