Few of Us Saw This Coming

Two years ago, most of us were dealing with severe restrictions limiting what we could do – perhaps giving us more time than usual to think about the future.?Commentators discussed the implications for business - how things might change, impact it would have on profitability and customer behaviour but one thing few talked about was the need for employee retention.

Over the past 12 months a new term has entered our lexicon – the so-called ‘Great Resignation’.?Resignation levels reached record levels during 2021 and retail experienced some of the largest impact with over 700,000 departures during August alone.?This pattern is consistent across multiple countries including UK, France, Germany and Australia.?

Research into the motivations have revealed consistent themes relating to personal and professional support .?Support here means both support of role associated tasks but also personal development along with support for the mental and physical health.

The impact of this on any organisation is significant but for retail it is particularly difficult – especially for operational roles such as store associates.?As shoppers come back into store seeking enhanced levels of customer service the criticality of store associates to deliver a differentiated experience cannot be understated.?

But minimising losing employees is only part of the problem.?Helping newly hired associates become productive has enormous potential in terms of meeting customer expectations.?This becomes more relevant when you consider that the academic who coined the phrase ‘The Great Resignation’ has acknowledged that it could last for several years .?Even in the face of potential economic hardship 20% of UK employees expect to change jobs this year.

Failure to address this is likely to adversely impact customer experience but also store productivity at time when inflationary pressures mean that retailers must focus on operational costs.?

Imagine being able to drive productivity and increase speed of on-boarding new staff while improving satisfaction and engagement amongst your customer facing associates.?This would mean you could benefit from improved staff retention while continuing to meet the ever increasing expectations of your customers.

Organisation who are addressing these challenges are focused on three key capabilities:

Real-time store communications and collaboration

Leveraging modern tools for connecting your team and allowing them to communicate better with tools like push-to-talk and real-time task allocation.?Allowing leaders to solicit real-time feedback from customer facing teams about in-store operations and customer response allows rapid response to issues and the re-deployment of innovative ideas.

Retail workforce management

Digitize managerial tasks like store task allocation, shift scheduling that allows rapid deployment of schedules and the ability for associates to self-select the shifts they would like to work.?Placing this in the hands of associates increases associate control and engagement.

Process automation and career development

Expand what your stores and people can do through task automation in order to allow associates to spend more time with customers.?Provide guided upskilling of your associates and share knowledge across stores by building collaborative communities – valuable as store associates widen their skillsets.?Associate and manager insights allow detailed activity related perspectives to improve focus on mental and physical health.

Despite the rise of online commerce, stores will still account for over 75% of sales for some time to come.?Store associates remain a key differentiator and supporting their wellbeing and development is key to retention – but given how retail has long been a high-turnover business, accelerating on boarding remains valuable.?Empowering the store associate is a key retailer priority that Microsoft is addressing through the Microsoft Cloud for Retail - supported with retail industry-specific data models, APIs and an ecosystem of partners that are purpose built for retail-specific scenarios.

These capabilities are in use by some of the world’s most successful retailers - learn how they deliver for you here .