Performance Management in the Retail Industry: The 2022 Report

 

Discover what employees want, the business case for performance management in retail, and where the sector is currently falling short.

Retail report mock up

The retail report includes:

  • Insights from 500 people, working in UK-based retail firms with more than 500 employees

  • Analysis and data from the experts behind OpenBlend's performance management platform about what employees in retail want from their employers and managers

  • Key learnings and findings on how the retail industry can transform its approach to performance management through structured and effective one-to-one conversations

Conversation is key

 

The last three years have changed retail behaviour, perhaps forever. Things aren’t as they were and the experiences of the past few years and new learned behaviours won’t be forgotten in a hurry. 

Our latest research focuses on performance within the retail sector and asks some crucial questions about employee experience and how their needs are being met by employers and managers. We’ll also present some sobering statistics about how the retail sector is failing, in many ways, to address performance in the right way: through the topics that matter most to their people. The manager-employee relationship, that engine of performance, needs work. Our research looks at how we can fix it.

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Key findings

There's a big discrepancy between what employees want and what UK retail brands are prioritising when it comes to performance management. Below are just two examples, that show that retail employees are more invested in their performance than businesses think.

10
Who sets the agenda?

If business objectives are always the focus of performance meetings, then the meeting is for the manager’s benefit – not the employee. Retail workers want the agenda for their one-to-ones to be a two-way street.



 

11
Retail lacks all-important people tech

Almost half of all customer-facing employees surveyed say that their manager makes do with a spreadsheet or a notepad to record the outcomes of their performance meetings.

Retail report mock up

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