Marilyn Brown started her chain of ten wedding boutiques, $$The Knot$$ approximately five years ago. She presently operates within southwestern Ontario and has been enjoying record profits and growth. Marilyn$$s wedding boutiques provide full$-$service amenities to future brides. This includes wedding planning services, custom fittings, and locating hard$-$to$-$find wedding dresses.

Each chain has approximately $12$ employees $(6$ full$-$time and $6$ part$-$time$)$ for a total of $120$ employees. On top of that Marilyn has an accountant$/$tax lawyer assisting with daily administration. Marilyn essentially is her own Human Resource department and conducts all the tasks from recruitment to payroll and her shops are non$-$unionized. Her performance management process consists of informal feedback given to staff with on$-$boarding new employees through informal mentoring of experienced staff.

Marilyn$$s customer service philosophy is that the customer is number one and must be satisfied with their purchases.

However, recently Marilyn feels that she may be missing the mark on being more strategic from a Human Resource perspective. Through informal conversations with friends, she has discovered that she may be in violation of her legal requirements, especially hearing about Bill $168$ which was passed in legislation a few years back.

She is also experiencing a rise in complaints regarding the lack of friendly service being provided, and three longstanding employees have threatened to leave unless their compensation is adjusted in response to serving Marilyn$$s very demanding clients. Currently Marilyn pays all her staff the same base salary of $$18\mathrm{.}00$ per hour without any benefits. Marilyn feels that this approach promotes equity and eliminates any perceptions of favoritism between employees regarding compensation. Since receiving negative complaints and the threats of some of her staff leaving, Marilyn has decided she also needs to rethink her compensation philosophy.

She is also aware that diversity may be an issue and although she has no plans to let anyone go$,$ she does want to know what recruitment strategies she may need to consider meeting this requirement.

She decided she needed to obtain some Human Resource advice and support and as a result she conducts a competitive bid. Your team was successfully selected to address this issue. Marilyn is a caring and insightful leader and wants a proposal on what she could do moving forward.

$$ How may she address her current compensation program?

$$ She would also like some advice on how she could launch and communicate her plan to all employees