MEMBER LOGIN ERMS PORTAL
Pride-logo
ARA Australian Retailers Association
  • ABOUT
    ABOUT
    • About Us
    • Our History
    • Advisory Committees
    • Council
    • Leadership Team
    • Strategic Partners
    • Registered Training Organisation
  • JOIN THE ARA
  • SERVICES
    SERVICES
    • Advocacy & Policy
    • Employment Relations Advice
    • Human Resources (ERMS) Portal 
    • Legal Assistance
    • Tenancy Advice
    • Training & Education
    • Member Benefits Program
    • ARA Insurance
    • ARA Talent Registry
  • TRAINING
    TRAINING
    • Retail Ready Training
    • Career Upskilling
    • Leadership Training
    • Business Solutions
    • Industry Projects
    • Hire Talented Staff
    • Financial Literacy Education Program
  • RESOURCES
    RESOURCES
    • ARA Retail Review Report 2022
    • Business support
    • Covid-19 Resource Hub
    • Gender Equality
    • Media
    • News & Insights
    • Reconciliation
    • Podcasts
    • Research Hub
    • Sustainability
  • EVENTS
    EVENTS
    • Upcoming Events
    • OnDemand Recordings
    • First Responders Day 2022
    • ARA Gala No.1
    • ARA Leaders Forum 2023
  • Contact Us
    Access our Covid-19 resource hub for up-to-date state and territory restrictions
    back to Retail News & Insights
    Australian Retailers Association
    Australian Retailers Association

    How mobile employee engagement solutions lead to positive results

    • Saturday 27 July 2019
    Technology

    How to transform the employee experience by mobile solutions to, communicate and engage retail workforce's.

    Want to harness the power of a virtuous cycle to ultimately improve profits for your retail organisation? Then implement a mobile technology solution to create a positive employee experience and a positive retail brand to not only enhance the customer experience but also increase profitability.

    The fact is, the retail sector faces unique challenges in relation to engagement. A recent Hay Group study clocked median turnover rate for part-time retail workers at 67%. This high level of employee churn exacts a huge toll on retailers - in particular, it creates an ongoing challenge in attracting and keeping talent. This is why determining how to increase engagement is so critical from a bottom-line business perspective. If you can improve engagement amongst your retail staff, you will open communication channels, improve productivity, and retain talented employees.

    Keys to the kingdom

    Lack of engagement is a core driver that leads to poor attrition rates. Retailers who don’t make employee engagement a priority risk losing talented employees to their competitors and increasing recruitment costs. What’s really behind disengagement? Lack of effective communication plays a large part - between retail workers and their managers, and between peers - both of which can lead to employees feeling out of the loop and disconnected from the organisations goals and vision.

    There’s another key influence as well when it comes to these dynamics - remote working has become increasingly common in the retail sector. According to Gallup, the percentage of retail workers who spend at least some time working remotely has reached 30%. Distributed workforces can produce another layer of complication into internal communication, leading to morale dips paired with a negative impact on the customer experience and the retailer’s brand.

    Technology is critical to addressing this issue, as the retail industry continues its transformation to a business model that’s digitally driven and online. What would an ideal engagement solution entail? For starters, it must address the sector’s specific communication challenges, particularly with employees increasingly likely to work in different locations. Another requirement in this scenario is effective workforce management technology - ideally in a single seamless platform. There are new mobile engagement platforms available to help navigate through and around the above challenges to drive positive engagement between management and employees.

    What engages the entire sector?

    Whether you’re a traditional retailer or an online retailer, your organisation stands to benefit from utilising mobile technology solutions to address engagement, just as the industry as a whole has successfully incorporated innovative technologies into their business model.

    By drawing on the power of mobile technologies, you can ultimately deliver best-in-class customer experiences, while helping to share a clear company ethos with employees across the organisation. This happens by building a bridge between different functions, geographies, and strata of workers. How can an employee app do this? By helping everyone see clearly what the organisation stands for and how it relates to their specific job, leads to increased employee engagement, resulting in better customer service and the cycle of virtue as described above.

    When choosing an employee engagement platform, not only do you need a mobile solution that can help create effective communication for both desk and non-desk employees (NDEs), but you also need one with analytics capability to measure success. Mobile tools are uniquely qualified to provide measurement functionality that can address needs and foster continued improvement in the employee experience (EX).

    In terms of communication, look for a mobile-enabled app that provides users with the ability to interact with and share information while working within defined communities from the store front to the warehouse. Your mobile engagement platform might even offer access to an instant messaging feature to let workers connect and engage with each other regardless of their location or job function.

    When it comes to measurement, you want a mobile app to help you untangle gathered employee data so that you can use this information to help define your ongoing internal comms strategy and further boost engagement. Only a comprehensive technology platform lets you measure and analyse engagement changes over time to understand how to increase engagement and business performance long-term. Seek an engagement platform with access to real-time analytics. This is the only way to collect the information needed to constantly adapt and improve processes, meet the needs of your workforce, and achieve higher engagement levels while minimising turnover rates.

    When you have the technology in place to build an emotional, two-way connection with your retail staff, including NDEs, you can help your entire organisation feel closer to your brand. It’s only then that they will actively connect, engage, and positively promote your organisation, becoming brand advocates and helping retailers finally break the cycle of their current engagement woes.

    Geraldine Osman is the Chief Marketing Officer for StaffConnect, a leading provider of mobile employee engagement solutions for the enterprise. She brings a wealth of global technology B2B marketing leadership in public and pre-IPO start-ups accelerating revenue growth through growth hacking, high conversion inbound marketing. Learn more at www.staffconnectapp.com/

     

    SHARE THIS ARTICLE
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Linkedin
    back to Retail News & Insights

    FURTHER READING

    Retail Voice CEO Message: 15 June 2022
    Paul Zahra

    Retail Voice CEO Message: 15 June 2022

    The resilience of our sector continues to be tested with rising cost-of-living and business cost pressures – from acute supply chain issues, and staff...

    READ MORE
    Supply Chains: How to stay ahead in the era of unpredictability
    Retail Directions

    Supply Chains: How to stay ahead in the era of unpredictability

    The last couple of years have seen the supply chain hit hard, with challenge on challenge faced.  

    READ MORE
    Retail Voice CEO Message: 8 June 2022
    Paul Zahra

    Retail Voice CEO Message: 8 June 2022

    Inflationary pressures remain a constant for businesses and consumers, and with the RBA increasing interest rates for the second straight month, we’re...

    READ MORE
    LOAD MORE

    Sign up for ARA newsletters

    Strategic Partners

    • Afterpay white logo-1
    • Amex-logo-2
    • Deloitte-1
    • Fabric-logo-2
    • Hitch Advisory - Logo - white-2
    • mastercard-logo-white-2
    • QUT_SQUARE_MONO_REV-2
    • Rest-logo
    • Salesforce-1

    Partners

    • 1200px-Amazon_Web_Services_Logo_edited_edited
    • good360 logo
    • Meta_lockup_mono_white_RGB-1
    • mst marguee_edited_edited_edited
    • Officeworks_Logo_White_RGB
    • RM

    Supporters

    • NRF-logp
    • Australian-CCI-logo
    • Associations-forum-logo
    • FIRA-logo-1280x500 (1)_edited
    • GS1_Australia_Full-Transparency_White_827x436

    About

    • About
    • Member Benefits
    • Membership Application
    • Membership Terms & Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Code of Ethics
    • ARA COVIDSafe Retail Plan

    Training

    • RTO Policies & Procedures
    • Compliance
    • Nationally Recognised Training Officer

    Contact us

    phone-icon.png

    1300 368 041

    envelope-icon.png

    info@retail.org.au

    place-icon.png

    Level 1,  112 Wellington Pde

    East Melbourne 3002

    Join our community

    The ARA acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work, learn and live. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and also recognise Australia’s First Nations’ peoples as Australia’s first traders with a sophisticated network of trading paths that have facilitated the exchange of goods, knowledge and culture for millennia

    Copyright Australian Retailers Association 2021

    ALREADY AN ARA MEMBER?

    Login to view member-only content:

    Login

    NOT AN ARA MEMBER YET?

    Join us today to access ARA member-only content and events.

    Register Now