Deloitte produces recent report: Driving profitability through your store associates: The make or break factor for retailers.

Report summary:-

Retailers are facing unprecedented pressures caused by the prolonged uncertainty of today’s economic environment. To respond to these challenges, they might be tempted to try and do more with less, which often translates into taking labor hours out of stores and/or cutting store employee development and other related “people” programs. This kind of response can lead to a general weakening of employee skills, which in turn can limit the organization from creating the kind of differentiation needed to keep customers.

Since your store employees have the first and last interaction with your customers nearly every day, what are some of the things retailers should consider doing to help make sure those interactions drive positive performance at the store level?

From a human capital perspective, retailers can use a variety of strategies to increase company profitability. In our latest report, Driving profitability through your store associates: The make or break factor for retailers, we review three major strategies that retailers should consider undertaking:

* Enhancing customer value through the store’s employees
* Creating and growing employee engagement with the retail organization
* Improving the quality of the work environment, or the “employee experience”

Improving the customer-employee relationship is a huge opportunity for retailers to drive sales and positively impact financial performance.

To stay ahead of the competition, savvy companies will need to strike the right balance of continuing to invest in their people, while simultaneously making the right decisions about other cost-cutting initiatives.

Extract of report's charts:-









Click here for Deloitte's full report