HRMT20024: Challenges of Attracting and Retaining Staff in Retail

This essay examines the challenges of attracting and retaining staff in the Australian retail sector, focusing on the factors that influence candidate attraction and retention. It highlights the unique characteristics of the retail workforce, including its age and gender demographics, and discusses the impact of globalization and competition on the industry. The essay also explores the recruitment and selection processes, performance management strategies, and the role of motivation, rewards, and compensation in retaining employees. Furthermore, it addresses the issue of employee turnover and retention, examining factors such as lack of motivation, low wages, and limited career advancement opportunities. The essay emphasizes the importance of effective HRM practices in creating a positive work environment and enhancing employee performance in the competitive retail landscape.

Running Head: ATTRACTING AND RETAINING STAFF IN RETAIL SECTOR
ATTRACTING AND RETAINING STAFF IN RETAIL
SECTOR
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1ATTRACTING AND RETAINING STAFF IN RETAIL SECTOR
Introduction’
In the growing competitive workforce markets attracting and retaining candidates has
turned in to the major concern for the all the retail organisation. While doing so, employers
are required to understand the huge dimensions of factors that affect the career decision
making and the role of the employer in retaining human capital. In this context, the main aim
of the paper is to examine the changing factors that attract candidates in the employer and
industries along with the challenges in attracting and retaining the labour force in the retail
industry. Based on these factors the paper outlines an employee turnover model that helps to
identify the impact on the frontline employees and perspectives of human resource activities
on the staff turnover in Australian retail organisation. In addition to this, the study also sheds
light on the influential factors of employee motivation, rewards and compensation that helps
to influence the employees in a positive way.
Discussion
Job design of retail workforce
The Australian retail industry employs more than 10% of the overall Australian labour
force and it is the second largest labour force industry in Australia. In addition to this, the
sales assistant employees make up almost 40% of the retail employment force that is one of
the largest occupation group in Australia. It is the end number of characteristic features that
are present in the retailed workforce that makes them different from the other industries.
However, the industry has one of the youngest age profiles with nearly three fourth of
workers who are aged below 45 years of age and over one-third of the candidates who are
aged at 24 years of age. In this regards, almost 56% of the workforce working within the
retail sector in Australia are female workers and 48% of the employees are male. On the
contrary, Van Berkel et al., (2017) reported that almost 41% of the retail workforce is
employed within the large retail organisation whereas 38% of them are employed within the

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small-sized organisation. The industry is huge, diverse in nature and complicated in
operations.
Apart from these, Theeb & Abdullah, (2018) stated that there are high opportunities in
Australian sector of retail and it is the increasing appetite amongst Asia's growing middle
classes for the consumer goods and services. Besides, globalisation presents the industry with
a high challenge on the global retailers developing themselves in Australia and competition in
the domestic marketplace. Therefore, in order to capitalise from its geographic location, the
retail organisation in Australian is required to establish intense knowledge and competencies
for recognising the opportunities within the international market. They are also required to
offer suitable goods and services to the worldwide customers and compete carefully with the
large global international retailers who will be able to get the advantages from the economies
of scale.
Recruitment and selection
The process of recruitment along with outsourcing facilities and selection is
increasingly growing all over the globe. Previously, the process of recruitment was performed
traditionally in-house, whereas now the process of recruitment outsourcing is rapidly growing
as the trend. However, the Australian retail organisation's employees have faced the unique
set of changes due to a strict labour market, pressures from the economic boundaries and
volatility after the international financial crisis. As stated by Gilani & Jamshed (2016), the
main intention of the professional strategy if recruitment and selection are to retain and attract
the appropriate number of skilled employee to offer positive experience within the
organisation and to empower the employer brand in the workforce market. Larger retail stores
in Australia such as IKEA, Tesco have HR expertise on their sites. However, in most the

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retail outlets the manager who are not completely expert in the process of recruitment
manages the recruitment process.
On the contrary, Price (2016) states that the productivity and profits of the retail store
can be directly linked to the number of people that are managing the restock. As a result of
which the early stage of recruitment is not often conducted on a face to face basis that results
in the selection of improper candidates. Apart from these, the cost associated with the
recruitment and selection process is a major problem that creates a problem for the retail
employers in Australia. In this context, there is some clear relationship between employee
engagement and HRM practices.
According to Naidoo & Gasparatos (2018) HRM theories and perspectives, retail
organisation are highly required to respond to the policies and rules given out by the
government to recognise the social legitimacy. It is the necessary role of various government
agencies for delivering public employment services in the retail organisation and other public
organisation. These agencies usually treat employers as customers by delivering the
customers with alternative channels for recruitment and a larger pool of workforce. In this
context, these agencies can offer services that are potentially significant in limiting the cost
for the employers such as ailments free for recruitments, pre-employment training for the new
workers. Therefore, these activities can easily attract the retail sectors by reducing the cost of
recruitment and selections.
Performance Management
As stated by Varsei et al., (2014), the retail sector is popularly known for its use of
flexible workforce and for its centralisation of operation at the retail organisation leading to
the reduction of the managerial autonomy at the store level. In all these sectors, food retail is
one of the largest subsectors within retails that are critically found in both size and perpetual

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terms. In this context, managing the availability of the cost and labour is the foremost part of
the performance management that is the major focus of the retailers. Sarkar, Raghavendra &
Ruparelia (2015) states that food retails usually functions on low-profit margins, that is
highly concentrated and competitive in nature leading to the reduction of costs at the time of
employment practices. However, the centralised form of key performance indicators and
budgets obligates the food retail managers. In this context, whenever, the front line service
employees are included, the teamwork in lean retailing and examined based on the individual
targets and checkout operators are supervised against the recognised benchmarks. However,
apart from the food industry, today's online shopping has turned in to a prevalent trend
through which retailers in Australia tries hard to defeat cutthroat competition to retain
customers.
Jain, Singla & Shashi (2015) states that it is the performance of the employees, which
plays a crucial role in enhancing the operating effectiveness, developing customer loyalty and
driving profits in the organisation. According to the Australian Bureau of Labour and
Statistics, almost 14.8 million people are employed in the retail industry. In this regards,
cashiers and retail sales employees were the most common occupation in the overall
economy with 3.3 million working in Australia. As stated by Nguyen et al., (2017) managing
and improving the performance of the staffs is the major challenge for the managers of the
retail organisation. The problems take places mostly during clarifying job duties, expectation
and aligning their objectives along with the priorities if the business and in keeping them
motivated to enhance the profits if business.
Moreover, retailers in the Australian economy encounters cut-throat competition
within the environment due to the tight formation of the economy, intense competition within
the market and growing expectation for higher service and outstanding experience of the
customers. Fatima & Azam, (2016) states that consumers’ enthusiasm often reaches beyond

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the retailer's expectations. Therefore, in order to manage these challenging issues, retail
managers are required to use effective strategies for enhancing the performance of the
employees and the revenue of the sales. Effective performance management can help in
driving increased customers centric services with an improved store performance and help in
aligning objectives with the organisation.
Therefore, it can be said that having the approaches in the appropriate place to assist
the performance activities and to recognise standard performers, proper performance
management strategies are required. Moreover, in order to quantify the establishment needs
of the workforce, it is necessary for the entire retail service to motivate the workforce from
the part employees to operations and management workers to balance the performance.
Motivation rewards and compensation
The contemporary retail business consists of manufacturers, distributes, retail
managers and final consumers. The manufacturers are responsible for developing the
products and provide supply to the distributors that are finally delivered to the customers. In
this process, with the passing time, researchers have identified that leadership styles and
different activities such as motivation, rewards and compensation to the employees have an
influence on the strategic priorities and application of the formal system of control. In this
according to, King, Svensson & Wei (2017), utilising the effect transformational leadership
style on the comprehensive retail organisation, rewards system and compensations provisions
has a high influence on the managerial performance. These predictions suggested that
intrinsic and extrinsic process of motivation, rewards system has an ability to inspire the
employees thereby helping in higher managerial performance within the retail organisation.
As stated by Patel, Guedes & Pearce (2017) it is the challenging environment of sales
within the retail sector, which focuses on the developing sustainable relationship with the
consumers. In this context, it can be said that, since the sales workforce within the retail has a

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strong relationship between the organisation and business consumers, it is necessary for the
workforce to be sufficiently motivated to achieve the objectives successfully.
On the contrary, Meacham et al., (2017), argued that the necessary motivation of the
studies on the employee motivation is that they have treated intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
as the international constructs. It is the world-wide nature of retail sales person’s intrinsic and
extrinsic method of motivation that becomes a hindrance in recognising the phenomenon of
relationship with other factors such as management control and performance of the employee.
For instance, behavioural motivation may influence the effective dimension but not the
psychological dimensions of the employees. Therefore, in order to manage the employees and
make them work in an effective way, employers are needed to set up a system of control
within the organisation to provide the employees, with compensation, rewards and
procedures to monitor, direct and motivate the employees. These, the system of control will
help the organisation to enhance the performance and in the achievements of the
organisational objective.
Employee turnover and retention
The retail industry continues to be the central point of the sense of community and a
potential driver of innovation. The industry continues to serve the public by offering access
to the market for the manufacturers, access to goods and services for the consumers and most
importantly, it provides a social experience for the country. However, Oosthuizen, Coetzee &
Munro (2016) states that the industry has undergone a significant transformation for
responding to broader changes that are evident in the society, technology and economy.
Retail expenditure increased in the dollar since the global financial crisis, but the rate of
nominal turnover is seen to be at more than 3% in the year 2012, that is lower than the first
half of the decade.

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Research in these context shows that factors are such lack of motivation, low wages
of the employees, bad working shifts and dead-end job design with a less change for career
establishment are leading to employee turnover in retail sectors. However, Tian & Gamble
(2016) states that the retail industry offers a prior opportunity to experience the accountably
without having required to have long years of experience. Similarly, Aladwan, Bhanugopan
& D'Netto, (2015) supported this by stating that the retail sectors are starting to shed the
negative perspectives. As it calls for candidates with expertise skills, resulting in high skills
people to obtaining higher wages, secondly organisations in the retail sectors have also
started career development training and traineeship with an effort to change the positive
viewpoint and to retain highly skilled employees,
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above study, it is evident that retailers have to consistently strive
to build a strong performing labour force along with the changing environment and growing
trends of the market and for sustaining the workforce for a long period. It is evident that there
are two major areas, which are posing threats in HR recruitment, and selection in the current
retail sectors is the extensive rise for talent and consistent change in technology. With the
increase of shortage within the industry, it is turning more challenging for the employers to
seek the appropriate candidates. Therefore, the organisation need to extensively focus on
recruitment strategies and motivational strategies to attract more to standard candidates who
will be determined to grow with the organisation.

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