An Adaptive Workforce: Retail
Welcome to the first of a new series we are calling “An Adaptive Workforce”. In this series of blogs we will be writing about different workforces and the industries their skills and transfer of training are best matched to. This week, we are starting with retail.
The retail industry has been hit hard due to the Covid lockdowns, forcing stores to cease storefront trading. This in turn has had a massive impact on the store and the workforce they employ.
Just this week it was announced that Paperchase, the popular highstreet stationary and card chain, were heading towards administration. The BBC reported that Paperchase has 127 stores across the UK, with roughly 1,500 employees. Paperchase is just the latest of retailers to announce their difficulties, Arcadia Group, the company that owns Topshop and Dorothy Perkins, has also gone into administration, seeing 13,000 jobs put into jeoprady.
Therefore, the UK will now see a rise in unemployment, eager to get back into work. With this being the case, and few retailers now recruiting, what skills do these workers possess and which roles would they thrive in? And how can you test for such skills?
Characteristics Common Amongst Retail Workers
Whilst not everyone employed in retail will possess the same skills, it is likely that those that have been employed in that sector for a prolonged period of time would have been shaped by the surroundings and training in a certain way.
Here are some of the subscales that are commonly prevalent across candidates with a retail background.
Altruism
In order to provide great customer service in retail it is essential to be altruistic. Even when performing a task, it is essential to always be aware of nearby customers who may require assistance. Some customer related tasks may be described as “Going the extra mile”, but we tend to just call this “Altruism”.
You can check to see if a candidate was effective as customer service by asking to see if they have a customer feedback report, or any previous instances of appraisal around customer service.
Altruism is one of the subscales of the Agreeableness personality trait in The Big Five. The Altruism subscale depicts a person’s need to exist for the benefit of others, i.e. helping and teaching others. A person who scores highly in Altruism is incredibly likely to help and support others, often going out of their own way in order to do so.
Self-Discipline
In a retail scenario staff will often find themselves pulled from pillar to post, even though they have likely been designated a task to perform in a certain time frame.
Even when moving between various tasks, they are able to maintain their focus on their key goal, revisiting the task whilst also ensuring they are helping their team and customers.
Self-discipline is a subscale of Conscientiousness. Self-discipline is a skill that will be required for any job, in any industry. The ability to keep working and keep your focus even when distractions present themselves. This sub-scale really helps to show how well an individual is able to motivate themselves to keep working and can be even more important if the role requires work that can be seen as repetitive.
Cheerfulness
In retail it can be important to be an open and engaging character, therefore being able to communicate and create dialogue with customers, in all to aid towards building a “shopping experience”. This can help customers to feel like they are making a personal connection with the employees of the shop.
The cheerfulness subscale falls under the Extraversion category in The Big Five. Whilst being classified as an extravert is not essential to performing well in a retail environment, cheerfulness is certainly an important subscale when considering customer service.
Now it is simply a matter of matching these skills with new industries and roles that will require these traits in order to perform.
Redeploying Retail Workers
Retail workers have an abundance of skills, and whilst they were garnered in a retail setting, they are easy to apply to new industries and job roles.
Customer / Supplier Relations
Having worked in a public facing role for a prolonged period of time, retail workers often possess great interpersonal skills and therefore are able to utilise a great deal of charm and etiquette. An approach like this can be brilliant for a role that involves interacting with customers, suppliers or really any stakeholder!
Working within supplier and customer relations can involve having upbeat characteristics as well as conflict resolution skills, this is important for building rapport and a good relationship.
Sales
Sales can be a role where a huge variety of characters can be effective, with a variety of different sales approaches often proving successful. However, utilising a great degree of self-discipline and cheerfulness can be “infectious”, positive traits. If you are a character that people buy into, they will be more inclined to hear your pitch.
Many retail positions may have an element of sales to it already, therefore making the training process easier to grasp.
How We Redeploy
At Inpsyght Consultancy we test for Altruism, Self-Discipline and Cheerfulness by using MAP. MAP is based upon the Five Factor Model, testing for all 5 scales, including all 25 subscales.
Using this test, we are able to see just how high or low a candidate scores in many personality characteristics, including the previously mentioned traits. With this we can cross reference these skills to the new industry to understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
To learn more about the psychometric tests we provide, use the following link: https://www.inpsyght.co.uk/solutions/
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