Retail HR heads battle attrition
With attrition levels hitting 35-40%, retail chains are busy developing strategic initiatives to ensure retention and steady the flow of talent at shop floor and management levels.
By Writankar Mukherjee, TNN |
KOLKATA: Human resource professionals with the country’s top retailers are having a tough time battling attrition. With attrition levels hitting 35-40%, retail chains are busy developing strategic initiatives to ensure retention and steady the flow of talent at shop floor and management levels.
Some initiatives include retail management courses in partnership with management institutes, roping in talent from other sectors, developing comprehensive career growth and loyalty plans for existing employees. Top players like Pantaloon Retail, Trent, Shopper’s Stop, RPG group & Ebony are on their toes.
The Future group-promoted Pantaloon Retail, has developed a comprehensive strategy, wherein it expects that in two years, it will not need to recruit any new managers from outside.
“The future workforce requirement will be met via internal promotions or through placements from partner educational institutions running retail management courses. This is sufficient for our estimated need of one lakh employees till ’11,” said Sanjoy Jog, HR head, Pantaloon Retail.
Pantaloon has, in fact, pioneered the concept of partnership with an educational institute to run retail courses across the entire chain. The company has already tied-up with 11 B-schools, including the likes of KJ Somaiya, Welingkars, Narsee Monjee and IISWBM.
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“The first day a student joins these courses, they are given an appointment letter by Pantaloon. Moreover, seats are reserved for our employees,” said Mr Jog. Pantaloon is also teaming up with Madurai Kamraj University and Manipal University to start correspondence courses that will fill the talent gap at the shop floor level. Other firms are replicating the Pantaloon model. “Trent is exploring the option to tie up with educational institutes,” said a senior official with Tata group’s retail chain, Trent. Trent has developed a comprehensive in-house learning programme and goes to undergraduate colleges to recruit students.
Ebony has created a new position of a learning and development manager. Pantaloon has also started an employee growth program to motivate and ensure long-term loyalty in senior management. Ebony is stressing on employee relations just like customer relations.
“Just like an emotional link is required to draw customers, the same is required to retain employees. With proper work environment and job profile, we have been able to reduce our attrition rate to just 8%,” said Lalit Kumar, CEO, Ebony Retail Holdings.
Retailers are also identifying cross-sectoral talent. “We are looking at recruiting talent from allied industries like FMCG. There is a huge catchment of talented workforce in these sectors,” said Jitesh Mehta, president, Spencer’s Retail. For instance, Pantaloon’s Damodar Mall (president — food business division) has been roped in from Hindustan Lever and Jaydeep Shetty, chief (new business lifestyle retailing), Inox.
Ebony has recently recruited talent from entertainment industry for its project division and hospitality sector for shop floor.
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