Understanding frontline retail staff engagement

What is shaping retail

Retailers and D2C brands compete across stores, apps and marketplaces. Store experience, availability and convenience decide where shoppers go next.

• Shoppers move freely between online and offline
• Store experience is a key differentiator
• Loyalty programmes and personalisation drive repeat

A fashion and footwear retailer, working in South Africa. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.

Organisation

A fashion and footwear retailer

Sector

Retail

Team engaged

Market Research

Services

Quantitative research, Qualitative research, Reporting & insights

The fashion and footwear retailer faced high turnover among store staff, raising training costs and leaving stores short-staffed during busy periods. Exit records gave little insight into why people left.

• Deliver on the brief: understanding frontline retail staff engagement.
• Understand the views, needs and behaviour of staff.
• Measure how widespread each pattern is, and explain the reasons behind it.
• Give the client evidence it can act on within 7 weeks.

The work focused on 2,000 staff.

• staff2,000

Audiences we typically reach in retail

ShoppersStore staff and managersOnline customersLoyalty membersFranchisees

Coverage: South Africa. Market: South Africa. 150 stores covered.

• South Africa

A mixed-method design: structured research measured how widespread each pattern was, and qualitative conversations explained why.

1. 1Brief
2. 2Anonymous staff survey
3. 3Store manager interviews
4. 4Insight

We ran an anonymous survey of store staff in English, isiZulu and Afrikaans, covering scheduling, pay, management, training and career prospects, and interviewed store managers about staffing challenges. Results were reported by region and store size only where groups were large enough to protect anonymity.

Quantitative researchQualitative researchReporting & insights

staff

2,000

• Qualitative participants were recruited purposively to cover the full range of experiences that mattered, rather than for statistical representation.

• Interviews and discussions were led by experienced moderators using a guide agreed with the client.

• Recordings and transcripts for every session
• Re-screening of qualitative recruits
• Logic and range checks on the final data
• Work carried out under our ISO 20252 quality procedures

• Cross-tabulation by key groups and locations
• Significance testing on the differences that mattered
• Thematic coding of interviews and discussions
• Journey and decision mapping

• Unpredictable rosters that changed at short notice were the strongest driver of turnover, especially for staff with family responsibilities or second jobs.

Predictable schedules improved retention more than small pay increases.

• Build on the core insight: predictable schedules improved retention more than small pay increases.
• Focus effort where the evidence was strongest: unpredictable rosters that changed at short notice were the strongest driver of turnover, especially for staff with family responsibilities or second jobs.
• Re-measure after the changes to confirm the effect.

• The retailer introduced rosters published two weeks ahead and a shift-swap system, and turnover fell.

What changed in the business as a result of the work. Impact is described qualitatively.

• Insight report and management presentation
• Cleaned data file and data tables
• Interview summaries and key verbatims

• Repeat the measure after changes are in place to track progress.
• A natural follow-on question: are stores delivering the brand standard?