We attended NRF in New York this week and made you a summary of what we think was one of the most interesting talks touching upon sensible issues for most retailers. In “Staying one step ahead” talk, Kyndryl CTO, Kayla Broussard describes the core elements that retailers should take into account when planning growth in a highly competitive landscape. In this article, we made you a recap of these core pain points along with our thoughts and recommendations that we hope will set you up for success.
How Retail Culture Drives Employee Retention & Business Success
A strong company culture is a key driver of success in the retail industry. How businesses treat their employees directly impacts retention, engagement, and overall performance. High turnover rates can be costly, with research showing that replacing an employee can cost twice as much as retaining a trained one. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. retail organizations face an average employee turnover rate of 60%.
The Role of Company Culture in Employee Retention
“Your employees are the face of your brand. They shape your identity and reputation. Providing enhanced value and a maniacal focus on culture is critical in today’s retail world. Why? Because attrition in retail is no joke.”
— Kayla Broussard
Kayla interviewed Wawa Executive Declan Forde to discuss Wawa’s employee retention strategy. Declan highlighted a key incentive: Wawa’s employee stock ownership program (ESOP). Currently, 40% of Wawa is employee-owned, allowing workers at all levels to participate in stock action programs and decision-making processes. This fosters a sense of ownership, engagement, and long-term commitment among employees.
Declan explains:
“When working as a team, we are 70% more effective—just like geese flying together, we go further.”
The Impact of Employee Recognition Programs
Wawa also prioritizes employee recognition programs to boost morale and foster teamwork. Employees celebrate each other’s achievements with small rewards, such as coffee cups, hoodies, or personalized gifts. Declan emphasizes that the true value lies not in the prize itself, but in creating a culture where every success is acknowledged and celebrated.
Salesfloor’s Insights on Employee Engagement & Recognition
At Salesfloor, we’ve seen similar trends among our clients. Employees seek recognition, empowerment, and rewards to stay motivated. Our platform enables retailers to:
✅ Empower sales associates with personalized Storefronts and Lookbooks.
✅ Enable remote sales so associates earn commissions even on days off.
✅ Strengthen employee engagement by allowing them to build a network with local clients.
Our data shows that customer engagement and loyalty often reflect employee engagement. That’s why implementing a scalable system that promotes ownership and rewards employees is critical for long-term retail success.
Key Takeaways
- Strong company culture reduces turnover and boosts employee retention.
- Employee ownership programs foster engagement and long-term commitment.
- Recognition programs help employees feel valued and motivated.
- Digital retail tools, like Salesfloor, empower sales associates beyond the store.
By focusing on employee satisfaction, recognition, and empowerment, retailers can create a thriving workplace that translates into higher customer satisfaction, increased sales, and a stronger brand reputation.
Scaling up
In this presentation, Wawa executive Declan Forde, explains that the quickly growing company is aware that some of the old methods are not scalable. When it comes to expansion, being able to deliver the same service quality at scale also comes hand in hand with the need of automating and implementing technology into their processes. But concretely, what does it mean for most organizations in 2025?
The first step towards enabling an aggressive growth initiative was implementing technology into their everyday operations. As he puts it, technology is an investment that is ultimately tied to their growth ambitions. They underlined 4 important areas where technology would play a pivotal role:
1. Omnichannel presence
We live in an ‘always ON’ world, customers now shop around the clock. Providing a seamless shopping experience across physical and digital touchpoints is key.
2. Automation
Adopting artificial intelligence, IOT, augmented reality, investing in conversational platforms can revolutionize many aspects of retail: Ranging from enhanced customer interactions, to inventory management, streamlined operations, all providing database precision.
3. Agility and adaptability
The ability to quickly adapt to the ever-changing market trends and consumer buying behaviors. There is always something we as retailers can improve, reshape and innovate on. It is about anticipating and preparing in regards to customer needs and wants before they even realize it. Successful retailers will do so by introducing products, services and strategies before they even realize they need them.
4. Adopting Customer-centric design
You have to be intentional about your customer wants and needs and their pain-points. You need to remove friction while creating the personalized connection they crave. Define what your customers can expect from you and what makes you unique and what experience do you promise? What makes them want to buy more or spend more and keep coming back to you versus your competitors for more.
Our thoughts
As a technology used by many big box retailers, Salesfloor is a software dedicated to resolving these common issues that come with growth or managing a large number of stores. Common pain points for retailers with multiple branches is that they seek to maintain the human connection while also automating and centralizing databases to get a better understanding of their customers needs and wants.
Providing a seamless experience between in-store and online shopping is becoming a crucial part in an expansion plan, because more and more people are now expecting the same level of personalization between their online and in-store experience. The solution Salesfloor is offering in this matter is to allow sales specialists to connect with clients by chat, SMS or video through the branch’s website along with geolocation, allowing them to engage with shoppers that are in the same geographical area as them. In parallel, we also offer a retail-specialized conversational AI, Maestro AI. Our conversational AI is specifically trained to answer shoppers in human-like conversations 24/7. This allows retailers to deliver off-hours product suggestions based on its conversation. Salesfloor is also fully connected to the retailers’ inventory and product catalog, allowing sales representatives and conversational AI alike, to never recommend a product that is unavailable, ensuring there will not be any friction possible with shoppers.
Salesfloor also enables the creation of customer profiles through its connect widget, which allows sales representatives to have in mind clients’ preferences, past purchases history and more to help them remove all the guesswork when recommending products to them.
In conclusion
It has become clear that in order to scale in a successful way, today more than ever, companies should seek to engage and empower their sales associates in new ways and develop a robust methodology that allows them to automate processes without compromising the human experience of shopping.
If you are interested in learning more about our omnichannel clienteling solutions, don’t hesitate to reach our sales experts
