Fashion & Accessories Category -Best Overall Giordano International executives admit that taking overall first place in this year's Hong Kong Retail Association's Mystery Shopper programme was an effort that involved redirecting the ambitions of floor staff from merely money to personal development.
Human resources director Christine Wong said the excellent quality Hong Kong's leading clothes retail chain squeezed out of its employees was the result of four years' work, overcoming cultural and economic hurdles that existed on the retail employment level.
Ms Wong said the company altered its human resources strategy in 1993 when Giordano executives realised the market was catching up with the quality of floor service and customer satisfaction it had promoted since its establishment in 1982.
'Before that, the entire service industry standards for customer service were very low,' she said. 'When they caught up, we realised it was time for a change.' Ms Wong and her staff, who oversee the company's 47 stores and 600 employees, began redirecting training and employment policies away from monetary incentives.
'Our mission was to find the passion in our employees,' she said. The problem was that much of the staff in the front line of the service sector across Hong Kong suffers from low self-esteem.
'In old China, there was a sense that servitude was bad,' she said. 'That carried over into Hong Kong where many people in this field are very humble and don't feel particularly good about their jobs and what they are doing with their lives.' Ms Kong said many of those who came into Giordano looking for a job had not performed well academically 'and don't feel very proud of themselves'.
To change such mindset, Ms Wong and other Giordano executives launched a personal development programme in 1993 to cultivate pride among the workforce.
