Building a frontline-centered workforce strategy is key to confronting the many pressures that retailers are under now and for the foreseeable future, says Fabrice Haiat, co-founder and CEO of YOOBIC
Between the long shadow of Covid and now what is predicted to be a year of recessions, retail organisations will continue to do what they do best – operate with agility, resilience and efficiency. However, they are now having to do these things with fewer resources, due to the difficulties of finding and retaining staff, and the need to cut costs in the face of inflation.
Frontline teams are key to enabling retailers to operate at the peak of their capabilities, and an important reserve of productivity gains. However, this will require a shift in thinking and resourcing because for decades, organisations have heavily invested in their deskbound workers, so-called knowledge workers, while overlooking their deskless workers in the field.
After all, it is the frontline teams are the ones delivering the customer experience every day and therefore have the most direct impact on the business. Incremental improvements in the frontline performance translate into both sales conversions and revenue, so any investment pays for itself, particularly as a frontline-centered workforce also improves employee retention and helps build tomorrow’s talent.
For example, Gartner says that by 2025, 35% of organisations with a customer experience initiative will see synchronization with the employee experience as critical to sustainable success and reduced customer and employee churn.
Putting strategy into action
It is important first to understand that, because of the distributed nature of frontline teams, onboarding, communications, training and development, and operational execution are more difficult to deliver, control, and manage over time. Interaction and visibility into what’s happening on the floor are needed to help retail managers to improve performance at scale.
The strategy must aim for greater consistency in operational execution, given that right now the difference between a low performing and a high performing store in a comparable setting can translate into an up to 20% uptick in revenue.
There are many ways to unlock frontline teams’ potential to make business thrive; here are the five key ones.
- Onboard faster and better
Turnover in retail has always been higher than in other industries and we can expect it to remain so. The key to success is to be very effective at onboarding new recruits better and faster and become an agile organisation. Creating good onboarding paths and delivering them consistently across the network will help retailers fight the embedded staff shortage, and also improve employee loyalty and retention.
- Scale management and coaching
Managing and coaching across the network is without doubt a challenge but doing it effectively will go a long way in improving the performance of frontline teams. In many instances, managers are not provided with the management tools and methodology to do a good job. The ability to deliver management resources across the network, especially to store and area or district managers, is critical. In addition, facilitating and encouraging peer-to-peer mentoring is a great way to empower and motivate team members, and to uncover tomorrow’s leaders.
- Communicate across the organisation
There is a prevalent feeling among frontline teams that they are disconnected from the HQ, and not felt heard or valued. This can create a lack of engagement and understanding of the company mission and strategy that will impact sales performance. Creating a robust and real-time communication channel that connects all employees, managers, and the HQ will foster a sense of community and belonging that can work magic in motivating your employees and boost sales. For instance, store managers from different regions / countries being able to learn from each other through direct interaction, or the CEO communicating directly with store staff, or communities of employees coming together around shared interests and professional topics.
- Skill and upskill in the flow of work
Frontline employees are also “knowledge workers,” brand ambassadors who serve increasingly knowledgeable customers. Not being properly trained to perform the job well will frustrate both customers and employees. Training and developing frontline teams effectively and regularly with adequate microlearning in the flow of work will shape employee and customer experience. As an example, think how frustrating it is for a customer to visit a store where the store staff has less product knowledge than they do. This is particularly true of luxury, consumer health, organic and healthy products where knowledge is key to the sale.
- Tap into frontline employee knowledge
This might be the most underused resource: leveraging the knowledge of the frontline workers. They serve customers all day long, getting feedback on the brand and its products, and they have great ideas, but so often frontline teams’ knowledge is not shared among the organisation – with the HQ or peers. The ability to create a user-generated knowledge base or resource library like an employee Wikipedia with learnings, tips, and best practices is a huge untapped source of performance and productivity gain. We estimate that 80% of the training of frontline teams comes from experiential and community learning, rather than documentation or classroom sessions.
Executing on strategy
The future of labour in retail is all about agility, resilience and performance. Bringing this all to life will be much easier if all the elements are brought together on a single platform that is purpose-built for frontline teams, one through which they can access inclusive and personalised communications and enhanced productivity features to manage their daily tasks and procedures.
