8 Ways to Improve the Retail Employee Experience

Captivate Shoppers By Engaging Your Staff

“Investing in employee experience is shown to directly improve customer experience, affirming the connection between engaged employees and business performance.” (Source)

The battle for successful recruitment and retention of retail employees faces increasingly challenging obstacles. Pandemic-induced cultural shifts and persistent economic pressures have given rise to a renewed emphasis on improving the employee experience and its decided impact on sales and customer satisfaction. Failing to create an employee experience that takes employee preferences into account leads to an uncomfortable turnover rate.

Retail Employees Work for People, Not Companies

A 2023 Workday survey reveals that supportive leaders are key to lowering staff attrition. The report found that 80% of frontline workers who say their manager understands and regularly supports them indicate they are happy in their job with no plans to leave, while only 20% of workers who say their manager doesn’t consistently support them say they are happy in their current role.

The fact is, employees work for people, not companies. The ideal retail leader acts in ways employees want to emulate. At the very least, the best leaders act as personal mentors to their staff. Set an example by maintaining a cheerful attitude toward work, embracing innovation, conveying agility when solving problems on the fly, showing willingness to adapt to industry shifts, and being approachable.

Source: Workday

Source: McKinsey & Company

So, what can retail leaders do to support a better frontline worker experience? Use the following tips as a guide. As you integrate successful tactics into your managerial style, you’ll improve your store’s ability to serve customers and earn their loyalty.

1: Offer Flexible Scheduling

Work-life balance is something that is sought by employees at every level in every business sector. In retailing, it’s easily achieved when workers are given flexible work hours. This means allowing your staff more control over their schedule – a factor that is essential to employees of the “gig economy.”

Rather than limiting frontline workers to certain shifts within a given store location, consider broadening their work opportunities by offering crossover shifts in other store locations. Digital workforce management tools such as MarketSource’s REPfirst™ enable optimal flexibility.

REPfirst allows collaborative communications between retail management and staff, and streamlines scheduling shift changes, training, and communication, while fostering peer-to-peer connections – all designed to optimize the employee experience.

Many retailers have multiple tools that impact employee experience. Consolidating employee-related processes into a single platform simplifies and streamlines administrative activities to increase productivity.

2: Make Career Development a Priority from Day One

According to a recent McKinsey report, career development was the main reason frontline retail employees planned to leave their jobs in 2023. In another McKinsey report, three out of four frontline employees state they want to be promoted, but less than one in four achieves this goal.

Surprisingly, many frontline workers see retail jobs – even if it’s their first step into the employment world – as stepping stones toward fulfilling broader aspirations.

So, it makes sense to motivate employees to stay and build their careers from day one. It’s essential to make onboarding training easily accessible online from any device, and to ensure it’s engaging. Gamification, participatory exercises, and interactive activities make onboarding fun.

Continual training and upskilling, along with maintaining an ongoing flow of relevant information to and from employees, assures a more confident, committed, and competent staff; it also serves as the foundation for rolling out career paths for ambitious new hires. Outlining structured career paths can give employees a clearer trajectory of performance expectations, should they seek career advancement.

Source: McKinsey & Company

3: Put Technology into Employees’ Hands

Employees expect to be using technology on the job. Besides helping them be more effective and efficient, the right technology influences how employees feel about your store or brand.

A Workday survey found that if frontline workers don’t have access to the right technologies to do their work, they are 20x more likely to say their employer is not open and transparent.

In this regard, REPfirst brings a breath of fresh air to the employee experience. Aside from supporting scheduling preferences, REPfirst allows group chats between workers, timekeeping capabilities, instant distribution of important store-related messaging, and much more.

4: Prioritize Clear and Open Communication

Clear communications that contain specific, constructive messages, conveyed to the right employees at the right time, benefit employees in many ways. It’s important to make sure that employees not only hear what you are saying, but that they also grasp your point, and know how they can carry out your suggestions or apply your advice in real-world circumstances.

Your attitude in communicating is important, too. Employees should feel free to ask questions, get clarification, and request assistance when needed. Remember that communication is not just one way. Listen to what employees say; they want to be heard and appreciate appropriate responses to whatever they want to share. Whether in a one-on-one conversation or in a team meeting, allow an exchange of information in a setting that avoids potential conflict and builds mutual trust.

5: Make Retail Employees’ Work More Meaningful

Employees want to know that their work is contributing to the success of your brand, but also to the betterment of their community and the world. If your store or brand supports a social betterment activity or charitable organization, make sure your employees know about it. Groove employees into your corporate brand’s mission, and ensure they understand how their work contributes to a bigger, worthwhile purpose.

Taking the boredom out of routine tasks appeals to many retail employees. Allow job-sharing or job-shifting on occasion, to expose staff to different departments and alternate ways to engage with other teams and with customers. Besides making their workday more interesting, this leads to a better understanding of how their role fits into the entire operation. It may also fuel aspirations to move up within the company and lead to the pursuit of management opportunities.

Remain open to innovations the improve the employee experience. For example, implementing generative AI in a selective manner may free workers to perform more personally satisfying tasks. As the McKinsey report states, “Retail leaders can use new technology, such as generative AI, to simplify mundane frontline work and redirect employee energy to higher-level tasks.”

6: Develop a Team-oriented, Inclusive Work Culture

Shoppers represent America’s melting pot, and there’s no reason your staff shouldn’t be similarly represented. Employees from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds likely comprise a significant portion of ideal job applicants. Therefore, communicating in culturally sensitive ways before, during, and after hiring can translate to staff who are more reflective of your customer base, feel more a part of your team, and are more receptive to sharing potentially helpful perspectives and ideas.

When managing retail staff, the adage “teamwork makes the dream work” holds true. When they’re working toward a common purpose, employee work teams are more connected to each other and to the organization as a whole. This emboldens them to focus their contributions as advocates for the brand. This, plus a healthy dose of spirited competition, is a strong motivator. A Workday global survey found that 79% of frontline workers who feel a sense of belonging have no plans to leave their employer.

7: Recognize and Reward Excellence

Employees perform better when they know their work has value. A well-orchestrated system of rewards and incentives for exceptional work habits shows employees they are appreciated and encourages them to do their best.

Be creative in the ways you reward employees. Consider “best suggestion” contests. Honor exceptional customer service. Ask customers to fill out “thank-you” cards when an employee is especially helpful.  Conduct “Employee of the Month” promotions. However you decide to recognize staff, it’s important to praise employees for simple things like a helpful attitude, being consistently on time for their shifts, and going beyond their outlined duties to assist a fellow employee. It’s also important to recognize both individual and team performance as well.

A Forbes blog reports that, according to a Quantum Workplace study, workers who feel recognize are 2.7X more likely to exhibit high levels of engagement at work.

8. Encourage Initiative and Personal Responsibility

Giving employees the authority to make decisions can immediately increase retail productivity. First, it leads to greater efficiency in terms of fulfilling customers’ desire for improved responsiveness to their needs. Second, it gives workers a stronger sense of ownership of their roles as brand representatives, leading to greater responsibility for the success of the business a whole.

Because they regularly interact with customers, frontline workers are in an excellent position to observe problem areas and make suggestions for improvement. Be receptive to their suggestions. Granting employees autonomy in their roles with the freedom to make important contributions builds pride in their roles and enhances the willingness to improve performance.

Remain Resilient

While retailers are struggling to find and hire competent retail staff, frontline workers themselves are facing pressures induced by inflation, raising families on limited incomes, and the search for meaningful work. Retail leaders must stay attuned to the current mindsets of prospective employees, and be ready to adapt to economic and cultural shifts that require modifying hiring, recruiting, training, and  tactics.  Resilience is key. Retailers who can quickly adapt to trends in the employment marketplace and respond to employee preferences will ultimately find the path to recruitment and retention a smoother process.