Five Tools For Retaining Great Retail Team Members

Fair and Competitive Compensation is a Critical Part of Your Retention Program.  But is it Everything?

Virtually everyone knows that compensation is important to both job seekers and employees.  It is usually the number one factor that prospective employees are concerned about. 

Surprisingly though, for your current team members, compensation may not be the number one thing that determines whether they begin looking for a new position.  Surveys show that it is often other factors that impact their decision making.

As retail consultants, we often work with retailers who are trying to improve their ability to retain top performing sales representatives and managers.  With that in mind, here are five things you may want to consider in your employee retention strategy.

Five Things You Can Do To Build A Great Retail Team

1. Growth opportunities – A pay increase can improve retention, but in today's economy many retailers may not have the capital needed to increase salaries. Instead, offer your team members the opportunity to improve their skills. This could mean giving them new responsibilities or providing them with a retail training seminar to help them develop new skills.

2. Schedule Flexibility – Over 61 percent of employees surveyed said that having a flexible schedule is an important factor deciding whether to work for a particular company.  That is why as retail consultants we encourage giving preferential scheduling to top performing sales representatives as a best practice.  Surprisingly, we have found that top associates actually want to work more weekends and evenings because that is where they can make the most money…and that is when you want them to work!

3. Competitive benefits – Often it is things like “bring your pet to work day” or “casual Fridays” that get a lot of press, but the fact is that it is the core benefits of vacation time, affordable health care coverage and achievable incentive bonuses are what really matter to your employees.  While these things can be viewed as a large expense, the truth is that they likely cost less than what it will cost you if you lose a few top performers to the competition!

4. Creating a Positive Culture – I used to work for a company that provided a free high quality lunch, an on-site gym, all you could drink Starbucks and a lounge with X-Box and a pool table.  While those were great perks, the company still had an excessively high employee turnover.  Why?  Because employees really wanted to work for a company that recognized, appreciated and listed to its employees.  Are you creating an environment where your team members really feel like they are part of a team?

5. Have Some Fun – If you have that positive culture, now is the time to really make the workplace awesome.  Hold some quick sales contests (and make sure you pay-out immediately).  Have a monthly bowling party or buy a pizza lunch for the team once a week. 

Is your retail company looking to improve the quality of its recruiting, hiring and employee programs?  If so, contact us to learn how our retail training and consulting programs can help you to achieve your goals!