Shopping malls are mushrooming everywhere. More foreign labels are coming to Malaysia. Not that I can afford them but the sight of their stores decorating our city landscape is a testimony of our country’s economic boom.

Retail business is huge. One just needs to read the successful story of Walmart to understand the great potential of this business. In case you are not aware, Walmart is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores and is currently the world’s largest public corporation by revenue, according to the 2007 Fortune Global 500.

Retail business needs 3 important ingredients: place, products and people. Before a store is officially open to the public, place and products are resolved. However, people is an “ingredient” that you cannot determine as it has its “life” of its own. You may have them the first day of your store opening but can quickly lose them the next day and this is a usual trend in the retail business. If you are not convinced, take a walk to the latest malls in town – the Pavilion and the Gardens. Notices of job openings are displayed as permanent fixtures on their beautiful glass doors.

As most sales positions do not require much qualification, many do not see a bright career prospect in this industry. Getting people to be interested in retail is indeed a challenge. Long hours and working on weekends are unavoidable. The boom in other industries such as IT and Telco did not help either as school leavers do not consider retail as their number one job wanted list. It is a REAL headache to many retailers!

Retail owners understand the risk of not having enough or the right people to man their store – poor customer service leads to poor sales results and eventually affects staff morale which in turn increases staff turnover. How to end this vicious cycle?

Thus, it came as no surprise that the Human Resource or Recruitment Department of retail companies have their hands full with filling up vacancies the whole year round. Openings are aplenty and the list never seems to get shorter. Besides posting jobs at Allyhunt, a retailer needs to have a proactive human capital plan in place that supports a staff retention strategy.

The following are some of the ideas tried out by some reputable retailers over the years. Perhaps the HR Practitioners may find some tips here as they review their strategies.

• Commission structure has to be attractive to motivate sales staffs to earn as much as they can as though the sky is the limit.

• Provide lots of staff empowerment. Let them be the ones that come out with new ideas on how to decorate the store and promotion ideas. Besides instilling a sense of belonging, their ideas may actually be much better!

• Give other non-financial rewards – flexi working hours, traveling, discounted price for own store purchases and etc.

• To curb staff turnover, try recruiting retired and elderly people for a change (by the way, we would have more of this category of people in 10 -20 years from now thus easing the recruitment process). Walmart has tried it!

• Invest in on-going team building and customer service trainings.

• Build and promote employer branding by getting potential candidates to perceive your company as a great place to work!

• Securing the right people is ultimately the most important strategy. Who are the ones that fit the bill? Retail business is about customer service and teamwork. Get people who enjoy working directly with customers and those who hold on to the working philosophy: “Serving people as a way of life.”

To have a successful retention strategy is always a big plus. However, not many employers seem to invest enough time to measure the losses of replacing and costs of recruiting new staffs to consider the need for a solid staff retention plan. It is the long term answer and it will not only help retailers to have good staffs gravitate to them but a definite increase in sales revenue.

Now, with this crazy pre-Christmas shopping period, where to get people? A short-term answer is “Part-timers”. Can you hear the retailers shouting, “School leavers, where are you?”?