These are challenging times for retailers as many external forces impact hiring and retention. The convenience store industry is in a tight battle for frontline talent today at a time when many new policies and standards are also being implemented.
All of this comes at a time when employees are still lukewarm about returning to the workplace, instead searching for jobs that allow them to work from home at least part-time.
Organizations must have goals to drive success and a positive corporate culture to attract top talent. However, many companies talk about wanting a certain type of culture, but their actions would make you think the opposite. The processes of how people are talked to, and decisions are made reinforce something different.
In a positive work culture, people take pride and ownership in their role with the company. There’s increased work effort, productivity and efficiency, improved teamwork, higher morale, reduced absenteeism, better overall customer experience and lower team member attrition. Culture drives competitive advantages. You can feel a positive culture when you walk in the door. It impacts how employees interact with customers.
A strong culture can also be a significant liability when not aligned with strategy. In other words, some cultures undermine their mission. Culture is a resource, and leaders should be managing it.
This leads me to a workplace study recently released by Gallup. The research firm found that employers and employees are heading for a relationship reset in 2024. This reset, in part, is being driven by changes in where and how people work. For example, in 2019, 60% of remote-capable employees spent their week working fully on-site. In 2023, that number plummeted to just 20%.
But that’s not the whole story. Gallup found that nearly five in 10 U.S. employees work fully on-site in jobs that can’t be hybrid or remote, such as the retail and hospitality industry. Gallup’s research indicates that managing employees has about four times as much influence on employee engagement and well-being as their work location.
Essentially, the relationships workers have with coworkers, managers, etc., are significantly evolving. Many organizations are radically retooling how they do business, leaving many employees, including managers, stressed and disconnected.
Consider that when Gallup asked managers what changes their organization made in 2023:
- 64% said employees were given additional job responsibilities.
- 51% cited the restructuring of teams.
- 42% reported budget cuts.
To win in 2024, Gallup said leaders should consider re-tooling their management strategies to support better the changing needs of their workforce and organizational culture. It recommended a plan for assessing and addressing the following six trends impacting business across the country:
1. Global Worker Stress Remains at a Record High. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report revealed that employee engagement is rising worldwide. While that should be considered good news, employee stress has remained at record-high levels since the pandemic. In the U.S. and Canada, employee stress is even higher, with 52% of employees reporting they experienced a lot of stress the previous day. This trend holds implications for people’s well-being at work and home, as well as their productivity and longevity.
2. Engagement Is Slowly Recovering, With Some Areas for Improvement. Employee engagement levels in the U.S. started a slow crawl in 2023 after a post-pandemic slump. But one particularly concerning trend is the decrease in employees who feel connected to their organization’s mission and purpose. This sense of connection inspires employees to go above and beyond basic job demands and push toward excellence. It also substantially boosts loyalty and retention, which is something that convenience store chains need to take notice of as they build a retention strategy.
3. Leaders Are Restoring Trust, Yet Have Much Room for Improvement. Trust in organizational leadership significantly declined since the onset of the pandemic until it started to recover in 2023. Yet, today, only 23% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they trust their organization’s leadership. According to Gallup, the hardships and disruptions of today’s new world of work have created headwinds for leaders. However, when leaders communicate clearly, lead and support change and inspire confidence in the future, 95% of employees say they fully trust their leaders.
4. Managers Are Getting Squeezed. Few retail businesses are as difficult to manage as a convenience store. Between foodservice, gasoline, employees and inventory management, c-stores are complex businesses. Still, Gallup found that changes to the workplace have hit managers especially hard. In 2023, managers were more likely than non-managers to be disengaged, burnt out and job hunting. They were also more likely to feel like their organization doesn’t care about their well-being and to say that they’re struggling with work-life balance.
These manager struggles are bad news for C-stores because they trickle down to their teams. Managers serve as crucial connectors for team collaboration and effectiveness, accounting for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. The manager squeeze largely comes from increased responsibilities and navigating numerous organizational changes. Gallup research shows that many managers have more work to do on a tighter budget with new teams.
What’s certain is that managers will need more training and support to lead effectively in today’s new work environment riddled with new expectations for managers.
5. Understanding the Hybrid Work Strategy. This is impossible for frontline convenience store employees, but the takeaway here is that these jobs exist, and your employees are likely looking for one of them. Since mid-2022, work location trends for the U.S. workforce have largely stabilized, which implies that most employees are currently working where they expect to be working for the foreseeable future. But given that hybrid work has become the norm for remote-capable workers, retailers could risk losing good people to allure working from-home offers. Gallup suggested employers focus a little more on creating a compelling workplace value proposition for employees who work onsite to make them feel valued.
6. Hybrid Culture Can Be Great — If Done Right. This applies more to corporate employees working at headquarters. Gallup found that hybrid work offers the advantages of a more flexible work environment while posing some unique challenges.
In terms of advantages, hybrid workers have higher engagement, better overall well-being and lower turnover risk than fully on-site remote-capable workers, which is also good for business. Leaders and managers tend to recognize these benefits and report that hybrid work has reduced burnout, improved retention and expanded talent pools in their organization.
At the same time, working apart more often and on different schedules creates new obstacles, Gallup reported.
Organizations planning to move forward with a hybrid strategy for the long term must fully commit to how they best communicate, collaborate, build relationships and nurture their work culture.
When we finally come out on the other end of these economic doldrums, we’ll find — as in downturns past — that it will not be the big businesses that devour the small or even the fast who outdistance the slow. The focused and flexible will outmaneuver and outlast the unfocused and inflexible. Decide which one you want to be going forward.
Elie Y. Katz is the CEO and president of National Retail Solutions (NRS).