How You Can Use Tech To Empower Your Retail Staff

Keeping your team happy and motivated is the key to productivity and success in business. Empowerment plays an important role in ensuring your workforce feel as though they are contributing to the success of your business and not just another miscellaneous cog in the retail machine.

Technology offers businesses the chance to empower employees in more ways than ever before. Whether it’s offering up new responsibilities or giving them the chance to learn new skills and qualifications, technology can fast track empowerment opportunities in a way which was previously impossible.

Added Responsibility

Giving employees new roles on different tasks is often a sign of growing influence in the business and can be very empowering. Thanks to technology, these roles can be delegated quickly and with oversight.

Take your point of sale (POS) offering, for example, an employee might be responsible for monitoring the sales figures of specific locations. Modern POS systems also have inventory tracking functionality built-in as well. This offers the employer the chance to simply extend their responsibilities to cover this additional function on top of their existing role.

A simple move, which makes sense in terms of efficiency and gives the employee a boost in morale. A win-win situation.

Upskill Opportunities

In the digital workforce, employees need to be capable in a multitude of areas to succeed and compete for promotion opportunities. Fortunately, there is an almost unlimited amount of educational resources available online – a vast amount of these are also free to use.

Google, for example, has its own Google Analytics Academy which offers anyone the chance to learn about their best in class analytics software completely free of charge. It also rewards employees who have completed the course with their own certificate of achievement.

Finding relevant and worthwhile learning opportunities for your workforce will not only mean you have employees with improved skill-sets, but empowered ones too. It’s also worth taking on suggestions for useful courses which employees feel might benefit them in their role. This shows extra-curricular research and should be rewarded!

Remote Working

As the years go by, less people are working in an office environment. Thanks to technology, a growing number of businesses are finding that having employees work under one roof just isn’t necessary for many job roles and that some can be done from the comfort of their own homes.

Whilst this isn’t possible for every retail employee, presenting this option to those that are applicable will show you trust them to work to their full potential wherever they are. It’s a strong sign of trust which is sure to empower and motivate your employees.

Thanks to video conferencing software and Digital HR platforms, time-tracking and check-ins should not be an issue and will allow you to keep on top of your workforce, wherever they set up for the day. Did you find these tips helpful in empowering your retail staff? Let us know in the comments below!