How can I better utilise my in-store staff?

Getting the best out of your store staff is no easy task, but it’s an important one. After rent, labour makes up the highest proportion of retail costs for store-based retailers so getting the best possible return on investment is crucial.

Riccardo Basile, director at consultancy AlixPartners, says it’s not just about reducing staff numbers. “It’s all about maximising the return on investment in staff by making best use of the sales people you’ve got,” he says.

One way to improve your use of staff resources is to ramp up staff numbers during periods of high traffic. Basile says aligning labour to traffic can increase conversion by two to three percentage points.

“It may sound obvious, but it does not happen in every store due to a variety of reasons. Planning labour more scientifically leads to higher sales, which is very important in this environment,” he says.

He adds that better parity between labour and traffic can be achieved using traffic counters, although sophisticated software isn’t needed. “We have helped many clients realise improvements simply by using Excel,” he says.

The other important factors are training and clarity on what is expected from sales assistants. Basile says: “Investment in training is great, but you need clarity on the top two or three things you’d like your assistants to do differently following their training. And measure it to see if you are achieving the returns you expect.”

Another area ripe for improvement is improving back-office processes so costs are cut, enabling reinvestment in customer-facing roles.

As Basile says: “There are big opportunities, and they can be easily unlocked once you have good information and clear goals.”