9 Things Retailers Are Missing About Building a Workplace Culture

3 min read

by Marques Coleman

When it comes to retail business, the importance of workplace culture is hard to overestimate. When all employees are engaged and happy, they perform better and can satisfy even the pickiest customers.

As a retailer, you should build a healthy work culture. You should make sure that your employees are happy to come to work in the morning and that they are dedicated to your company’s goals.

Are you striving to create a positive workplace culture but feels like something is missing? You probably make one of the following mistakes.

Ungratefulness

Everyone wants to feel valued and important. Everyone wants to receive gratitude for the work done. Keep that in mind when talking to your employees.

What do you usually say when store associates accomplish a goal? Do you just say “good job”? It’s not enough. You should genuinely thank your employees for their hard work. You can put your gratitude message this way:

“Helen, Melanie, and Megan, thank you for completing X and Y tasks with such dedication! Everyone is impressed by how masterfully you deal with picky customers. Thanks to your work, our store has become a Store of the month. We are grateful for having you in our team.”

You can be sure that these words will not leave your employees indifferent.

Improper use of social media

You can use social media platforms to communicate not only with your customers but also with your employees. You can share content that adds value to your team members in order to boost engagement.

As we have already mentioned, employees want to know that you appreciate their work.

Therefore, it will be a good idea to dedicate a few Instagram and Facebook posts to your employees. You are proud of your employees, so why don’t you boast about that on social media?

This tactic works for Starbucks, and it will work for you.

Rejection of innovations

Modern employees, Millennials, in particular, want to work for innovative companies. They want to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies and smart devices.

Do you ignore the world of innovation? That may negatively affect your workplace culture. Look around and find advanced tools that can benefit your retailing company.

For instance, try out Visual Retailing solutions. Leverage intelligent 3D technology to visualize your collection with the Digital Showroom, manage and sort your collection visually, create ready-to-publish images for Visual Merchandising, and many more.

MockShop

Micromanagement

Who likes to be micromanaged all day? No one. No person in the world likes that.

People want to feel free to live, work, and make big and small decisions on their own. They don’t want someone to point out their mistakes. So if you control every step your employees take, don’t be surprised that your plans to build an effective workplace culture fail.

Stop micromanaging your employees. Once you give them more freedom, they will start working with more dedication. They will become more creative and be better engaged in the work process.

Lack of transparency

Healthy workplace culture is when everything is transparent and when employees can trust the employer and each other.

Do you hide some important information from your workers? Don’t expect that they will feel comfortable working for you.

“To achieve success, you should be honest with your workers. You should openly share information related to your suppliers, product, sales, and other aspects of your business. Your team will appreciate your honesty,”

- Kimberly Laurel, a business writer at Studicus.

Not remembering employees’ names

Have you heard Dale Carnegie’s famous quote:

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language”?

This saying is applicable to building a workplace culture in retail. If you don’t know the names of your associates, what type of culture can you create?

Seriously, stop calling your new employees “new girl” and “new guy”. Show some respect – get yourself to remember their names. It will not take you much effort but will make a huge difference for store workers.

Ignoring the importance of team building

Have you hired exceptional talents? That’s great. Now you need to make these talents work together – you need to create an effective team.

It happens pretty often that retail companies hire qualified specialists, but fails because these ‘specialists’ can’t get along together.

Your task is to help employees to get to know each other and define the areas of responsibility and influence. Consider using team-building activities or find any other way to make your employees feel valued members of one big team.

Lack of feedback

If you want your employees to work better, you should give adequate feedback.

It’s not enough to say, “I’m not satisfied with your work.” It’s necessary to provide detailed explanations.

You should make it clear to your employees what exactly you like and dislike in their performance. Also, you should suggest ways on how to fix the detected issues.

Do you tend to avoid face-to-face interactions and uncomfortable conversations with your workers?

Give feedback via email.

Indifference

Indifference kills interpersonal relationships, and it kills a workplace culture.

So don’t be indifferent to the people who work for you. Get to know your workers better – talk to them about things that don’t relate to the work.

Your employees are not robots.

They are humans – they need your attention and support.

Treat them in the way you treat your friends, and then the turnover rate will approach zero.

Wrapping up

Has this article made you realize that you make too many mistakes? No worries! Now you can fix all these issues. Revisit your strategy and start communicating with your employees in a new way.

Keep in mind that it’s impossible to build a strong workplace culture overnight.

So get ready to work day by day to see the first improvements.

About the author

Marques Coleman is a freelance writer and blogger with a background in recruiting and HR. Currently, he works as an editor for two writing companies BestEssayEducation and ClassyEssay. Also, he curates academic writing projects at TrustMyPaper and GrabMyEssay. The texts he writes are always informative, based on a qualitative research but nevertheless pleasant to read.