Stay or Go? What Factors Impact a Store Associate’s Loyalty

Vicki M. Young
·3 min read

Enjoyable work is the top decision-driver that impacts stay or quit decisions among apparel and luxury retail store associates.

Rounding out the list are work-life balance, physical demands, commute, autonomy, coworkers, sustainability, advancement, health and safety, and diversity. Among the 30 categories listed, the bottom five starting at No. 30 in descending order are pay fairness, comfort of environment, company reputation, sufficient hours and health benefits. Somewhere in-between are categories that include management, job stability, pay level, scheduling flexibility, education benefits, culture and time off.

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Enjoyable work was the top decision-driver across the board for most retail channels, including big box and grocery and convenience store retailers. Not surprisingly, there were differences among retail channels. Specialty stores selling beauty, gifts and books rated sufficient hours their No. 1 priority, while staffers at fast casual dining ranked physical demands as their top priority.

Those were the key takeaways from a Lotis Blue Consulting survey of 1,000 store employees just before the start of the 2023 holiday selling season. The “2024 Future of Retail Workforce Study” goal was to gauge insights into attracting and retaining hourly frontline retail associates.

In the third quarter of 2023 when the survey was conducted, the number of retail job postings reached its lowest point since 2008, with demand for retail talent dropping by 29 percent in just six months between April and July, the study’s co-authors—Lotis Blue partners Aaron Sorensen and Erica Grant—noted.

“Labor dynamics in retail have changed dramatically in the last 12 months with a tightening of the job market and stabilizing sales, coinciding with major attitude shifts toward work and employers,” Sorensen said.

Conducted three years in a row, the Lotis Blue study relies on its proprietary Employee Value Proposition that addresses seven key categories—company, career, schedule, job and work environment, benefits, compensation, and leadership and culture—and 30 underlying factors ranging from sustainability (under the company category) to fair promotion practices (career), as well as as quality of management and coworker relationships (both under leadership and culture).

Sorensen said that even with changing labor conditions and issues, the data compiled over the three years are comprehensive enough to predict an employee’s decision to stay or leave an employer with 87 percent accuracy. The most obvious conclusion is that retailers who want to hold onto their valued employees need to provide an environment where there are more factors that make them want to stay than quit.

Since the 2022 study, factors driving staying and quitting decisions have shifted. Sustainability, health and safety and enjoyable work have become more important, while job stability, diversity of the workforce and physical demands are now less important. A company’s sustainability practices became the top-five driver of turnover from having no influence on turnover decisions in 2022, the study’s results indicate. And health and safety jumped to third overall, likely due to the impact of shrinkage and organized retail crime, the study’s two authors noted.

There were also overall differences across demographic groups. Job stability, company reputation, health benefits and health and safety were of lower importance to those between ages 18 to 24. And it was no surprise that workers age 65 and up weren’t concerned about advancement opportunities or educations benefits. Women rated sustainability practices, diversity of the workforce and physical demands as more important than their male counterparts. Black and African American retail associates gave higher priority to childcare arrangements, education benefits, sustainability practices and diversity of the workforce when making decisions to stay or quit. Education benefits and childcare arrangements were also more important for workers in urban areas. Advancement opportunities, training and development opportunities and fair promotion practices were most important to those who managed others.