Retail

Luxury Retail Staffing: Stop Firing and Keep Hiring Well I would love to say Happy New Year to luxury retailers and staff...

Retail Staffing: $20/hr is the "New Norm" Ontario is a few years late, but set to raise minimum wage to $15 an hour in January. Most industries have blown past that low standard by multiple percentage factors already. In fact, the average of every retail job is already $17.68 per hour across Canada. Except, try and hire at that rate. Good luck! Without $18 to $20/hr as an opening offer, workers simply turn up their nose to job offers. Hence the 1 million (and growing) vacancies, even during the holiday season. Retail is one of the top wage growth industries in Canada at...

Luxury Retail Staffing: Algorithms Won't Fix Your Shortages Never has luxury retail focused as much on hiring as they are now. Never has luxury retail hired as many people as they are right now. Nor have they ever spent as much money on staffing as they are today. Yet the staffing shortage continues to get worse. November stats in Canada for jobs filled smashed previous pre-COVID records increasing by 154,000 new hires when only 35,000 hires were expected. Hiring is exploding, but it only serves to shrink further the pool of candidates accepting luxury retail roles. Why Isn't It Working? 1. Not Interviewing Enough People The...

How grab & go robberies affect retail staffing and hiring. By now, most retailers have seen or heard about the repeated mass losses at upscale retailers in California by swarming groups of up to 80 or more robbers. Black Friday showed an influx of this behaviour across the US. In Canada, we look in horror thinking it can't happen here. Why would you think it can't? The entire goods on display system of retail is based upon the honour system. Most folks won't steal from you because they feel it to be morally wrong. Thus the fancy glass window displays externally and internally with...

The curse of retail for the last few years has been the relentless filling and re-filling of roles at every job level. Especially in Canada, which has historically ranked amongst the highest countries for retail employee turnover. Resumes showing more than 2 years at any one company are becoming rare. Fewer people working in retail trade According to the Labour Force Survey for September 2021 from Statistics Canada, employment fell by 20,000 (-0.9%) in retail trade, bringing employment in the industry to 3.1% (-71,000) below its February 2020 level. Despite the easing of many restrictions across Canada, employment in the industry has hovered around...

Retail Staffing: The Missing City Core Office Workers = No Customers The impact of the missing office workers in city cores is hard to understate. Not only are there few people to become potential customers to sell to, staffing for the cores has become a total nightmare. Why would anyone take a job that has 77% less customer sales potential than pre-COVID? Read that stat again! 77% of weekday office workers in Toronto's prestige Financial District have not returned to in-office work, and experts are saying that it may never recover to pre-pandemic numbers. How Does This Translate to Retail in the Area? Let's...

$15 per hour in Ontario too little too late While minimum wages vary greatly across the country, the "defacto" minimum wage Retailers are generally being forced to pay due to market supply falls between $17 to $20 per hour in Canada. It was very interesting to see the reaction to the news that the Ontario government is proposing a minimum wage increase to $15/hour starting in January; from the restaurant and hospitality sectors in particular. Jumping to offer the $15.00 per hour right now to get staff - they had few to no takers. As I mentioned in my last blog, the end...

Retail Staffing: CRB has ended and still no flood of people racing to get hired The prevailing thought amongst Retailers is that people prefer to stay home and earn CRB federal money, rather than work. They believed that when CRB ended and without that support, people would flood back to retail jobs. REALITY CHECK If they were going to do that, they would have done that a few weeks ago. The expectation was a massive rush of scared workers submitting resumes. It simply has not happened. About 50% of American states ended their special support for COVID-19 shut outs a few months ago. The...

In just under 2 years, retail no longer looks the same. It has transformed from a predictable protocol with a few “new” things every couple of years, to nearly unrecognizable. Nowhere is this more evident than in staffing.Retail was understaffed by about 10% prior to COVID-19. Now, vacancies are 20 to 40% in many cases. Currently there are over 26,000 retail positions posted on Indeed Canada (as of September 1, 2021). The new title we assign to this problem is “Curse of the Vacancies”.Ads produce next to no “qualified” candidates. Candidates that do pass through have demands unheard of in...

With case counts rising all across the country with the more transmissible and deadlier Delta COVID, retailers can no longer dodge the issue of vaccination standards.In July 2021, Best Retail Careers International Inc. in partnership with Retail Insider conducted a survey about how retail employees are feeling about return to work and vaccines.Retail is eager to open fully. Retail workers are eager to get back to work except 68% of them are worried about returning to work with unvaccinated co-workers and customers. It’s such a big issue many are delaying making themselves available for rehire and retailers are in a...