Employee Related Factors: Causes Of Retail Shops

Introduction

Retail stores provide much of people’s daily necessities: clothing, food, furniture, etc. Although much of the retail environment helps to keep society running smoothly, most of the operations behind retail stores don’t run as that. According to CNBC, in 2013 when the economy was at rise, the average turnover rate for retail stores was 74.9%. Retail is a field that is branded by several different events such as grand openings, store failures, new products, and employee turnover (Darden, Hampton & Boatwright, 1987). Employee voluntary turnover, the proportion of employees who leave an organization over a set period of time, has a negative effect on the rest of the company (Smith & Macko, 2014). The most common complaints among

Darden et al. argues that causes of employee turnover can be categorized in to three different kinds of factors: 1) work-related factors, 2) personal factors, and 3) external factors (1987). Work related factors include pay, performance, job satisfaction, coworkers; personal factors include level of education, age, job tenure; and external factors include unemployment rates, union presence, and perceptions on employment (1987). Work-related factors tend to be the most obvious causes of voluntary turnover to employees. Factors such as pay, performance and coworkers all lead to the level of job satisfaction for the employee. Job satisfaction is typically described as the degree to which an employee is content with his or her job (Davis, Trevor & Feng, 2015). Job satisfaction is the most studied variable in studies relating to turnover rates, however, the two are not as strongly related as most people would predict (Darden, Hampton & Boatwright, 1987). These authors suggest that other factors such as organizational commitment and pay are also closely related to dissatisfaction in the workplace and turnover rates (1987). Smith and Macko back this research by also stating that the three main factors involved in turnover are external business environment such as unemployment rates, the personal element such as inter-role

Employee engagement has been a more contemporary topic in the recent years, and is based upon the employee-employer interaction (Smith & Macko, 2014). Employee engagement tends to be best when employers demonstrate they are committed to the employees by providing them with benefits and advancement opportunities, and when employees, in return, demonstrate loyalty and motivation towards the company (Smith & Macko, 2014). One problem that is typically ran in to when studying turnover is that it is hard to question an employee when they have left the company. For this reason, these researchers studied employees’ intent to leave (Smith & Macko, 2014). The researchers found that some causes to low levels of employee engagement were lack of communication from upper management, negative perception of management and employees’ lack of involvement in company decisions (2014). Other research on employee engagement suggests that there are three different types of engagement: cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, and behavioral engagement (Shuck, Twyford, Reio, & Shuck, 2014). Cognitive engagement comes from the employee’s feelings of meaning, safety (physically, mentally, and psychologically), and well-being in the workplace, while emotional engagement is better