Member Article

Boosting wellbeing in retail: take the stress out of sales with fairer targets

Research released earlier this year indicated that the retail industry experiences an employee turnover rate of 25%, 10% higher than the national average¹. At the same time, the UK as a whole has seen sick days rise each year since 2011, with absence now costing the economy £18 billion per year².

On the flipside, workplace wellbeing has been shown to link to increased engagement, improved productivity and reduced sickness levels, leading to better customer satisfaction and more sales – essentially, the key components of business success, as StoreForce’s Director, Chris Noble, explains:

With a competitive trading landscape and changing shopping behaviours both on- and off-line, retail businesses are recognising that competitive advantage lies in exploring ways to create rich and relevant customer experiences. And this relies on leveraging value from a retail business’ most powerful asset; namely, their staff.

The BRC has been a longstanding champion of the role of retail staff in revolutionising modern retailing. Its ongoing campaign highlights the importance of recruiting, retaining and upskilling store associates via investment in technology and innovation, in order to transform the retail experience for customers. By lobbying for better retail jobs in the future, it argues, retail businesses can improve productivity and provide quality employment opportunities – and meaningful careers – across the UK.

And staff wellbeing initiatives that facilitate these ‘better retail jobs’ are already in evidence across the retail landscape. Marks and Spencer, for example, has evaluated the components needed to create the best working environment for its staff, including safe access to and from the store, improved cycle storage, access to daylight and an enhanced look and feel of internal space. Ikea is addressing the incompatibility of shift work with family life and is giving all staff at least one weekend off in every four. Meanwhile fitness brand Sweaty Betty offers staff free workouts, group exercise sessions and the chance to learn new health and fitness skills.

In addition to some of these more lifestyle-led elements, which will certainly help to enhance the working life of staff, it’s also critical that retailers clearly and transparently communicate targets – at an individual, store or regional group level. Understanding these targets, and knowing the key actions that need to be taken in order to achieve them, can help to make store associates feel more confident in their role and motivate them to deliver against what drives conversions and, ultimately, enhanced business performance.

To do this, it’s important for retailers to examine their sales figures in more detail and consider where and when they see fluctuations in store performance on a daily basis. Typically, retailers create monthly targets based on historical sales and the store manager breaks these down into daily and weekly targets using a combination of experience, emotion and guesswork. Targets may be broken down by employee, but are very rarely accurate and fair, and do not account for fluctuations in traffic on different days.

For example, historically, Sunday was always a quiet day, but today, Sundays can be even busier than Saturdays. If, however, retailers still schedule Sundays as a quiet day – and many do – it means the store is operating at the wrong service intensity, so staff are unable to provide the right customer experience and have less opportunity to convert sales.

We also hear retailers say that their part-time staff convert more sales and deliver better ROI when compared to full-time staff. When we dig deeper, part-time staff are generally recruited to work at busy times such as weekends, so automatically appear to be the better performing group. Meanwhile, full-time staff spend a large percentage of time during quieter periods fulfilling non-sales focused tasks, such as stock control or processing online returns. While these tasks are essential for delivering high levels of customer service there is little understanding of the time they take or value attributed to these functions.

Technology has the functionality to revolutionise sales targets by crunching a wealth of data. Historical sales figures, customer footfall and hour-by-hour sales patterns can be layered with information such as the time taken on non-sales tasks and even breaks. Retailers can then build up an accurate picture on which to create hourly, daily, weekly and monthly sales targets.

Once this is in place, it will also be possible to identify which staff members are performing well and which need further training and development so they can achieve their full potential.

By taking the guesswork out of setting targets retailers can set goals that stretch staff but are accurate and fair, which in turn will enhance the wellbeing of their staff. Once staff feel that their collective targets are achievable they will experience less stress, be more engaged in the sales process and will be able to create a customer experience that will draw shoppers back into the store once more. Something that should help to reduce employee churn and boost the business.

Chris Noble is Director at StoreForce.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Weeks .