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5 Ways to Increase Employee Retention in Your Retail Store
3 min read
by Michael Deane
Hiring and keeping the right employees is hard enough. But the turnover rate in retail is especially alarming, and it can be particularly troublesome for retailers.
On average, it costs about $3,300 to hire a replacement for a $10/hour retail worker, including recruitment and training.
Retail is a sector like no other, made up of contract distribution channel employees, full-time head office employees, part-time retail employees, and everything in between.
If you want to keep your operation running smoothly and grow your best talent, it is necessary to minimize turnover across all departments. Here are 5 ways you can increase employee retention in your retail store.
Hire Carefully
When an employee quits or you fire them, you may be tempted to get someone behind the register or fill an empty seat ASAP. This can cause many headaches down the road.
Take your time to find the right worker. It will save you time and money. Interviewing can be tiresome, but don’t take in anyone who’ll say what you want to hear just so you can move on. Make sure they can deal with customers, not just say they can.
The Wall Street Journal has some great tips on how to interview and vet candidates. Finding a person with the right skills is not enough. You also need to make sure they’ll fit well with the company culture and get along well with the team.
Instead of hiring someone who just wants to get experience to take it somewhere else, make an effort to find an employee who wants to grow with your company.
After you create policy operations, it’s also important to train and direct staff with a set of these written guidelines. Not only does it provide a clear direction for them, but it develops this mindset across the board, inspiring others.
Career Advancement
In our ever-changing world, career uncertainty is at an all-time high. Up to 43% of millennial workers think they’ll leave their jobs within the next 2 years. And, Gen X workers are the least happy in their current roles.
Over 70% of high-risk retention workers think they have to leave their current employment to move their careers forward, according to Willis Towers Watson. If you want to keep your employees, you need to help them climb the proverbial ladder.
To do that, do your best to promote internally, discuss opportunities within your own company regularly, and perhaps even offer a mentorship program to pair up workers to learn something useful for their career advancement.
Employees look outward to other businesses for a role change when they don’t have the opportunity to develop skills or cannot see a clear career path within their organization.
By rewarding employees for performance, encouraging an open dialogue about promotions, and offering opportunities for education and career advancement, you’ll be able to pick up individuals who have left previous organizations for greener pastures.
Offer Incentives
Money talks. About 44% of workers claim they would consider changing companies for a 20% raise or smaller. This might seem obvious, but regular bonuses and raises are key to retaining your workforce and decreasing turnover rates. Incentives at a manager level just don’t cut it. No employee wants to work hard just to see someone else reap the rewards.
But what may surprise you is how many workers worry about money and how that may affect your organization. According to Willis Tower Watson, 1 out of 5 workers thinks that financial concerns affect their productivity. Giving your employees a raise may be one solution, but it’s not the only one.
If you can’t afford to give bonuses too often, or even if you can, you can offer your employees financial planning assistance or organize financial planning workshops. By doing so, you’ll establish yourself as a retailer who goes above and beyond to meet the needs of your team.
You don’t necessarily have to beat big businesses in the healthcare options they offer in order to keep your employees. But you should try to offer perks they won’t find elsewhere, such as more flexible days off.
You could also invest more effort into organizing fun team building events or you could pull some strings to score free tickets to events that may interest your employees. Interesting perks and rewards like gym memberships and free food can go far.
Increase Responsibility
Managers often neglect more talented employees in order to spend more time on workers who are struggling. If your star workers start to feel unsupported and unnoticed, it may lead to resentment.
Make an effort to let your top employees know how much you appreciate them. Aside from an occasional “attaboy”, you can offer them a leadership role.
Your retail employees will feel more engaged and empowered if you offer them more responsibility. You will demonstrate that you value and trust them.
That trust can go a long way in increasing employee retention. But, don’t just assume that an employee who is great at carrying out tasks will make a good manager.
You need to make sure they have good interpersonal skills as well. Promoting an employee because of the work they’ve done shouldn’t be your only criterion.
Workers quit managers, not brands. If a supervisor has poor interpersonal skills, the staff won’t tolerate them for long.
No one wants to feel like they’re a cog in a wheel. You want your team to feel like it’s their store and it’s the manager’s job to help you make them feel that way.
Company Culture and Employee Engagement
You need to create an environment that attracts and engages workers if you want them to feel a strong bond with your company. Whether you opt for a laid-back, more casual atmosphere or a strict, by-the-book workplace, your company culture should match the type of worker you want to hire.
As opposed to less-engaged employees, engaged workers do much better in areas of performance, safety, and attendance. According to Gallup, engaged employees are less likely to leave.
By promoting employee-well being overall, you will increase engagement at work. You can “gauge” the wellbeing of your workers through their health, sense of purpose, community involvement, and social relationships.
There are numerous ways you can reward employees who work hard. Not every business can offer the same benefits, but there’s always something you can do to increase employee engagement.
About the author
Michael has been working in marketing for almost a decade and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing and hopes to make it a daily habit. You can read more of Michael's work at Qeedle.