10 Employee Engagement Ideas for Retail [With Examples from Large Retailers]

An engaged workforce stems from its people feeling valued, seen and heard in their contributions. The frontline nature of the majority of retail teams means colleagues are the crucial eyes and ears on the ground, hearing regular insights from consumers and generating innovations for internal and external processes. Amplifying voices of retail employees brings these insights to life so both the customer and employee experience can be optimised.

How Asda Does This

Partnering with Rippl in 2013, Asda have delivered their employee engagement platform, ‘Asda Stars’ to their store teams for over 10 years. Asda have continually evolved their programme in line with the needs of their growing colleague community, with a recent platform innovation including their ‘Asda Ideas’ hub. This extension amplifies voices, feedback and ideas across the business, with employees entering their submissions under various categories within the hub, and clever automations notifying relevant stakeholders who can then promptly rate,  respond to and action each submission. On average, ‘Asda Stars’ receives 65 new ideas every month, a third of which are further explored by senior stakeholders.

Dynamic incentives are particularly effective in enhancing employee engagement within the retail space. Incentives should be tailored on both an individual and group level, motivating employees to unleash their potential and encouraging a collaborative culture across the business. Their objectives and reward structure should also be clear, so employees fully understand how to secure additional perks.

How Mercedes-Benz Vans Does This

The ‘Van Stars’ platform creates a community to connect, recognise and reward the 3,000 retail employees behind Mercedes-Benz Vans’ UK dealer network. Evolving over the last two decades, the programme blends incentives with recognition and social engagement to motivate and reward their teams. ‘Van Stars’ hosts large and configurable sales incentives all year round, providing live league tables for employees to track their performance against target and remain engaged.

An authentic way of elevating recognitions and shoutouts for both individuals and teams within retail businesses is to incorporate rewards. This can be distributed in line with set reward budgets and finalised by team leaders or store managers, or can be introduced as an employee-led award nomination scheme to put a peer forward for additional perks.

How bp Does This

bp’s engagement platform, ‘Smile’ recognises, rewards and incentivises the people behind their UK service station stores, launching in 2006. Every colleague accesses the programme via their own smartphone and can nominate their peers for the Store Superstar and Wild Bean Ambassador campaigns, with winners selected by senior managers who distribute corresponding reward. Similarly, colleagues are further incentivised by prepaid reward cards in line with bp’s customer loyalty card scheme.

We know within the retail space employee wellbeing often goes overlooked. To overcome these challenges, industry employers need to proactively invest in supporting their workforce wellbeing in- and outside of work. Enter the power of a comprehensive perks and benefits package. This should champion each pillar of wellbeing across employees’ physical, mental and financial health and be tailored to the unique needs of the workforce. Importantly, benefits must be accessible around the clock to maximise business investment.

How Asda Does This

Another of Asda’s recent innovations to their engagement platform, ‘Asda Stars’ was to streamline their existing benefits offer into their recognition and reward experience for employees to access at the touch of a button. By placing all engagement features under one roof, Asda were able to extend their benefits offer with additional perks from Rippl’s Benefits Catalogue including retail, hospitality and leisure discounts, as well as savings on days out and gym memberships for employees to redeem 24/7.

Similarly, giving employees paid time off to support a business charity partner or a cause of their choosing enhances engagement by empowering teams to contribute to meaningful causes whilst demonstrating industry employers’ commitment to their corporate social responsibility. Volunteering day allowances should be communicated clearly and employees should be encouraged to share their experiences with their wider team to encourage further engagement with their organisation.