0 Likes
The fact that Indian retail industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the country is no secret. And with the pace and scale of growth comes the challenges and opportunities associated with it.
One of the biggest among these opportunities and challenges we have today is talent. India, with a median age of 28 years (according to 2020 census) has one of the largest talent pools for any industry. However, managing employee turnover has become a major challenge for many retail companies in India.
High employee turnover can lead to increased costs, decreased productivity, and a negative impact on customer satisfaction. To manage employee turnover effectively, it is important for retail companies to understand the reasons for turnover and implement strategies to reduce it.
Reliance Retail has a four-dimensional strategy to help the company build a strong relationship with its employees, to help them realise their career aspirations. These levers help organisations improve job satisfaction and build a progressive and inclusive work environment.
Career Growth
To drive Capability Building and Career Progression across the Employee Life Cycle, an organisation should inspire a pull-based learning culture in which employees are provided with multiple opportunities and mediums to learn and build their capabilities. The full spectrum of development across multiple phases of an employee’s life enables horizontal, vertical, and diagonal career growth for our employees.
Programmes like Step-up – A role-based career aspiration lead program curated as a learning journey to develop identified talent pool through structured assessment and training – should be encouraged. The Step-up programme is successfully managed across Store Operations and enabling functions to build a strong talent pipeline across the verticals for employees to move up the ladder.
To ensure that employees gain a wide range of experiences across functions, channels and formats, organisations such as Reliance Retail encourage diagonal mobility. Initiatives like cross-spring are focused towards making employees ready for career options across functions and businesses. Employees can choose their career moves and this then gets assigned to similar programmes at central and format levels.
Similarly, WE – a women leader programme – is designed as a focused and structured leadership programme for high-potential women at mid- level, helping them to become a powerful contributor to long-term corporate success. These virtual modules have multiple elements including structured webinars, real-time assignments, internal mentoring programme, and nudge calls.
The CEO Trailblazer Program is an eight-month long learning programme, designed to give an opportunity to a select, qualified group of employees to learn first-hand from the senior leaders in the organisation. This unique programme is intercepted with classroom sessions, experiential learnings, and project work both individual and group. The participants in the programmes proved better than their counterparts in the subsequent assessments/development centres.
Capability Development
While business learning academies help manage the immediate and long-term capability requirement for the store and field operations, specialised COEs help build targeted and future focused skills.
Functional Capability Academy identifies the potential successors across all the levels, and develops them for the next level roles with a certification programme. They will be considered as successors through an internal talent marketplace platform.
Future Skills Academy enables building hardcore tech and functional capabilities on the latest technology and behavioural requirements keeping in mind the future trends evolving in retail and beyond. The academy allows the employees to expand the horizon on growth and implementation of business strategies in line with future changes.
Coaching on demand platform helps drive a coaching culture within the organisation by democratising coaching. To enable the same, we have built a pool of certified internal coaches who provide need based coaching support in three stages – performance coaching, succession coaching and transition coaching.
Technology-enabled learning: We endeavour to facilitate individual and organization growth by democratising learning. To enable learning without constraints of space or time, we channelised our automated learning programs on our LMS, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera and curated relevant VILT programs, to encourage employees in transitioning to the new learning paradigm.
Micro-learning modules such as Micro Reels empowers the learners with quick on-demand learning in the form of infographics, short format videos, and podcasts.
Chatbot based offerings informs employees of relevant trainings based on their requirements and aptitude.
Care for Employees’ Health
The R-Swasthya programme focuses on ensuring physical wellbeing of our employees, under which hospital tie-ups were done across different geographies, including Tier-II and Tier-III cities, so that proper medical care can be extended to our employees and their family members. Also, Reliance Employee and Family Emergency Response Service (REFERS) is our 24*7 Medical Emergency services strengthened to provide medical support to our employees during any medical exigency.
An initiative called “SPRING (Success through Positivity and Resilience through Inner Growth) focuses on building emotional & mental wellbeing through an ongoing series of workshops on positive thinking habits & wellness.
Respect for Diversity
Our flagship initiatives ‘Jagriti’ and ‘Pragati’ was designed for the women employees to help them move to managerial roles in store, warehouse, and field operations. These programs helped women employees to break the mental barriers, inhibitions and instil a sense of self-belief.
There is conscious and consistent effort to support and drive gender diversity and inclusion by the businesses. Some of the practices include – ‘All Women Stores’ and Women-Led Stores, led by women store managers.
‘Project Sakhi’ is an initiative towards reinforcement of safety, hygiene and well-being of women store employees. Two Sakhi’s (women employees) are identified per store for other women working in the stores to reach for help/support and guidance.
‘SHE Box’ is an initiative keeping in view the Health & Wellness of our Women Store Employees. Most of our stores have a ‘SHE box’ consisting of Sanitary pads, Sewing needle & thread and Safety pins under the custody of senior women employees at respective stores.
Managing employee turnover is a challenge for many retail companies in India including us at Reliance. However, by understanding the reasons for turnover and implementing effective strategies with employees at the heart of it has helped us reduce turnover and improve overall employee satisfaction. These initiatives have not only helped us increase productivity, but also help reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction. We believe retail companies that invest in their employees and provide a positive work environment will be more successful in retaining top talent and achieving long-term success in the competitive Indian retail industry.
Ajin Pisharody is a seasoned Talent Development professional with over 15 years of experience in core L&D function. He is an XLRI Alumnus and has worked in multiple industries ranging from Hospitality, Real Estate to Pharmaceuticals. Currently he is associated with Reliance Retail as General Manager – Learning & Development in the Talent Transformation team. He is passionate about Learning & Talent Management technologies & using the same to build unparalleled talent experience.
Your email address will not be published.
