Power to the People
For many retailers a huge proportion of their collective brainpower resides in their stores, which when coupled with the proximity of those individuals to the customer, would suggest a perfect breeding ground for sales generating and money saving ideas. The reality for many retailers however is that policies that govern the way stores operate are generally created by head office, with at best a store presence on central working groups.
21 December 2005
Publication
“Capgemini outlook: Power to the people
James Lowther, head of retail, Capgemini, on driving change by empowering staff on the shop floor
For many retailers a huge proportion of their collective brainpower resides in their stores, which when coupled with the proximity of those individuals to the customer, would suggest a perfect breeding ground for sales generation and money saving ideas. The reality for many retailers however is policies that govern the way stores operate are generally created at head office with, at best, a store presence on central working groups.
What’s wrong with driving top-down change into stores? The first issue is the ability to identify the root causes of problems in stores. Symptoms are easy enough to identify, for example, lack of compliance to company processes, but the reason for that lack of compliance is only evident in store. Even if issues can be identified centrally, when new processes are dictated to stores they can often lead to de-motivation and ultimately encourage more non-compliance.
Some retailers are finally realising this approach is not working. New operational procedures must be developed from the bottom up in order to obtain true shop floor engagement. As one recent client stated: “We can no longer enforce changes in-store because within months, our shops are back to the old way of working”.
One way to initiate bottom-up change in an organisation is to select a small group of stores representative of the store portfolio in terms of size, customer type and performance. These stores are a controlled environment in which store teams can be given the freedom to throw away the rule book and start to develop solutions to issues they know are driving inefficiency or poor customer service. These solutions can be validated across a wider group of stores and with central stakeholders before being implemented across the entire store portfolio.
However, new solutions don’t guarantee sustainable change. To embed new working procedures, store staff must understand where responsibilities lie and be equipped with the skills required to deliver on set goals. Another critical component to sustainable change is a balanced performance measurement framework for store and regional managers to use to identify and respond to future operational issues.
Bottom-up change helps staff form a clear idea of what is expected of them, what role each employee plays in the overall store team, and what the implications are of not complying to set processes. It delivers a mechanism by which ongoing change, a key component of a successful retail strategy, can be managed. It creates a closer link between head office’s need for continual progress and stores’ capacity to deliver this. But most importantly, it establishes this mind set in store: “If the task I am doing is not helping my customer, then why am I doing it?””
