IMRA confab to address labor shortage; keeping valued employees tests retailer's creativity - International Mass Retail Association

Discount Store News, Feb 12, 1990

IMRA Confab to Address Labor Shortage

Keeping Valued Employees Tests Retailers' Creativity

SAN FRANCISCO -- How to attract and retain high-quality employees is a leading concern for many discounters planning to attend the seventh annual Human Resources and Store Operations conference sponsored here by the International Mass Retail Association.

Over a three-day period, from Feb. 14 to 16, this topic and others will be discussed at the conference held at the Hyatt Regency. The program includes morning sessions with guest lecturers, plus daily sessions on such topics as workplace ethics, taking the time for training, effective internal communication, substance abuse and employee incentive programs.

The key topic, however, is the ongoing retail labor shortage. The depletion of workers, particularly minimum wage earners, has forced many chains to come up with creative approaches to making the most of their employees.

"We continue to have a concern about the shrinking labor market," said James O'Neil, director of employee relations and personnel services for Philadelphia-based Clover. Combined with this problem, he said are pressures to increase productivity and customer service, requests for child care and child leave provisions, and pressure to raise the in-store wage levels.

At Clover, many of these issues are now being addressed. Wage levels, for instance, are now determined by the job market conditions of an individual region, which O'Neil said "has helped us to be more effective with the payroll dollars we have."

The chain is also trying to be more flexible with employee benefits, and is considering such options as child care benefits, fixed scheduling based on employee preferences, and premium pay for inconvenient time slots.

Target, Minneapolis, has already switched its stores to a more flexible staffing approach, letting employees have more input on hours worked and benefits, while also trying to better match people to specific jobs, said Susan De Nuccio, vp, stores and distribution personnel.

While this approach has been in the stores for three years, De Nuccio said the discounter just recently instituted Target University. First tested this past fall, the university provides all store level employees with a day-long training session taught by Target's top store managers. Two themes are the focus: the corporate culture and background of Target; and the expectations of customers and how to provide top customer service.

Menu of Benefits

At Green Bay, Wis.-based ShopKo, the chain is trying to keep its employees happy by offering a menu of benefits, since what is appealing to one employee may not be for another, said vp, human resources David Liebergen.

"It isn't the dollars any more. It's how they're treated, how they feel about their job, how accommodating we are to their needs and how consistent we are with our delivery; and every store is different," said Liebergen.

ShopKo spends considerable time and dollars to understand what its employees in each market want, and the company also passes on this worker-concerned approach to its store managers via seminars, he said.

"Once upon a time we were looking for a single solution, but today it's really a matter of identifying your [work force] population and saying let's try it all," agreed Gerald Fitzgerald, vp, personnel at Secaucus, N.J.-based Jamesway. The chain not only emphasizes understanding the employee needs in different markets, but also the varied personnel needs of the groups of people making up those markets.

This means Jamesway now looks at the requirements of students, older workers, employees with families and other types of classifications, explained Fitzgerald.

In addition to the store-level labor issues, retailers are also facing a shrinking labor pool at the management level. There is a growing credibility problem among college graduates as well, Clover's O'Neil noted. He said the recent financial woes of such retail conglomerates as Campeau, and a generally bad reputation that retailers have for overworking poorly paid middle managers has helped contribute to the overall negative perception. "We [retailers] are not very popular on campus these days," O'Neil said.