Retailers Need a People Manager

–Contributed by Vivin Wason

  
Retail has recently been giving a competition to various co-existing sectors in terms of turnover, employability and increasing contribution to  the GDP. But another area where Retail seems to be excelling is the employee turnover. Retail attracts a lot of people. From the figures it looks like, it deters as many. Is it the lack of money or is it the stress of working round the year? Retailers are still trying to find an answer. According to a news article , the attrition rate in retail is as high as 20-25%. The front end executives are being lured by sectors such as BPO and hospitality with better salary packages and 5-6 days working every week. It is logical for any low wage employee to move as soon as he gets a higher paying opportunity. Can a better work environment help these job-hoppers to stay in one place? Probably yes. Though for a larger store understanding employee goals at the individual level is very tedious. But, managing expectations and aligning them with the company's requirement should be the goal of every HR manager.  

Another aspect of the issue could be the replacement of the people who leave the organization. Though it is important in retail to have a sound employee base to manage the customers effectively but certainly it is not the end all. Recruitment and training of new joiners is and on-going process in any retail organization. The key here is to be able to retain the key employees by keeping them satisfied with their jobs and identifying the optimum number of employees required to manage a store. Retail being a new industry skilled manpower is scarce.   Thus, training the employees has to be done with a view to retain people for a longer time. Most retail businesses have more number of people to be able to simplify tasks and assign each employee with a part of the process. Though the system works well in organizing the process, over a period of time, it might get monotonous for the employee carrying out the activity day in and day out. Introduction of more challenging or creative activities can be the solution. Keep the employees involved in their work through having a restricted number of efficient employees and acknowledging the contributions of each employee. It is also important to ensure that the merchandise on display is able to sell itself and does not need the employee to spend too much time ensuring the customer about the product.

Retailers are tired of hiring, providing training and investing resources in an employee who looked good on paper, but a few months down the line, has failed to deliver? Still managers would like to stick to that employee in order to extract the resources that have been spent on him. This might sound as a good idea on the face of it but such employees can cause more problems as the good staff and valuable customers leave in the wake of having to deal with them. So think again before employing in large numbers because recruiting the wanted candidates is less difficult than getting rid of the unwanted ones.

Would like you to provide your feedback on the same.
( email at vivin.wason@milagrow.in)

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Milagrow Retail Planet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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