DISCUSSION
Retailers can reduce turnover by treating employees like consumers
Written by RetailWire Staff
Photo: RetailWire
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.
Retailers/CPGs have the second-highest turnover rate across industries at 13 percent per year, according to LinkedIn research. For hourly store employees, turnover has been estimated to be as high as 65 percent.
According to Jay Reilly, senior manager of business development for Deloitte/ConnectMe, workforce management (WFM) solutions help manage employees, but they’re often limited when it comes to providing an engaging experience.
Mr. Reilly shared three steps for retailers to reduce turnover by enabling retailers to build a digital workplace based on interconnectivity between departments:
Provide a "consumer-grade" experience for employees.
Just like shoppers, merchants must give employees the right technology to have all the information they need to succeed.
“Employees use their own smart devices, whether it’s a phone or tablet, and applications on those devices in their personal lives, so they expect that and need that type of tool in the workplace,” Mr. Reilly said. “Generally, they don’t get it” in a retail work environment.
Use personalization tools to provide employees with context for their jobs.
Personalized dashboards that contextualize knowledge articles, task lists and content based on an employee’s role, location and job title can improve the workplace for retail employees, all while making the job less confusing.
“Thanks to Amazon, people expect their preferences to be known, and information that they get back to be related to those preferences,” Mr. Reilly said. “In the employee workplace, a lot of retailers don’t provide that level of personalization for their employees. It’s very general information that they provide their employees, so the employees wonder, ‘Do they really care about me?’”
Embrace workplace flexibility through consumer-style communication channels.
As many as 77 percent of companies believe that e-mail is no longer a viable tool for effective communication, according to a survey from Deloitte and Facebook. Retailers must be more conscious of the communications channels they are using to interact, especially when it comes to manager-to-employee interactions or scheduling.
“The internet is always on for consumers,” Mr. Reilly said. “They want to be able to interact with their company where, when and how they want to.”