UK high street closures are having a big impact on the low-end job
market, but they could have a surprisingly beneficial effect on so-so
standards of service in UK shops.
January sales are up by 1.1 per cent on a like-for-like basis compared to
this time last year, according to the latest British Retail Consortium figures.
But this was driven by growth in food as non-food, especially clothing and footwear, fell away.
As shoe retailer Stylo and sportswear brand JJB Sports fight to salvage anything from the administrators, Tesco is rumoured to be planning a rival to online fashion success story ASOS. More telling is the fact that its multi-storey Liverpool store was inundated with job applicants on opening.
Retailing has long been plagued by more jobs than there are people to fill them. As a result, staff churn rates have in some cases been over 100 per cent per year. That means most of the people employed in a store this year have no idea what was going on there last year. The potential consequences for strategy continuity and cost of training aren’t difficult to figure out.
With a dearth of retail job opportunities, existing staff may think twice about moving on and think more about what they can do to keep their store in the black and off the blacklist.
Fraud and wastage — usually the work of disgruntled staff — may be on the wane. In the past, fraudulent employees might have found new jobs with ease. But it may be more difficult for organised criminals to place their own people in retail businesses now there are much fewer job vacancies.
Meanwhile, smart college leavers joining the workforce are unlikely to be satisfied with a job that goes nowhere and offers no prospects chances to learn. Retailers that want to differentiate their service should recognise this as an opportunity to buck the high-churn trend and invest in employees.
The upshot of the recession, for those retailers that manage to stay afloat, could be stores that are more secure and staffed by experienced workers who are committed to making them a success — which any retailer worth their salt will agree is one of the cornerstones of good retailing.
(Photo: Andallthatmalarkey, CC2.0)
