Introduction
Over the years the retail industry has seen notoriously high turnovers, and there is really no surprise to it. It has been seen that more than 41 million people from the fashion retail industry has voluntarily quit their jobs in the year 2020. However, by the end of 2021, the number is estimated to see a rise to around 47 million.
The fashion retail industry has got a tendency to treat their employees as any other regular physical assets rather than human beings. However, several managers do understand that these fashion retail employees aren’t any mindless drones who would only show up for work. Any sort of employee no matter from what industry he belongs needs some sort of motivation in order to stay invested and interested in their job. Several fashion retail employees come to their jobs every day feeling just aimless. Most of them are destined to repeat the same monotonous job and just wait for their shifts to end. When all this stuff is considered, the odds get stacked up against any fashion retail business in order to retain its employees. Here in this blog, we will be discussing some great ways by which anybody can motivate any fashion retail employee. However, before we start, let us see what exactly fashion retail employee motivation is.
What Is Fashion Retail Employee Motivation?
Employee motivation especially in the fashion industry is an intrinsic drive used to put in their effort at work. In contemporary managerial terms, employee motivation is defined as the psychological forces determining a person’s actual behavior in a fashion retail organization. Most importantly, motivation is the willingness that can be helpful to expel energy in order to achieve a goal, especially when applied to a marketplace.
All the employees regardless of any industry get both satisfaction and recognition, which in turn gives the organization service, productivity, and even quality.
How Can A Fashion Retail Employee Be Motivated?
A new study completely based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs suggests that salary is the lowest determinant when it comes to the hierarchy of needs for an employee. The study also suggests that money has a limited motivating effect on a fashion retail employee, whereas recognition or praise are often considered to be a strong motivating factor. While at times it might seem unexpected, the key driver behind the motivation of an employee is recognition or rewards.
Now since we have a much better understanding of what it takes to motivate a retail employee, let us see how essential it can be to improve a fashion retail workspace.
Best Ways By Which You Can Easily Boost Morale Of Fashion Retail Employees
Try Building A Culture Of Recognition: Providing proper recognition to fashion retail employees for all their effort is the main key to their motivation. Most of the fashion retail employees thrive on recognition especially for a job well done. Recognition can come in several forms, ranging from verbal, manager to peer, peer to peer, and many more. No matter whatever type of recognition you choose, it is undoubtedly important to recognize a fashion retail employee for all their efforts. A great way of doing this is to implement a perfect company-wide recognition program. This sort of program especially includes a set of streamlined platforms enabling all employees to send recognition to one another for staying late, covering shifts, helping out one another, taking a lunch, etc. You can even start customizing your reasons in order to provide recognition on these platforms especially to stay aligned with all the core values of your company. All these recognitions can even appear on social feeds enabling employees to like and comment down. Another great way to recognize employees is to make them gather at the end of their shifts and then recognize them verbally for all their efforts. You can also ask them to recognize their peers and make sure that you encourage recognition frequently for your entire team.
Try Listening To Your Front Line Employees: One of the best things that a fashion retail manager can do is to boost the overall engagement and fashion retail morale of their employees. Most of the retail store employees are great at providing proper feedback on topics such as technological solutions, products, and even on their fellow employees. In such cases, it is the overall duty of the management team to listen and make changes accordingly. Employees are the ones who interact with the customers and they are usually well equipped and aware of all the pain points making them great resources to jump-start the process of identifying all the key areas of improvement. Your willingness to listen to your front-line employees can be helpful in two big ways. Firstly your staff can get a huge boost in morale and secondly their input can help in the positive transformation of your business.
Try Rewarding Your Fashion Retail Employees For Their Great Work: Most fashion retail employees can get highly motivated with the help of rewards. No matter whether you gift them with a bonus at the end of the month, or if you have a selection of customized rewards to choose from, your employees will always appreciate knowing that they have something or the other waiting in order to work toward. Most of the effective rewards are usually personalized by enabling a reward platform that can help them in choosing their own set of rewards. Reward platform helps in automating the process of securing special items, gift cards, vouchers, and discounts. Employees can further send points and even redeem them in order to get thousands of amazing gifts. You can further customize all your reward range with something more specific to your company. This can range from taking an extra day off, a long lunch, a company-branded shirt, and much more. Moreover, making use of such reward platforms provides the personalization that you need in order to motivate all your fashion retail employees.
Help In Encouraging Career Development: Most fashion retail employees don’t consider that their jobs in retail offer anything more than just cash in their pockets. In fact, a fashion retail job can really become a career-launching point and it is very important for your employees to understand from the very first day. Fashion retail at times can be a bit difficult and even laborious. However, if you are a manager of a fashion retail business you can have the power to reduce that stress among employees through a career development program. If your fashion retail employee sees a steady forward path, they can easily become motivated to work harder and achieve goals.
Moreover providing a clear forward path is an easy way that can easily help in motivating any fashion retail employee. You can start by clearly outlining what a career trajectory can look like in your company. Trust us it can be as simple as explaining a managerial hierarchy to them and detailing them about how a manager walks to that position in your company. In case you are looking forward to getting a highly motivated employee, you must always cater to your employee’s career development needs.
Try Setting Attainable Goals For Your Fashion Retail Employees: The fashion retail industry runs in a fast-paced and competitive environment. Therefore, it is no surprise that setting up attainable goals is a huge motivating factor for the employees of this industry. In the very first place try identifying what your company’s overall goals are. Is your key objective limited to raise your overall sales? Are you looking forward to increasing your UPT or units per transaction? Or, are you thriving to get a properly organized retail store at the end of every close?
A great way by which you can easily motivate your employees and work hard towards your company’s goal is by creating small and big competitions such that your employees can thrive to achieve them. However, it is also important to make sure that all these goals are can be easily attained, otherwise, it can turn wrong and exhaust all your employees who are already struggling with burnout.
For instance, if your company is planning to increase units per transaction, try to hold an everyday competition for all those who are working on the registers. Also, try to encourage cash operators to upsell an extra item at the register. The employee who has attained the highest units per transaction at the end of each day can get a $10 gift coupon from your store. Moreover, if your final goal is to recover your entire store before closure, try to break your employees up into different teams. Whichever team recovers most of the store by the time of closure can get a free meal, a gift card, or whatever you want to be the reward. These small competitions are a great way to get your numbers high, motivate your fashion retail employees, and keep them engaged throughout the entire day.
Try Having Regular 1:1 Meeting With Your Employees: Most of the employees especially the ones who belong to the fashion retail industry need to have a regular mode of communication with their managers in order to feel valued. Opting to have a 1:1 conversation with your employees can have several key purposes. Some of them are listed below.
- Having a 1:1 conversation helps in building a trustworthy relationship between the management and the employees.
- It can help in staying aligned and informed of what’s going on inside the organization.
- It helps in providing mutual feedback.
Having 1:1 meetings with your fashion retail employees can easily help in checking on their workload. It can also help in evaluating their schedule, and get feedback on their processes. Moreover, these meetings can be really good in proving feedback to the employees as well. If you are a manager, you can easily go on their performance and offer a few words of encouragement especially if you are meeting with any high performer.
Try To Make Work Schedules Readily Available For Your Fashion Retail Employees: Another frequently noted complaint among retail employees is not knowing their schedule ahead of time. Most of the fashion retail employees have families, and planning around the schedule of their children while working in the fashion retail industry might cause stress. Planning schedules at least two weeks prior can be a great stress buster for several fashion retail employees. By doing such things, you can easily prove that you are thinking about your employees and treat them more like your own people rather than just any other type of expendable resource.
Another great way to motivate them is to keep their schedules as consistent as possible. In case your employees have a general understanding of when to work and what to work, they can also plan their schedule accordingly. This can be a mutually beneficial way because your company can easily notice a steep drop in shift covers, no call or no show of employees, and even calling in sick for work.
Try Surprising Your Employees: There can be times when the best way to motivate your fashion retail employees is by breaking the monotony of a day by providing a nice surprise for your employees. For instance, if you know that Sundays are always a busy day for your store, try surprising your employees with some baked goods. You can even try making them at your home, and in case you are not much of a baker you can try stopping by a nearby store and pick up a tray of cookies or even a box of donuts. A tiny gesture that can alleviate the overall stress of a busy workday can help in motivating your employees by a considerable margin.
Remember there are several ways by which you can easily surprise your employees. In case your employees had a great day, try to consider them with a day off. They at times can appreciate this reward and the overall extra time off their feet. Furthermore, if your employees have exceeded their monthly target, you can even give them a bigger surprise by taking them out for a dinner after their shift in order to congratulate all their efforts.
We really hope that all these tips and tricks have helped you by sparking some ideas in order to motivate your fashion retail employees. Remember with the proper combination of career development, recognition, and effort from the management you can easily make your fashion retail employees feel more valued and get them to stay invested in your company for a pretty long period of time.
Conclusions
We really hope that all these tips and tricks have helped you by sparking some ideas in order to motivate your fashion retail employees. Remember with the proper combination of career development, recognition, and effort from the management you can easily make your fashion retail employees feel more valued and get them to stay invested in your company for a pretty long period of time.
