Everyone knows that running an efficient Retail business is about maximizing every available resource.

Do you want to improve the productivity of your retail staff?

If the answer is “Yes”, then, the question you should ask yourself about staff Productivity is, whether you want them to work more or to achieve more.

I strongly believe that most of you will be interested in results, so specialization is the key here. Thus, to increase the productivity of your retail employees, make sure to focus on the below five practical tips:

1- Track the performance of your employees

Conduct regular employee evaluations. This way, everybody stays on the right track, and you get to redirect if you need to.

What I would suggest you do is to keep a performance record. This will help you quickly see how your employees and department are performing all the time.

Keeping track of​ employee performance and behavior will make it very easy to see who your best employees and teams are, and especially, it is useful in boosting competition between various teams and helps increase the productivity of your staff.  Based on the reports, you can actually decide who deserves recognition and who needs coaching or training for improvement.

Trackstar is a great software that you can use to customize your rating scales and manage your performance expectations.

2- Give constructive feedbacks

It is important to give regular feedback about employee performance but without hurting your employees’ feelings. Remember, engaged employees are more productive. They provide impetus towards shared vision, values, and goals.

When you energize your employees to perform at their peak the impact on performance at individual and team levels is higher and this directly benefits your bottom line and profit. To be engaged in your future vision, the employee needs to feel wanted. They need to know that their contribution is valued and that they are helping the organization reach its goals.

The problem arises​ when you provide no feedback as employees feel ignored, and when someone feels ignored, they feel unimportant. And feeling unimportant develops a tendency to not work and thus, results in a decrease in productivity. Thus, feedback is important; even negative feedback is much better than no feedback. Set clear expectations for your employees.

You can use tools such as 15five to survey your employees or set different surveyors for different employees. You can align everyone to share the same business goals and offer constructive feedback.

3- Equip your employees with tools

In this new world of technology, messaging has become one of the most popular methods of communication and providing information to one another and it is how nowadays a lot of people prefer talking with one another. This is the reason why businesses are developing chatbots that you can message and talk to as if they were human and ask your queries.

More and more businesses are using them for online customer service to resolve issues and answer simple questions. Choose ​an AI chatbot platform​ that can play the role of virtual counters and speed up the billing process. If you are not building a chatbot, you are already behind.

4- Ensure effective communication within organization

In the world of retail, communication is essential to ensure everyone is on the same page, which leads to better productivity and improved store execution.

If you run a fleet of stores, you need tools to communicate effectively with your employees across those stores. This is where software geared towards retailers comes in. A favorite among retail giants is Zipline. It aligns HQ, managers, field leaders and engages associates in an effective way. Zipline automates manual processes, sends personalized content to individual users, reminds teams of the work that needs to be done, and provides easy reporting into execution for an entire organization.

Effective communication is key to retail store success. With the help of the right tools, it can enhance problem-solving skills, help your staff communicate and collaborate to address changes, resolve differences and explore potential solutions.

5- Set-up Training Programs For Employees

Training and development of employees are crucial for improving performance and productivity. More than ever in today’s work environment it is extremely important that you train and develop your workforce and that includes yourself as a leader or a manager or business owner.

You should take a ​proactive approach​ towards training and developing your employees not reactive. Training delivers information that people will use in their jobs. It builds competencies, the knowledge, skills and abilities that employees need. Development refers to the experience that makes people better. It is a tool for increasing organizational productivity, excellence and health.

Thus, training and development increases employee engagement and helps employees and organizations perform their best.

Final Thoughts 

Productivity is talked about so much that a lot of us just zone out when we hear it but it is vital to understand how important employee productivity is for your organization.

Your company relies on employee productivity to keep labor costs down and to keep profits up. A google and finality joint survey found that the average worker loses 2 hours and 12 minutes per day to poor communication.

Make sure to add clear directions for your employees. Thus, set a vision of where the company wants to be and couple that with a set of milestones and objectives for your people so everyone is clear about what they are supposed to be doing. That is an incredibly powerful weapon to increase the productivity for your staff.

The post Top 5 Ways to Maximize The Productivity of Your Retail Staff   appeared first on TaskQue.