Best ways to manage your retail store employees
Effective retail management necessitates a diverse set of abilities.
These abilities boil down to time management, training management, employee management, and change management.
As a store manager, you're responsible for training your staff, keeping customers pleased, maintaining sufficient stock levels, and conducting a variety of other duties.
To stay on top of things, you'll need more than just a group of talents and the right infrastructure. You'll also need the proper mindset.
Taking care of their benefits
When employing staff, it is crucial to help them manage their tax if they receive company benefits. So what are P11Ds? And how can it benefit your employees?
P11Ds are forms employers must fill out and submit to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) at the end of each tax year. The purpose is to report the value of certain benefits that employees have received during the year.
These benefits include company cars, private medical insurance, and other perks. P11Ds are essential because they help HMRC to calculate how much tax employees owe.
Without them, it would be very difficult for HMRC to ensure that everyone is paying the correct amount of tax. P11Ds also help to provide a record of employees' benefits, which can be helpful for accounting and payroll purposes.
Ultimately, they play a vital role in ensuring that the UK tax system runs smoothly and efficiently.
Top nine ways to manage your retail store employees
Here we have listed the best practices that you can implement today in order to improve your retail management skills. Stay tuned.
1. Adopt the right retail scheduling software
Your aim should be to utilise and maximise the possibilities of technology.
The right retail scheduling software makes it easier to operate a retail store. It allows you to spend less time on routine tasks and more time on what matters most to your workers.
Retail scheduling software makes it easier for retailers to schedule their shifts. It may also substantially minimise the time managers spend on scheduling duties by using shift templates, smart scheduling, and automatic forecasting tools.
An absolutely inevitable part of your duty as a retail manager should be to invest in technology.
For some firms, upgrading their Point of Sale (PoS) system might be the ideal option. In contrast, others can connect their in-store technology with e-commerce platforms by implementing effective online solutions.
The most important part to consider here is the necessity of identifying operational inefficiencies, as well as consumer and employee pain points.
Once you figure that out, it would be easier for you to determine your store's technological requirements.
You might want to consult with your staff to determine which tools will make their duties easier and ensure higher productivity. Once you have the right technology in place, half of the retail battle is already conquered.
1. Prioritise issues
No matter how big a retail store or chain is, there are bound to be issues arising out of nowhere, almost on a daily basis.
Experts call this “necessary evil”.
Once problems pile up, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and overlook the most crucial aspects of your operations. However, that should not be the case.
You must learn how to prioritise those difficulties on a scale of one to ten. This will help you focus your efforts by ranking your problems from most critical to least important.
Further, this practice would also ensure that your employees’ focus and productivity are not being wasted on redundant tasks.
Nurture a culture of handling retail problems in the order of priority. You need to figure out which problems your employees should focus on first.
Enabling your employees to think from this perspective will ensure they detect severe problems early and mitigate risks accordingly.
2. Delegate most of the tasks
It's not about doing all the retail duties by yourself to be a successful store manager. It's all about giving individuals around you the authority to carry out the appropriate programs and activities.
It is not your role to micromanage, but to supervise. As a result, proper task delegation is essential. The right delegation framework can also help boost your retail business.
Delegation, when done correctly, ensures that people are held accountable for their actions and the outcomes of their actions, all of this while they are in charge. It also motivates people to strive for excellence in their work.
Make sure that you instill a sense of ownership in your staff. Make it clear that they aren't just checking items off a to-do list. Rather, they must be responsible for how their tasks are completed and how hyperactive they are
3. Hire the right set of people
As a retail store manager, you should be able to tell what qualities your staff should possess in order to help your company succeed.
You might need workers with some core competencies such as exceptional customer centric behavior, sales skills, among others.
Often retail store owners make the mistake of hiring absolute freshers, and then trying to train them from scratch. This can be a good plan in the starting, but over time, the entire burden of nurturing new talent can often be an overwhelming experience, especially during times of heavy footfall.
We recommend that rather than trying to instill those characteristics in your staff after hiring them, hire people who already have the necessary skills.
Among the main characteristics that you must be looking for are kindness, organization skills, and excellent manners. At the end of the day, retail stores strive to provide a seamless customer experience.
Your aim should be to hire people who have what it takes to deliver exceptional customer service.
4. Develop and document repetitive processes
Setting clear work objectives for your retail personnel can help to secure your company's assets. Simultaneously, building effective processes can significantly improve the customer experience.
The implementation of a retail operations handbook and subsequent training of team members on how to obey the regulations can be your first step to developing such a culture.
We recommend that you make a point of establishing repeatable procedures in your store and ensuring that they are well-documented. This makes it easy for your employees to follow core procedures.
It also gives you more time to focus on other aspects of retail management. As a result, at times of high customer footfall and work pressure, your personnel can complete their tasks without consulting you unless absolutely essential
5. Keep track of your store's statistics
You can't manage or enhance something you don't track. As it stands, tracking your KPIs is essential. Sales, individual sales records, employee productivity, and customer turnaround times are all measures that managers should keep track of.
This can help you project your goals and share them with your team by allowing you to compare them to other periods of the year and other businesses if you operate out of several locations.
6. Set S.M.A.R.T. objectives for your employees
When it comes to setting SMART objectives, consider the following:
● Specific: Try to answer the 5 W's — Who, What, When, Where, and Why. This will help you create clearly defined goals.
● Measurable - When writing goals, think about how you'll know if they've been met.
● Achievable - The objectives you establish for your staff should be realistic but accessible. Put yourself in your colleague’s perspective and ask yourself, "How can I achieve this goal?" "Is it even possible to accomplish?"
● Relevant - Your employees should be able to connect with their objectives and understand the value of accomplishing them. To put it another way, they should be motivated to attain it. This will further drive them to work toward that specific objective.
● Time-bound — A deadline-bound aim performs best. It increases employee performance by instilling a sense of urgency.
8. Pay based on performance
If you haven't already, tie your employees' pay scale to their job performance, especially if they work in sales or other customer-facing positions. A commission-based pay system can greatly drive your best employees.
If your staff doesn't feel like they're progressing with the store, it's possible they're missing the connection between what they offer and what customers experience. It is critical to convey clearly what is expected of them and what they may do to improve their performance.
For instance, if sales numbers are more important for your store, make sure to develop a plan where the store employees with the highest sales record are rewarded on a monthly basis.
Similarly, if you strive to improve your store’s customer experience, consider rewarding those employees with the highest customer support rating.
9. Offer employee discounts
Give your employees a monthly quota of cents-off deals to keep them motivated.
Allow enough room for discounts so that they can shop for their friends and family on a budget. This will give them a psychological lift because they will feel proud to work at your store.
As a manager or business owner, you must recognize that your employees need motivation to bring their best work to the table.
Flexible policies, such as annual vacations, a liberal leave policy, and paid absences for health related reasons, are some simple strategies that you can adopt to assure your employees that you care about them. This will ensure that your employees remain motivated.
Conclusion
The way the Covid-19 pandemic hit the global economy, physical retail stores were obliged to adopt computerised models. Those who didn’t adapt to the change faced tremendous financial losses.
Now that stores have reopened and people have gotten accustomed to the speed and convenience that technology provides, it has become equally important that you take care of your retail employees.
We believe that the above tips will help manage your retail store employees in a better manner.
Additionally, if you want to future-proof your retail business and transform it into a profitable asset, consider reading how to future-proof your retail business in 2022.
Let us know in the comments section below which of the above ways have you adopted to manage your retail store employees.
