Timeline:

1903: Michael Raleigh and Conor Rosse started R&R a saddlery and equestrian shop.
1950s: R&R started selling high end watches and designer clothing.
1970s: Expansion of business throughout the Northeast and Midwest USA.
1987: Brian Rosse takes over as CEO.
1992: Ownership Culture program introduced by Rosse.
2004: $350,000 lawsuit filed and awarded against R&R for wrongful termination of employee.
2007: Linda Watkins appointed as the first non-family CEO.
2008: Luxury goods industry hit by global recession.
2010: R&R sued by sales associate in class action lawsuit for working off the clock.

Problems and recommendations:

The core value at R&R is to provide exceptional customer service. However, the
performance of its employees is measured purely in terms of the sales number they are
able to generate. This creates conflicting objectives for the employees to achieve. The
performance measurement system should take into consideration the customer service
tasks undertaken by the employees as well.
The criterion for selling and non-selling was vague and confusing. There should be a
clear criteria about the number of selling and non-selling hours that an employee needs to
put in and also what compensation would they get for doing the same.
The Saturday Meetings are off the clock. This displeases some employees as they do
not get paid even after coming to work. Either the meetings, which are important for
training and planning, should be considered as work hours and the employees should be
paid for the same or these meetings should not be conducting. By conducting these
meetings off the clock the organization is also violating the state labor laws which
attracts chances of lawsuits being filled against the company.
It is noted that the employees tend to underquote their work hours in order to meet the
SPH target. This is because there is no incentive for the employees to show their actual
working hours as they get heavy incentives by meeting the SPH target. The method of
calculating the incentives can be changed. For example, with a daily target of $412, the
weekly target for a 40-hour week comes out to be $16400. Now if an employee achieves
this target, say sales of $17000, he gets incentive on the entire $17000. Instead the
organization can give the employees a base pay on the target amount and the incentives
be given over and above the target amount, i.e. 17000-16400 = $600, in our example.

The revenue saved from above method could be diverted to provide incentives to the
employees who work for extra non-selling hours. By doing this, the employees would
be encouraged to focus efforts on providing extra satisfaction to the clients as they would
have motivation of getting incentives.
Several incidences of employees crossing the line to achieve their SPH targets have
surfaced. The managements response to such incidences is quite casual. The
management should define performance measurement parameters, a framework of how
the parameters are going to be measured and how much is too much, i.e. what are the
fair means to achieve these parameters and what actions wont be tolerated in the name of
healthy competition.