Retail - Innovate, Engage or Die?

Is the high street retailer soon to be a thing of the past? Not for those that innovate and engage their employees and managers.

“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” or to many in the retail world, "it’s not about the product the customer is buying, but the experience they receive when buying it" which will make the difference to whether they stay around.

KPMG recently predicted that by 2030 there will be 20% less store space than there is today! It sounds along time away but consider this; the year 2000 only seems like yesterday to many of us and that’s double the distance than it is to 2030….!

If our high street retailers and the brands we all know and love want to still be around by 2030 they need to innovate, not just in the retail proposition but the way they deliver services to their business.

The opportunity to create innovation, i.e. cost savings, cannot simply come from squeezing the supplier base, closing stores, moving online and reducing quality, it needs to come from how retail delivers services back to the business, how services are delivered to their people and looking at how their operation is run from a supporting services perspective. Employee engagement, flexibility of working, talent retention and the deployment of supporting services are all areas that need to change in retail. 

One of the contributing factors for many retailers today is that the size and type of technology in use is just not fit for purpose, it isn’t agile, it isn’t modern and leaves many employees dis-engaged thinking they have joined a company from the dark ages.

It will come as no surprise that these employees, who cost so much to attract, on-board, and train soon leave; money wasted on recruitment, on-boarding, training, lost sales etc etc. and then the viscous circle starts, or should I say continues; cost cutting needed, more store closures, lower quality.

Is employee engagement a way to address the situation? It is becoming the hot topic in the world of retail. Engaged employees deliver substantial benefits to retailers but what is Employee Engagement? Employee engagement is many things to many employees, employers and organisations and having that flexibility and agility as to how to engage the different areas of a workforce could be the real differentiator for many retailers.   

It is proven that an engaged employee will take pride in their role, become more involved, increase their performance and will be more committed to the organisation as a result. Having the flexibility to engage employees based on role, location or even at a store level can ensure the strategic direction of the business can be aligned; it’s hard to engage an employee and make them feel part of the journey when the retail world they are in feels in such decline, the technology is old and not fit to support the change so desperately needed.

Many retailers know they need to change technology and their infrastructure to address the decline but the constant firefighting doesn’t allow them the time….time they may not have.    

@corehr @theaccessgroup #hcm #hr #payroll #wfm #retail