3 Do's and Don'ts For Empowering Your Retail Employees

By Bob Phibbs

Updated November 29, 2024

How you treat your retail employees can significantly impact your company.

Attitudes and behaviors are largely determined by how employees feel about the person they work for and the training they've received from the company. If you treat employees like disposables, they’re likely to return the favor.

If you invest the time and effort to treat each one like a valued team member, they’ll feel empowered to invest the time and effort to build a career with your business.

Here are three things to do and three not to do to manage and empower your employees successfully.

Do: Keep it Personal

Convey important information regarding their employment in person. This applies especially to tough situations like firing, transferring, demoting, or laying off an employee; have the guts to tell them to their face. It also goes for the easy stuff, like complimenting them on a great job, helping out with an order, or coming in on their day off.

Don’t Phone it in

Employers have gotten lazy about communicating with employees. They rely on email, text messages, and phone calls to deliver news that should be handled in person. Unless there are extreme circumstances (the employee is a perceived threat or harassment has been reported, they’ve created a workplace disruption, etc.), there’s no reason you can’t personally deliver the news—good or bad.

Do: Utilize their Potential

Keep your employees engaged and motivated by giving them more challenging tasks and greater responsibilities. An employee who feels like he’s wasting his time at your business is right—one way or the other. Boredom and laziness are contagious habits. If you allow them from just one of your employees, more will likely follow.

Don’t Expect the Impossible

If you’re doing your hiring and employee training correctly, you should know what new hires can do before they hit the floor. Don’t expect them to have skills and training not in their resume unless you’ve provided them with proper employee training.

Do: Communicate Clearly

Do you expect employees to be able to guess what you want? Instead, lay out your goals and their responsibilities clearly and frequently. Do you want them to be on time? What is your store's dress code? Do you promote a company culture? Your business is like a ship—it’s your job to set a heading and make course corrections as often as necessary.

Don’t Pile it on

Don’t overwhelm your employees with constant changes to your standards and practices. New is fun for customers, not employees. Keep your course corrections small and manageable, or make one dramatic change like adding the best retail sales training program. Otherwise, the constant rocking may knock valuable employees overboard.

In Sum

You want to empower your employees because the more respected they feel, the more confident they feel about doing their jobs. That always translates into higher sales, lower turnover, and more profits.