Preventing employees from leaving is a better long-term solution than finding new employees for your store.
Full article in the magazine: Attracting the Best Retail Talent in the July issue. Read the article here.
See if you have developed habits that might be driving up turnover rates.
- Posting schedules with short lead times. Schedules posted with less than 2 weeks before the schedule starts makes it difficult for employees to plan other jobs or personal commitments. If your employees cannot commit to attending birthday parties or family barbecues because you don’t post schedules until a few days before the schedule begins, you can slowly build resentment across the staff. Post a 2-week schedule at least 2 weeks before its first day.
- Varying shifts that include too many “clo-pens.” (Closing the store and opening it the next day.) Nothing burns out an employee faster than back to back clo-pens. The other scheduling no-no is the dreaded split shift with a morning and evening shift and unscheduled hours in between.
- Short-shifting employees by sending them home before a full shift is completed because store traffic is light. A common occurrence with owner-managers is to send home employees when the weather or other unforeseen circumstances causes low store traffic. Be prepared with value-added tasks for idle employees like taking pictures for social media posts, extra deep cleaning or organizing the backroom. Better yet, let them run the store while you spend time networking with nearby businesses to increase your network and connections into the community.
- Lack of parking or commuting options for employees. Too many managers leave their employees to find street parking or walk blocks to get to the store. Naturally, the best spots are reserved for customers, but if management has choice parking locations, do the right thing and award the best parking spots to the employee of the month and pitch in for bus passes for everyone.
- No back room to eat or rest. Or a dreary back room that is not focused on the employee (filled with overflow storage and passive-aggressive notes about cleaning the microwave.) A purely utilitarian backroom tells employees that you don’t care about them as people. Make the space relaxing, bright, personal and regenerating.
- No real career growth or little reward for learning new skills. When an employee takes responsibility for making night deposits or creating the staff schedule, show some level of appreciation by increasing their pay or their hours on the schedule. Help them see that you have an intention of increasing their role in the store.
Full article in the magazine: Attracting the Best Retail Talent in the July issue. Read the article here.
If you recognize yourself, making changes today can yield results in time. Make a change. Tell your staff. Then hold yourself accountable to seeing it through.
Take Flora’s Smart Retailer courses in the comfort of your home or office. Click here.
