Retail Recruitment and Retention, Part 2: 5 Tips to Keep Employees Happy
In a labor crunch like the one the entire retail industry is experiencing right now, it’s vital to use every tool at your disposal to ensure store associates aren’t getting lured away. Having used our Part 1 advice to attract top talent to work at your store, you now need to ensure you keep those employees happy so there’s no better option out there and your staff attrition rate remains low.
As Rethink Retail reports in a July 2021 article, “Motivating employees can range from helping them to relieve the monotony by exploring new ways to engage with customers, providing training, job-sharing, and delegating responsibilities, supporting continuous learning and professional development.”
Although this is great advice, it can be hard to put into daily practice. Fortunately, we have not only five top tips on how to do this, but also five tools that can make each a reality. iQmetrix clients benefit from a massive ecosystem of partner integrations, many of which offer amazing workforce management and employee engagement platforms that can help you do just that. Even more partners offer integrations that make store employees’ jobs easier — such as Marketing tools and upselling opportunities — therefore making it more enjoyable and satisfying to work at your store, but we’ll stick with the workforce-specific integrations for now.
1. Optimize Staff Scheduling
When you’re operating a lean workforce, you need to ensure your best associates are on shift at the right time, and that scheduling is transparent and optimized. Not only does that make sense for your retail operations, but it also creates a better working environment and helps reduce staff frustration and burnout when shift scheduling is consistent and effective. What’s more, it’s important to be able to offer generous vacation days and schedule flexibility — as Part 1 of this blog shows — without losing productivity.
Shiftlab, which is integrated into iQmetrix solutions and is part of the company ecosystem to which iQmetrix belongs, offers all this and more. Its data-driven workforce scheduling platform uses sales data to optimize shift schedules and massively enhance productivity. Check out the Shiftlab website, and their webinar recording on using this data-driven tool to improve staff management.
2. Keep Employees Engaged and Motivated
To keep your staff in your employ, it’s crucial they are motivated and happy. Jonathan Bergman, the CEO of Hire Well Now who iQmetrix interviewed for Part 1, said, “The number one piece of information we get back from our thousands of exit interviews of retail staff is lack of feedback from their supervisors. They didn’t understand how they were doing or how they could improve.”
However, in a busy store it can be hard for managers to find the time to give feedback. That’s where an employee engagement tool can help. Arcade is a workplace engagement and motivation tool that boost productivity for wireless retailers, with gamified incentives and rewards tailored to the motivational needs of different levels of employees. Using the integration with iQmetrix’s retail management solutions, you’ll have insights from all the programs you use to select activities that help keep your staff happy and engaged, and move your business forward. Check out the Arcade iQmetrix partner page with its webinar recording on how to solve employee engagement problems.
3. Train Staff Effectively — and Scalably
It’s incredibly important that your staff are upskilled as efficiently as possible to help them do their jobs. After that, it’s essential to ensure staff continue to learn and grow in order to keep them motivated — and to have this growth potential in place to attract new recruits in the first place.
Upduo is a unique peer-to-peer training platform that applies best practices in learning and coaching to bring effective learning and coaching to organizations. Through a simple mobile platform, more experienced staff mentors and top performers coach newer associates on a wide range of sales skills via one-on-one video coaching sessions. Check out the Upduo iQmetrix partner page, including a webinar on how to use performance data to accelerate learning, and read the iQmetrix blog on how it works.
4. Improve Store Associates’ Performance
In a world where there are more and more devices, accessories, rate plans, add-ons, and promotions to sell, you need tools to ensure your staff are always up to speed. Smart Access’ performance management platform helps retailers improve store performance, including meeting sales targets and delivering consistent quality service, via personalized how-to guidance on workers’ mobile devices. With the iQmetrix integration, clients can gain more sales per shift and higher customer satisfaction with rapid distribution of new product knowledge and updates. Smart Access delivers performance analytics that offer real-time visibility into operational and skill gaps to help retail operators understand where to focus to improve. Check out the Smart Access iQmetrix partner page for stats on how this increases staff retention.
5. Solve Issues Management Effortlessly
One thing that can demotivate employees in a flash is the poor handling of issues and less-than-optimal communications practices. Intelocate is a one-stop issue-resolution and task-management tool designed to provide full visibility into the issues, tasks, and communications across stores, departments, and vendors. No matter what issue shows up, and no matter how it is handled, logging the issue or task into Intelocate enables retailers to track, measure, and understand the full lifecycle of each issue at each store, and massively improves communication. With its integration into iQmetrix’s retail management system, this offers a full picture that helps retailers improve and prevent problems from arising — making their stores a much happier place to work. See the Intelocate iQmetrix partner page for use cases and testimonials.
Want to find out about other iQmetrix integrated partners? Learn more below.
