A forthcoming study from Lotis Blue Consulting (LBC) and the National Retail Federation (NRF) shows that health and safety are more important than ever in retaining retail employees.
And Aaron Sorensen, LBC’s chief behavioral scientist and head of transformation, said one major concern could be adding fuel to that fire: retail crime.
LBC conducts its Future of Retail Workforce every six months by polling current retail employees or people who previously worked in retail but have left within the past 90 days.
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The data addresses 30 different factors—such as compensation, enjoyability of job, schedule flexibility, opportunities for advancement, company reputation and more. LBC analyzes the results with machine learning to understand which factors encourage an employee to stay or push an employee to leave.
Sorensen said making a choice to stay often hinges on different factors than calling it quits.
“If you think about whether you stay at an organization or you leave an organization, those essentially represent the same behavior. You’re staying or you’re leaving—one is the converse of the other. But what we find is that there’s different underlying psychological factors that drive that decision to stay or drive that decision to leave,” he said.
Per the data, among all retail employees, having strong health and safety measures in place makes workers 68 percent more likely to stay with their employer, up 10 percentage points from 2022.
In the apparel and luxury sectors, Sorensen said, the numbers were even more significant. In 2022, employees were 54 percent more likely to stay if they felt health and safety was valued. In 2023, that figure increased by 22 percentage points to 76 percent.
Among all retail employees, health and safety considerations took the No. 3 spot for ensuring employees stick around. Though LBC does not have data that directly addresses what employees mean when they say those considerations matter to them, Sorensen said he believes retail crime could be the culprit.
“What we believe is going on in our data, is that jump is attributed to the escalation in retail crime. That’s the only way we can think of how it jumps so much,” he told Sourcing Journal.
In the apparel and luxury category, health and safety took the No. 9 spot, and at big box retailers like Target and Walmart, it came in at No. 17.
Data from the NRF shows retailers saw $112.1 billion in shrink in 2022, up nearly $30 billion from 2021. And, per the data, theft—whether organized retail crime, internal theft, shoplifting or other external crime—accounts for 65 percent of retailers’ shrink.
Simultaneously, the trade group noted, retailers reported higher levels of violence associated with retail crime. In 2022, 81 percent of respondents to a NRF survey noted that organized retail crime perpetrators had become more violent. In 2023, 67 percent of surveyed retailers said they had seen even further evidence of violence and aggression than in 2022.
And as shoplifting and organized retail crime continue to make headlines, that violence could be impacting retail employees’ psyches, said Sorensen.
He noted that if employees consistently see retail crime in the news—whether it happens in their area or type of store or not—they may become more likely to believe they could be affected by retail crime in their store.
That in mind, Sorensen said, employees’ focus on health and safety does not exist only in urban areas, where a large portion of the news surrounding retail crime seems to be coming from.
“We’re seeing even in associates that are in rural and suburban locations [health and safety] also increased as a key factor,” he explained.
And though retailers report violent crime, the Council on Criminal Justice has data that shows only a small percentage of shoplifting incidents occur alongside a violent crime. In 2021, 0.23 percent of shoplifting incidents involved aggravated assault, and 0.78 percent of cases occurred alongside simple assault.
But an actual vs. a perceived threat doesn’t make much of a difference where a retail employee’s psyche is concerned, Sorensen explained.
“This is in the psychology of the retail workforce, and if we, as retailers, want to take good, prudent steps to ensure that our workforce is engaged and we retain them, we have to recognize this and take strides to be able to ensure that they feel safe,” he said.