Kelly Murphys Interview

I interviewed Kelly Murphy from Jared the Galleria of Jewelry. The biggest change that stands out to her throughout the company was when she switched from a floor manager to a general manager. She discussed how she had to change her attitude and behaviors so that she would be able to demand respect from her subordinates. The major policy that has been changed since she has been there is the change in how commission is given out to the sales people. Commission used to be something that really only benefitted full time workers. Now, part-time and full-time workers are able to receive commission since they use storewide numbers to decide commission instead of individual employee’s numbers. As a general manager, this situation also benefits her

Kelly believes that it is her duty to make sure that her employees have someone they can talk to and go to for guidance when feeling stressed. She tries to deal with her own stress at home, so that when she’s at work, she is able to be the rock of the store. Most days Kelly believes that her store has a productive environment. She feels that she has created a comfortable space for her employees to be able to be successful and help out one another to be the most effective team that they can be. At Jared, it is possible to experience a workload that is too heavy. Typically the heavy workloads happen to the managers and full-time salespeople, since they are the ones that are dealing with custom orders and more clientele. Kelly said that there are no specific resources. Kelly spoke about how she does sometimes notice a decrease in productivity when multiple employees are experiencing stress. She believes that is a situation that is inevitable in any work

A change that stands out to Marie was when the District Managers switched. She said that it was a long transition and the stores suffered somewhat when the change was happening. A major policy change that she recalls happening is when they started to really incorporate technology in the stores. Instead of always using their computers as registers, they had to begin using tablets to record all of their work. For Marie, that was a stressful change because she is not very fluent with technology and struggles with the tablets. As for handling stress in the workplace, Marie tries to face it head on and talk it out. She believes that she is able to get over a stressful situation if she is able to discuss what is on her mind. Marie believes that they do have a productive environment, but could sometimes use a little more focus out of some of the younger workers. Marie has experienced many workloads that were too heavy, but said that it doesn’t happen too often so she doesn’t really mind when it does. She said that she knows how busy the managers can get and is willing to take on more work so that they are able to complete all of their work on time. Marie is unaware of any specific policies regarding stress but she does think that Kelly does a great job at offering herself as a counselor to her employees. There is a noticeable difference when employees are