One of the rhetorical questions asked in retail circles is
“Why should we train our salespeople; they are going to leave us sooner or
later anyway?” And the answer to that
question is another poignant question… “What if you don’t train and they
stay?” In fact, I’d further like to ask
them a counter-question “Would you allow a guest in your home to be
ill-treated?” If the answer to my question
is a ‘No’ then, retailers should recognize that customers are indeed guests in
their stores and are currently being offered sub-standard service due to poor
training or lack of it. While it is
shocking to me that retailers ask that question in justification of not investing
in training; it is a question whose answer is so obvious that it doesn’t
warrant the question in the first place.
‘Attrition in retail is a given – universally. It cannot be wished away’. The only reality about it is that, it is
manageable in some formats; but is not so in others. (I won’t say ‘low’ or ‘high’ as that is
relative). Retailers will do good to
understand the factors responsible for attrition and address them with a strong
will and diligent execution if they want to minimize attrition. (I’m not sure
it can be totally eliminated!)
Attrition in retail is most frequently attributed to a
purely economic reason – that salespeople jump jobs for a raise of a few
hundred rupees. However, having seen different
retail formats at close quarters, my personal point of view is that…
There are four other psycho-sociological reasons that can
have devastating impact on any retailer’s most valuable resource – people. First, there is a serious lack of entry-gate
assessments for people entering the industry.
Second, retail stores find it mind-boggling to define job
responsibilities at all levels of operations.
Third, people working in retail suffer from dissatisfaction arising from
not being able to perform their tasks satisfactorily and finally, the retail
industry in India is yet to adopt international performance measurement systems
at the store and individual level – that help in setting up fair reward and
recognition practices. A closer analysis
of each of these factors can help us understand the complexity of the issue and
perhaps find practical solutions to address them.
No entry-level quality checks:
Not everyone is made for a career in retail – just as not
everyone is made for a career as a nurse.
The single-most important trait to look for in retail staff at the time
of recruitment is their attitude – an attitude to do whatever it takes to
satisfy customers with a smiling face.
All other skills – product knowledge; store operations and selling
skills – are trainable. Unfortunately,
retailers are not in a position to conduct any quality checks to ascertain
whether the candidates they are recruiting have the required attitude. In fact, retailers are constantly in need of
people – ‘yesterday’- that they overlook this essential characteristic in
applicants. Aspirants who join retail
jobs awestruck with the glamour of the role – being able to meet new people and
socialize; work in glitzy stores in air-conditioned comfort and store music –
are completely disillusioned when they realize that their jobs are not all that
glamorous after all. Retail sales people
are also required to perform other backend tasks – inward; count; tag; stack
and move merchandise; fill out multiple forms; remain standing on their feet
for eight to ten hours a day and serve customers with a smile. The disillusionment arising out of the gap in
their expectations and the reality; is also a major cause for attrition in
retail. Those that realize that a retail
job is not their cup of tea; quit never to come back. The pity is that recruiting and onboarding
of personnel has costs and retailers are having to incur them repetitively
until they fix the problem of hiring the ‘wrong’ people. So, it’s a perennial ‘chicken and egg’
situation for retailers – whether to slow-down and hire right, therefore
minimizing the chances of attrition OR speed-up store openings and get anyone
with a heartbeat on to the sales floor and keep replacing them every 60 days!
Ambiguity about roles:
People who are able to heroically measure up to the almost
military regimen of retail, go through hair-pin bends all through their
careers. Lack of job clarity makes it
impossible for retail staff to defend themselves from any and all types of work
dumped on them. It is not uncommon to
find staff arrive for work at 8am; unload trucks of merchandise; take physical
inventory of stocks against invoices; tag and label merchandise; transport them
to the shop floor and stack the store-shelves.
And then, they are expected to remain on their two feet for eight to 10
hours helping customers; straightening shelves; rearranging merchandise and
then repeating the same rigmarole almost every single day – often many times
over during the day! I’m yet to come
across any Indian retailer that has clear job responsibilities communicated to
retail staff; although I must add that it is not intentional. When retailers are able to communicate what
needs to be done – why and how; there will be no incomplete or forgotten tasks and
more importantly, fewer frustrated salespeople.
Impediments to performing tasks satisfactorily:
In the absence of any documented job description – staff do
not know how to prioritize their time between all of the above mentioned
routine tasks. Consequently, remaining
on the sales floor and selling to customers, becomes just any other task on
their ‘list of chores’ and gets treated that way – both in terms of attitude
and effort. (little wonder then that we
see such poor service in retail stores!).
All this, leaves a sense of ‘lack of purpose’ and erosion of self-worth
in salespeople. As if this were not
enough, store managers – who are generally ‘managing chaos’ instead of
‘inspiring success’ – keep directing retail staff in all directions ordering
them to accomplish different tasks. More
often, when sales people disappear from their jobs, they are actually quitting
their tyrant managers and not so much their jobs!
Absence of objective performance measurements:
Lastly, few retailers use any objective performance
management systems – that help set objective, fair sales goals and define the
right behaviors for salespeople.
Therefore, store managers and retailers end up using subjective opinions
– rather than have objective measurements – to assess and evaluate staff
performance. The inequal and
inconsistent grant of rewards, and the issue of consequences; leads to feelings
of favoritism that further leads to break-down of team spirit.
Consequently, frustrations from all these levels add to a
compounded feeling among retail staff of being over-worked and underpaid; with
no clarity of purpose or sense of self-worth.
Unable to share their anguish and frustrations, the only solution they
see is the sneaky path leading to an escape – both, from the suffocating
environment and the unreasonable people they are working with. Alas, when they quit and (luckily) land
another job at a different retailer; only the faces change. All else; including the problems, continue to
remain the same or sometimes worse than at their previous employers!
Thus continues the cycle of ‘quit and return’ – almost akin
to the cycle of ‘birth and death’. What
retailers should ask themselves is the question – why salespeople quit, or
rather who are salespeople quitting from? The sooner they ask this rather
poignant question, and find answers; the sooner they will be able to set their
houses in order.
It is those few blessed retailers that want to redeem
themselves from the throes of chaos; heights of inefficiencies and depths of
frustration that seek pragmatic solutions to bring some method to the
madness!
