It’s no secret that staff turnover in retail is high – higher than most other industries. The average turnover rate was 50.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2023, with turnover highest with store workers (46 per cent), low in warehouse and distribution (3.3 per cent) and lowest in head office roles at 1.5 per cent. Of the total retail job vacancies, store vacancies accounted for a huge 87 per cent. So, is it time to accept that there will always be a high turnover rate of store workers, or should you invest time and money in doing something about it? The fact is that your particular stores don’t have to follow the industry trend. You can retain your employees for longer if you can figure out why they’re leaving in the first place, and then actively address the root causes.
There are plenty of discussions and assumptions around why store workers only stay for a short period and then leave. It’s often believed that a combination of low salary, unsociable hours, high competition, poor career prospects and a stressful environment contribute to the high turnover. But do these reasons apply to your stores? If you focus on addressing all these causes, you could find that you’re not correctly directing your time and efforts. To find out what is really driving your workers out the door, you need to ask them.
Sounds easy, right? Not so when your workers are located across different stores and work shifts. So, if you’re wanting to interact with a large deskless workforce like store workers, you should look at harnessing survey technology that can gather largescale feedback. And because your store workers are unlikely to have a work computer and may not even have a work email address, the technology should be easy to access on mobile technology as well as on ‘kiosks’ in the staff breakout areas.
For example, exit surveys can provide a treasure trove of insights so managers can better understand what’s causing store workers to leave. The survey questions might cover whether the leavers would recommend the organisation as a great place to work; why they’ve decided to leave; whether they felt valued; what could have been done differently to prevent them from leaving; and what overall improvements could be made at the store, and the company as a whole.
The feedback can then be collated and analysed to find patterns as to why your people are leaving. The data can also be split into priority order so that any ‘red flags’ requiring immediate attention are highlighted.
With the insights to hand, you may find that assumptions around why your workers are leaving, such as low salary and the role just being a ‘career stop gap’, aren’t actually the case in the majority of instances. The survey results might reveal that the main reasons for high staff turnover are, in fact, poor management and lack of career opportunities, and so your recruitment and retention strategy might well have been focusing on the wrong areas.
A more holistic understanding of why your people are leaving means you can put together a targeted plan to reduce costly turnover and attract more talent, as well as increase employee engagement. This might include investing in management training and career development, as well as improving the onboarding process so that all new hires are aware of the career opportunities open to them.
Ultimately, retail leaders should never assume they know why their people are leaving, as these assumptions will stand in the way of change. It’s important to gain an honest understanding of the employee experiences at your particular stores, and then use the insights to address your most pressing recruitment and retention issues. You may just find that after a few months of tackling the ‘right’ retention challenges, your employees are sticking around for longer, progressing further, are more engaged and are delivering ‘above and beyond’ what’s expected of them, time and time again!
Ian Barrow, Senior Employee Experience Consultant at WorkBuzz
