Challenges of Hiring and Retaining Employees in the Retail Sector

Running head: MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCE
Managing Human Resource
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCE
INTRODUCTION
This paper will try to show how it is a challenge to hire and retain employees in the retail
sector. This paper will also offer recommendations that can be implemented so that retail
companies can retain their workforce. It is a challenge to retain employees in the retail sector
because employees in the retail industry have to work on weekends and public holidays as that is
the golden period for retailers. This results in a lot of stress among employees as they tend to
work for long hours away from their families during the festive season. Millennials are entering
the work place and it is not uncommon to find them switch jobs for a minor increase in their
salary. Regardless of the industry, employee turnover is a pertinent issue that is faced by
employers the world over. Excessive turnover of employees can decrease the efficiency of a
company. The financial costs incurred by recruiting and retraining new employees can have a
severe effect on the overall bottom line of a company.
Of all the industries in the world, the retail industry has the most trying time in hiring and
retaining its employees (Deery & Jago, 2015).According to studies conducted, the retail sector
has been reporting staff turnover at a rate of five percent per month. Studies suggests that
retailers should become more rigorous during the process of hiring by using the DISC
personality stress which looks into drive, influence, steadiness and compliance to rules as part of
the process of training. (Deery & Jago, 2015). The DISC profile, published by Wiley is a tool
which is used to analyze the behavioral differences of people. Participants are asked a series of

2MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCE
questions that reflects their personality, attitudes and behaviour. A person will also receive tips
relating to working with people who have a different style of working. It is one of the best
performance assessment tools used by multitude of people every year to improve work
productivity, communication and teamwork.
DISC profiles helps to increase one’s knowledge about his or her own self wherein a
person comes to know how he or she responds to conflict, what the driving force that motivates
that person is, what causes stress to that person and how the person solves problems. It improves
relationships by recognizing the various communication needs of team members. It leads to
greater teamwork and develop strong sales by identifying a customer style and responding
accordingly. It also helps to manage employees and team members by understanding their
disposition and their priorities. It also helps a person to become well rounded, self-
knowledgeable and effective team leaders ( Luthans & Doh, 2018).
This therefore standardizes the interview process which is sometimes subjective and not always
an accurate indicator whether the person hired will match the role or not.
The issues that are mostly faced by leaders include attracting talented people and
retaining those who are talented, developing the talent of the people one has, performance
management, creation of leadership teams, making decisions among others. Hiring and retaining
talented people is extremely important because people who are talented are up to eight times
more productive than average people. The success of any organization depends on their ability to
acquire and retain talent. To retain employees, one must ensure that they are satisfied with their
jobs. An employee puts in a lot of hard work, gives time, experience, ideas and efforts to the
organization he or she is working in and expects to receive rewards, compensation, perks,

3MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCE
benefits and working in a great organization with great people. An employee also expects
professional growth and professional development in order to enhance their skills. An employee
also wants a good quality life and a healthy work-life balance and good and proper facilities to
work in.
A good employee of the retail sector is made a lot better by training as training enhances
the skills. Employees should be trained well in customer service and should only be allowed to
interact with customers after their training is completed so as not to irate customers. Corporate
retailers should invest on training store managers and also on the new entrants because the new
entrants might approach a store manager for help. So it is imperative to train store managers as
well so that they are able to mentor the new employees and a. Providing training to employees
create a sense of bonding between them which results in employees giving their very best to the
organization and working for long hours at the office.
The word of mouth of staff members also leads to employee recruitment. Line managers
also play an important role in managing attendance at work. Earlier the main objectives of the
retailer were to increase the number of sales, building the brand and think and implement
expansion strategies. But in the heavily competitive world of retailing, the trend of online
shopping has diminished customer loyalty as many customers prefer to shop online. This has
posed a major challenge for the Human Resource personnel and it is increasingly becoming
difficult for them to attract talented people and retain their existing talent in an organization.
The challenges that make retail recruitment so demanding is the fact that retail recruitment is
highly decentralized. Apart from major companies, the hiring is done by managers with little or
no expertise in recruitment ( Luthans & Doh, 2018). Recruitment is sometimes also conducted