We have been hearing the phrase War for Talent since 1997: when it started to become obvious that more people quit than were being hired in many organizations.
Is it true in a recession for retail?
More than ever.
Nearly 61% of all retail workers plan to leave the profession within the next 5 years.
Google the phrase: War for Talent in Google and you will get 92 million articles that mention it.
What exactly is Talent anyway: People know it when they see it: is what they usually say.
For retail thats an even airier concept pre-hire: easy to demonstrate post-hire.
Talent for retail is simply this: The ability to deliver measurable results that impact the retailers bottom line directly.
Everyone else is support staff:
In retail thats around 30% talent or direct money generating staff and 70% non finance producing staff.
Does this even make sense?
It started with stores massively reducing front line sales staff for some reason allocated to cost savings: but few trimmed equally at head office level.
Get rid of the people who generate the income?
Thats exactly what most retailers did when faced with income issues.
I worked in the past consulting with one firm that actually had more head office staff than retail front line staff: More chiefs than warriors.
They flogged these poor store staffers endlessly to produce the money to support this massive reverse pyramid: pushing them for higher and higher sales and more and more hours.
Needless to say: it was unsustainable in the long run and the firm had to drastically scale back.
The obvious answer is to increase the numbers of people that actually generate the money:
and decresase the parasitic support staff.
I sit in awe as HR offices expand and expand and expand: creeping inch by inch across Canada:
some even having City HR managers........all seemingly dedicated to support the current staffing levels instore......and find new ones to replace the outgoers.
HR office growth is vastly exceeding direct income generating staff growth.
Logic would say: there isnt a need to have more and more levels of management for the existing retail staff: there is a need for more customer level staff to drive sales.
Retail is notorious for high turnover.
Retailers are almost never found in the Top 100 Best Companies to Work for lists.
Retail organizations have a reputation for being sweatshops to work in:
and having little regard or esteem for the income producers.
Retail has a reputation of being a temporary miserable career until workers find their "real" jobs.
This imbalance is contrary to the way IT and nearly all other firms work today:
IT firms realize they need more computer system designers than they do computer managers.
IT firms make money: Retail is shuffling along.
Statistics show retail is having a miserable time attracting talent: aka: people who can generate money and profits for them.
Not only is there less "talent' to draw upon:
as fewer and fewer enter the profession
But working conditions for the staff havent changed since the turn of the century:
and I mean the 1900s.......to entice newcomers.
12 hour days
working every weekend
no breaks
endless standing
poor pay: few benefits
untrained tyrannical bosses
working under surveillance cameras
daily performance measurement
use and toss out mentality of many firms
Retail is has taken over the cache of being the cotton fields of the 1800s:
the dead end pit to be avoided.
I actually overhead one senior manager responding to an urgent request to get off work for the death of a family member say: Why? He's already dead. There is nothing you can do now.
How tragic:
What is more fun than good retail?
At least it used to be.
Which brings me back to the war for talent.........the war for true retailers who simply love the game: who generate results year after year
in spite of better opportunities elsewhere: other career choices.
These true retailers are few and far between. These 30% support every single worker in the rest of the organization. And they do it out of pure passion.......and little reward.
Finding STAFF isnt hard. Finding true WARRIOR RETAILERS is like mining for diamonds............
you have to know when you have found a gem
and where to look for them.
Its a battlefield out there: and finding the talent is a skill all of its own!
Are you hiring actual talent? Are you hiring real talent to find talent?
If not: you are losing money every single day.
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