The great feature of our relationship with our staff is the length go in keeping an exact record of every man's work. When a man joins Selfridge's, the quality of his work is never lost to sight. We are commonly supposed to go to extreme lengths in this direction, and to incur a great deal of expense in these records of the work done by our staff. It is true that we go to a deal of trouble and incur no slight expense in securing the record of each man's work, and in keeping it up to date, but we find in practice that this actually pays. We promised at the outset that every individual who joined Selfridge's would constantly have an impartial analysis of his work before the directing forces, and in the conduct of the business since it started we have rigidly kept to that promise. A man who conies to Selfridge's to work knows that when he is doing good work, the quality of his service will riot be taken for granted. His record is there for the management to see day by day, and he is treated accordingly. By our system of a comparative analysis of returns in the selling force, we know what each man is doing, and each man is rewarded according to the quality of his service. When vacancies occur, as they must often do in an estab lishment of this size, promotions are made strictly on an estimate of the merits of the various men employed in the department under notice. Strange as it may seem, this simple method of keeping strict observation over the quality of service being offered, with the understanding always implied, that merit must count in increased payments, and in establishing its right to promotion, was so novel in this country that it tempted some of the best men from positions of security, and we were able to start at the beginning with a staff which numbered possibly many of the best salesmen in this country. People actually came in thousands after the statement of the conditions under which they would be employed, and we had the choice of something like ten thousand offers of service, the mitjority of our appoint merits being made from men and women who were actually in positions. We were thus able to start with a good foundation, and from our opening day it has not been necessary to make any drastic alterations.
The most essential part of any changes that we have made since have been rather in the way of extensions than alterations in our staff arrange .
ments. Of course, in a business like Selfridge's, we have to be always on the look-out for the right young man or woman for particular places, and for this reason we make a point of seeing every applicant for an appointment who writes to us. We try to add to our staff at the bottom—preferring, always when possible, to see places of importance filled by those who have already been members of our staff and who have in subordinate positions become familiar with the rules and policies of the house, and learned to "keep step to the music of the business." A part of our organisation is a staff manager, who is an enthusiast in securing the efficiency of the Selfridge staff', and in the interpretation of the ideals I have sought to establish in our relationship with employees, and a portion of his day is always taken up in interviewing people who wish to enter into the service of the establishment. Of course, fully staffed as we are at present, we are not now able to take every young person who applies, and, indeed, the character of applicants of this type provides a great many grains of chaff for every grain of wheat. Even now, however, by seeing all who apply, we protect ourselves against missing the grains of wheat which come along with the huge volume of chaff, and the one who can show really genuine qualifications for a high grade position never applies to Selfridge's without getting careful consideration of his proposal.
We are, up to the moment, too young a house to put into operation completely our ideals of what should govern promotion, but as quickly as possible we are aiming at organising our selling force on the original basis we laid down. That is, given a full complement of employees, so far as possible we would desire to promote only from the staff, though at the present moment we can scarcely do this, because we have not been con ducting the business long enough to ensure that we have properly trained hands coming from the lower grade of subordinates ready for the higher positions. As time goes on we shall remedy this with the view of always promoting from the lowest grade upwards. At the present moment we arc utilising a scheme which in the course of a few years will ensure this. The old system of apprenticeship does not entirely appeal nowadays. There seems to many something not quite desirable about binding one to rules and conditions which he cannot break without penalties, and we would, perhaps, instead, aim at leaving even the youngest member of our staff totally free. In place of apprenticeship, however, we take into every department. boys and girls who start as juniors in the lowest places in the establishment. We regard them rather as " students" than actual members of our staff, and it is our aim to direct their effOrts in such a way that they will find in the store a career for their best activities. For this purpose we have instituted a series of competitive scholarships. Each student coming into the business is, so far as we can ensure it, trained in the best knowledge of business conduct, so far as it relates to that particular department., and in a sense the head of the deptirtment acts as a kind of schoolmaster. To supple ment this method, the heads of the various departments hold a series of lectures during the winter months ftr these students. These lectures, illustrated by limelight views, are on subjects relating to the running of the department itself. For example, in the silk department, the buyer would lecture on silk—what it is, how it is grown, how it is manufactured, where it is bought, the various qualities, and why one quality is better than another. These lectures are delivered at regular intervals during the season, and are well attended, and there is no doubt that the boy or girl who takes a. serious interest in them will take from them the most practical knowledge it is possible to give about the various departments in which they are work ing. We then invite students to write papers on the subjects treated in the lectures, which are carefully examined, first by the lecturer, and then by the manager of staff. Marks are given for the accuracy of the knowledge dis played by the papers, and also the examiners take into consideration the thoroughness with which the paper is prepared, and the quality of its presentation. At the end of the lecture series, the marks awarded to each paper are totalled, and scholarships are awarded. They take the most practical form we can devise. Taking again as an instance the silk depart ment, the winners of the scholarship would be entitled to go with the buyer in that department to all the markets in this country and throughout Europe which he attends, so that they may see, by actual contact with the conditions, the most important duty associated with the store— its buying in actual operation. In other departments where the conditions are not the same, we aim at making t he rewards more or less equivalent. For instance, in the counting-house, the whiners of the scholarships would be educated in the higher forms of book-keeping and other commercial subjects, with a view to making them more efficient and capable of realising a practical reward for their efforts.