Long hours, minimum wage, no benefits, no career developments, and entire shifts spent on feet hardly inspire employee loyalty, engagement, and motivation in the retail industry. This explains why the retail and wholesale industry boasts the highest turnover rates, ranging from 60.5%. 

What you want is a group of employees willing to go the extra mile for you and your business. But only employees that are highly motivated and satisfied with your company can give you this type of commitment. 

Motivated and engaged employees will work to ensure that your company mission and vision are highly achieved. In turn, the trickle-down effects provide happy customers and increased productivity and product or service quality. So, how can you treat your employees less like robots and inspire intrinsic motivation within each?

Start With Leadership

Most businesses forget that the fish rots from the head. In fact, two in five of your employees will quit because of bad managers, and at least 82% would consider leaving if they were under lousy management. 

It is critical to remember that while your employees might oversee customer service, your managers will have a direct impact on employee motivation (70% of the variance, to be exact). Therefore, start with your managers. 

The goal here is to train your managers to manage as leaders. For instance, a manager approaches the company vision logically by setting processes and structures that employees must follow, like staffing and budgeting. 

On the other hand, a leader approaches the same vision by involving the entire team in creating a unified process and structure that meets the said vision. In the latter, the leader mainly focuses on aligning and influencing employees to offer their best work. In contrast, the manager primarily focuses on achieving organisational goals in the former. 

With that in mind, you need managers that know how to handle logical processes and business objectives by coordinating with your employees and helping them reach their goals to satisfaction. Remember that a leader is better skilled at identifying individual employee needs and challenges than a mere manager. 

Therefore, teach your managers how to be leaders that encourage your employees to share their beliefs, behaviour, and personality. Teach your managers how to help your employees learn and develop within your organisation. 

Your Employees Want To Learn More Than They Want Money

Most rewards and recognition in the retail industry, or any other industry for that matter, are often centred on money as the primary incentive. Money is good; everyone loves money and the additional options it provides. But your employees prefer to learn more than they prefer to make some extra cash. 

In 2019, 94% of employees in a study admitted that they would stay in their organisation longer if it invested in their development. Millennials and Gen Z especially tie their motivation and engagement at work to learning and growth opportunities. 

Therefore, if you want to boost morale among your retail employees, ensure you have a training and development culture. Take advantage of technology and use it to enhance your development strategies while reducing costs. 

For example, buy an online course and share it with your entire organisation instead of spending a significant budget on one-on-one workshops. Then make your training and development team accessible to your employees in case they need guidance or have queries regarding the course. 

One cost-effective method you can use to teach your employees and consequently boost their morale and engagement levels is delegating challenging tasks. Of course, let the employees work with a leader on these tasks to provide the proper guidance and training. Nonetheless, empower them with tasks or projects that are beyond their regular duties. 

You kill three birds with one stone here: You get more work done through delegation, which frees up the c-suite executives to more decision-making roles. You also get to teach your employees something new about your organisation or a new skill. It also tells your employees that you trust them with complex tasks. Hence, they feel motivated and engaged. 

Collect And Leverage Employee Feedback

Your employees know what they want and need better than you do. They know the challenges they face daily better than you do. They know your customers better than you do. Therefore, making feedback a significant part of your business operations will give you better results when determining how to engage retail employees. 

For example, ask your employees to review your company's customers and values regarding employee engagement. Implore them to give comprehensive responses, including the positives, negatives, and areas of improvement. Ask your employees how their managerial support factors into employee engagement values. 

Such questions give you an in-depth understanding of your employees, which, in turn, will help you develop strategies that enhance employee motivation. For example, if most of your employees identify poor managerial support, you will know to increase your efforts in training your managers into leaders. 

You can organise occasional company review exercises to ensure your entire motivation strategy remains updated with the changing needs of your employees. 

Build A Creative Rewards And Recognition Strategy, But Don't Document It

Modern employees face modern challenges. Therefore, incorporating modern rewards and recognition practices in the retail industry will give you better engagement results. For example, many employees face mental health concerns following the events of the pandemic. 

However, most businesses lack the proper structure to help employees handle such challenges. So, create a competitive advantage for your retail business by offering mental health benefits as part of your employee medical coverage. Or deliver luxurious gifts as incentives for most engaged employees. 

For example, we discussed creating an open communication channel where employees can share their business ideas. If an employee contributed an idea that has improved the business process, increased sales revenue, or even enhanced customer satisfaction, offer a "luxury gift" like a holiday trip over the weekend with their significant other. 

The more you acknowledge your best employees, the more motivated and engaged they will be. As for documentation, much like monetary incentives, it can turn into another KPI that develops entitlement instead of engagement and motivation. 

Therefore, communicate a rewards and recognition agenda within your business mission, but always make it a surprise for your employees. And don't feel pressured to book trips for every employee that goes the extra mile. A simple dinner for the entire team will also suffice once a sale target is reached. The point is to offer something fun and unique. 

Conclusion

As Descartes described, we all need motivation to achieve our intrinsic purpose. But because achieving employee motivation in the retail industry is easier said than done, what you must strive for is using the psychology of motivation in your favour. 

That is, create a working environment that commits your employees' efforts, persistence, and behavior toward improving service, productivity, and quality of work. Break the routine, turn your managers into leaders, teach your employees, and be creative with your rewards. 

You'll give birth to intrinsic motivation among your employees with a trickle-down effect that ensures customer satisfaction. And if you are looking for the right technology to help you increase employee motivation and engagement, consider our POS solution. 

When used optimally, our Erply POS software becomes a powerful employee management tool that boosts motivation and employment. You can get a free demo from us to learn more about our POS.