Successful Time Management

Retail Time Management We live in an amazing time. We have access to so much information to help us be better at almost everything. As I coach people in retail and mentor people I find that there is a consistent opportunity to work on a few basic competencies that are more challenging, but that are necessary, to build a foundation for successful retail leadership and one of the key competencies of successful retail leaders is high-productivity. There are a couple of key components to being highly-productive that are opportunity to a lot of new retail leaders: -Time Management -Planning -Delegation Here is the good news…they all impact one another in the workplace so if you choose one to start with – it willRead More

The Most Overused Word In Retail

The Most Overused Word In Retail I am wondering what word(s) popped into your head when you read the headline for this post. I am sure there are lots of retail buzzwords (that are overused and tragically misunderstood or used, but undefined, in your workplace) that are on the tip of your tongue. But…this is my post and it is the holidays in retail so this is about “STRESS”. I hear it every single day – at least 10 times from colleagues. For me it’s a frustrating word to hear so frequently. I have heard it from everyone in retail for my entire career. I feel as though retail employees think that saying they are “stressed” articulates an elevated level of productivity orRead More

Fundamentals for Building an Effective Training Program

Fundamentals For Building Effective #Retail Training Program When I speak to other Retail Culture or Training & Development leaders I can almost hear them (or see them) cringe when I explain that our Training Program is an 8-12 months investment in our new hires and our employees. But then, I am able to help them understand through our retention, profits, and employee engagement results how effective our program is. In 2012 when I created our training program I, literally, had to start from scratch. Even though I had worked in retail for 16 years, at that point, I’d never really experienced great training as a new hire and I had NEVER been developed (other than my personal passion to self-develop). Training, typically, revolvedRead More

Managing Conflict In Retail

Managing Conflict In #Retail Managing conflict is probably one of the more important competencies to possess, as a leader, in retail. Conflict regularly rears it’s ugly head in retail and it comes from, and is directed toward, a lot of people and places within an organization. It exists between leaders and their teams, peers, employees and their boss(es), and/or employees and senior/executive leadership. It’s something as leaders, we deal with, in some form or fashion, at least on a weekly basis. Conflict in retail can revolve around personalities, policies, who assisted a specific customer, scheduling, unspoken perceptions, workload balance…literally, I have seen conflict brew over nothing. There are few things that I have seen fail, miserably, for leaders when trying to deal withRead More

Retail Meetings: How To Make Them Efficient & Effective

Meetings In Retail – How To Make Them Efficient and Effective Meetings…UGH!! Am I right?!? Meetings and conference calls are , frequently, met with a very exaggerated eye roll in retail! They, often, lack inspiration and substance. It’s time to reinvent and structure meetings in a different way in retail. Earlier today I read a great quote from the great Megan Biro of TalentCulture about meetings: “Meetings are certainly the canary in the coalmine; in an authentically transparent company, they reflect everything about that company, including its message and mission.” Everything, all business practices, need to relate back to the company values and mission/vision. Ask yourself – Is the time spent on this meeting and in the meeting going to produce positive, effective,Read More

Celebrating Top Performers In Retail

Top Performers In #Retail I recently read a blog post by Jon Ingham of the “Strategic HCM Blog” regarding a Harvard Business Review article by Ram Charan that stated “2% of people drive 98% impact”. Here is the link to that blog post: Ram Charan’s 2% of the People Drive 98% Impact The accuracy of the statistic is definitely questionable but there is no doubt there are certainly those who are top performers and extremely important to the business. In retail this typically means: that they are top contributors to the business levers that their department is measured on; they are skilled at recruiting talent and filling open positions quickly with right fit people; that they’re on-time (or frequently early) with their projects/deliverables;Read More

70% of Employees Quit Their Jobs Everyday

70% of Retail Employees Quit Their Jobs Everyday (But They Still Keep Showing Up For Work) According to Gallup – 70% of your employees can become disengaged on any given day for a number of reasons. If, according to Harvard Business Review, at Best Buy the value of a 0.1% increase in Employee Engagement in a particular store is $100,000…just think of how employee dis-engagement effects productivity and profitability. In my post “Why Good People Quit In #Retail (And What Compels Them To Stay)” I cover some of the main reasons that people actually leave their jobs. In this post I want to cover a little more about how to keep the teams engaged at work. (A) Employees can become critically disengaged whenRead More

Why Good People Quit Their Retail Company (And What Compels Them To Stay)

Why Good People Quit Their Retail Company (And What Compels Them To Stay) The workplace has all different ways of measuring and assessing “human capital” facts to plan for a variety of expected business changes and to forecast future changes. For example, according to this story from HBR, At Best Buy the value of a 0.1% increase in employee engagement at a particular store is $100,000! Additionally, the article states: Employee attrition can be less of a problem when managers see it coming. Sprint has identified the factors that best foretell which employees will leave after a relatively short time. (Hint: Don’t expect a long tenure from someone who hasn’t signed up for the retirement program.) Interesting, right? I have written several postsRead More

Fostering A Culture of Employee Advocacy

Fostering A Culture Of Employee Advocacy In Retail One white whale of opportunity that I see in much of Retail is to allow employees the freedom (and guidelines) to advocate on a brand’s behalf. I recently read this amazing article by Ben Donkor on LinkHumans – “A Kickstart Guide To Employee Advocacy In Social Media”. This, literally, gives the reader the steps and policies for building a program that manages and supports your team using Social Media to advocate for and help grow your brand and brand loyalty! Employees want to support the growth of the brand but are tentative to share information for a number of reasons: -There is no formal policy around it -They have been told that they aren’t allowedRead More

Hire Innovators and Let Them Innovate

Hire Innovators And Then Let Them Innovate One of my favorite questions when I am interviewing candidates is, “Which is more important – creativity or following policy to the letter?”. I like this question because I really enjoy working with smart, creative, confident thought leaders. The people that answer “creativity” frequently go on to tell me how they made a process or situation better using common sense or innovation to devise the tools they needed. These people are, typically, strong in self-development, asking for stretch assignments and for being highly-productive and proactive with their metric accountability, staffing and people issues, and their time-management. In my experience, the people that answer “following policy” are the people that say they can execute their essential jobRead More

Retail Workplace Happiness

Focusing On Retail Workplace Happiness The Retail Candidate Experience during the interviewing process should reflect the experience that the candidate will have through the onboarding process as a new hire. According to the SHRM Foundation “Organizations say effective onboarding improved retention rates by 52%”. When employees feel the company cares about their growth & development they are happier and more productive at work. When employees feel the company cares about their growth & development they are happier and more productive at work. According to Megan Biro of TalentCulture there are five key things that help deliver Employee Happiness – (1) Pay fairly, (2) Deliver awesome benefits, (3) Keep an open leadership door & mind, (4) Share the profits, and (5) make your workplaceRead More

Contributing To The Retail Zietgeist

Contributing To The #Retail Zietgeist Zeitgeist is a great word, Mirriam-Webster defines it as the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era. I absolutely think that applies to the #Retail landscape and the focus that is being placed on employee well-being and workplace happiness. There is a paradigm for the workplace that is shaping the cultural climate and is embedded in the cultures that are, now, considered “Great Places To Work in Retail”. A focus on creating an authentically great and beneficial place to work for employees is a constant key point in these environments as is brand reputation and image from the consumers perspective. There are a couple of things that contribute to the retail zietgeist more than others: (A)Read More

How To “WOW” In A Retail Interview

How To “WOW” In A Retail Interview There is a surplus of interviewing information available on the internet. If you type “Interview Questions” into Google – you get 86,000,000 results! You can find that you, as a candidate, could potentially be asked “Where do you want to be in five years/ten years?” – likely, you can also find a really good answer for that question that feels somewhat organic for you to verbally recycle in an interview. Even I have written a post about my favorite interview questions to gauge emotional maturity and emotional intelligence in candidates. However, you will find that the landscape of interviewing is changing dramatically. I read an interesting article the other day on the SHRM blog called “NoRead More

Retail Career Obstacle: Unwilling To Self-Develop

Retail Career Obstacle: Unwilling To Self-Develop With the New Year quickly approaching I thought I would cover some topics that are opportunities in retail as professional resolutions for 2016. The first topic I wrote about was #Retail Career Obstacle: Defensiveness. Now I want to cover another growth hurdle I have encountered in my career: Self-Development. I am obsessed with self-development because retail, generally, doesn’t have a great track record with training and development or truly investing in the future growth of their employees. Typically, we are hired into roles because we possess the skills needed to positively impact the job description and the competencies that the company feels are relevant to the role. We receive operational training on compliance and policies and that’sRead More

Supporting and Inspiring Change In Retail

Supporting and Inspiring Change In Retail There is an adage that goes “Only three things are certain in life: Birth, Death, and Taxes”. Over the past many years I can, without reservation, add “constant evolution and change in retail” to this list. AND I think that those of us who have been in retail for a while actually enjoy that quality of the business. Change represents challenge and newness to strong leaders. Creative people, especially, enjoy change, it gives us the opportunity to positively communicate change to our teams, we also can, usually, find a fun way to support the team with dealing with the change. Unfortunately, not everyone in retail embraces change. Here is great infographic for why change fails at times.Read More