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Retailers: How to Motivate Staff on Employee Appreciation Day

Posted by Heather Brautman | Fri, Mar 07, 2014 @ 10:00 AM

Employee Appreciation DayThe paycheck you provide employees may be considered appreciation enough for the work they put in at your store, but in honor of employee appreciation day, we encourage you to explore some options to take things a little further. Showing appreciation to those who toil behind your counters and on your floors doesn’t require a huge investment of time or money, but the payoff (that ROI you need) can be huge.

Express Yourself isn’t Just a Madonna Song

Whether your store’s uniform has been an iconic blue polo and khaki pants since inception or you offer a slight bit more room for expression, there are usually ways you can let employees shine some of their personalities each day. Check out these tips we provided to our friends in the auto industry about how sales professionals can deck out their uniforms while still looking pleasant, present, and appropriate. We aren’t saying to buck trends (the attire and comportment for a high-end jewelry shop may understandably vary from a skateboard retailer!), just to take an interest in your employees’ interests, and go from there.

Make Quotas a Fun Challenge

So you need to sell a certain number of a product, or reach a sales goal for the day. Yep, there’s going to be pressure, and chances are, that pressure will trickle down to your employees, too. On this day of appreciation, especially, take a moment to thank them for all they do. In many cases, your workers probably do more to sell to and satisfy customers than you even know, since you can’t have eyes and ears everywhere at all times. So while we’d never encourage you to lose the quotas, we do recommend making them more of an inspirational challenge. See what we suggested in this article for ways that retail locations can stand out as the most rewarding places to work.

Take It Outside

If you can swing it on a day when that “Closed” sign appears on the door, get out and about with your employees. Schedule a trip to an amusement park, paintball center, outdoor festival, hiking trail, or any place where your staff can bond together without the confines of cash registers, name tags, and time clocks. And retailers who already have staff concentrated predominantly outside – we haven’t forgotten you. If the majority of your sales folks are already pounding the blacktop, consider taking it inside. Plan an employee activity within four walls such as a day at a rock climbing center, go kart facility, candy making, or a private tour of a local museum. 

Celebrating employees doesn’t mean you have to relax all safety and security controls in place. There may always be a couple of pointy needles in your haystack, but you don’t have to let those few hurt your great team. Check out our gift of appreciation to you for everything you do providing jobs and goods to the community by downloading our free booklet of tips on preventing employee theft, here:

 employee theft prevention

Topics: Retail

Written by Heather Brautman