Retail Safety Takes a Central Role
The current COVID-19 pandemic is placing even more attention on the overall customer and employee experience with safety central to this focus. However, many retailers struggle with meeting increasing safety demands while also dealing with the everyday business realities of longer shifts, a growing list of employee expectations, and maximizing productivity.
Job stress is everywhere but can be particularly high in the retail environment and can worsen during peak times such as a holiday season. Some reports have employee turnover in the retail sector at 60% – a statistic that is considerably higher than the average turnover rate of US companies, which is 15%. There are many downsides to this constant churn of employees for businesses, including the huge impact on training, loss prevention, productivity and general operational costs.
“The unprecedentedly high turnover rate translates into more than 230 million days of lost productivity and $19 billion in costs associated with recruiting, hiring, and training, according to Human Resources Today.”
- Megan Wells, DailyPay
With this as a backdrop, what steps can retailers take – especially during busy seasons – to reduce the amount of unnecessary stress their employees face?
Go to the Source
One of the simplest ways to manage employee stress is to take a deep review of the tasks employees are performing and simplify or eliminate the ones that are time consuming and inefficient. Cash handling is often a prime example of a critical task where a lack of consistent procedures for staff to follow often lead to mistakes and, as a result, more stress.
Balancing the cash drawer is still one of the most time-consuming processes, while also an employee task that still holds a high level of mistrust between staff members and managers by putting both parties in a position of pressure to ensure every count is correct, knowing a mistake could cost them their job.
In most retail stores, there are multiple cash counts throughout the day which can be time-consuming for employees. Automating your count procedures significantly reduces the amount of time entering data and carrying out recounts due to manual errors which can help to reduce stress and improve trust between colleagues and managers.
Turn to Technology
Implementing a cash management solution can create a much easier and efficient process for your employees while giving them accountability for their own drawers.
Look for a solution that is easy to use and drives efficiency by reducing actual count times to under 60 seconds.
Many global businesses are turning to cash management solution businesses, such as; Cashmaster, to help create more efficient and accurate cash handling processes, improve employee productivity and drive loss prevention throughout the business.
The Cashmaster One Max device, the most intuitive solution of its kind available on the market place is designed specifically for ease of use for your employees, to allow them to balance their till drawers in under 60 seconds while integrating with your already in place internal systems.
A well-built cash handling process and clever count technology can not only save your business time and money through operational overheads but also reduce staff costs. As mentioned, retail in the US has one of the highest rates of staff turnover in the country. Count technology can prevent staff stress at the end of their shift, during peak seasons and spot checks and in turn increase employee satisfaction.
When your employees are less stressed, they will provide better customer service and as a result, your customers will have a much better customer experience.
Want to find out more about how you can help to reduce staff stress? Get in touch with us: