Staff retention is the share of your people who are still with you at the end of a period. In retail and hospitality it's usually the number that decides whether a store or site has a good year, because every leaver costs you the time to recruit and train a replacement, plus the trade you lose while the team is short.
The good news is that the things that keep people are mostly in a manager's hands. Pay matters, and I'll come to it. But in our experience the reason a good store or site manager leaves is more often the person they report to, the rota, a career that's stopped moving or pay that's slipped behind.
How to measure it
Two numbers are worth tracking, and they tell you different things.
Retention rate is the share of the people you had at the start of a period who are still there at the end:
Retention rate = (people employed at the start who are still employed at the end ÷ people employed at the start) × 100
If a store starts the year with 20 people and 15 of those same people are there in December, retention is 75%, however many new starters joined in between.
Turnover rate counts everyone who left, against your average headcount:
Turnover rate = (leavers in the period ÷ average headcount in the period) × 100
Turnover can look high in a business that keeps its core team and churns seasonal staff. Retention tells you whether you're keeping the people you rely on. Track both, and track them for managers separately from everyone else. Losing a sales assistant hurts. Losing a store manager can set a store back a season.
Why managers leave
When we talk to store and site managers who are looking to move, the reasons tend to fall into a few groups.
Their own manager
The relationship with the area manager or operations manager comes up more than anything else. Managers who feel trusted to run their store stay. Managers who feel checked on, or who never hear when they've done well, start looking.
The rota
Retail and hospitality work weekends and late finishes. Everyone knows that going in. What wears people down is the rota that changes at short notice and the day off that keeps getting moved. A predictable rota is one of the cheapest retention tools a business has.
No next step
Good managers want to know what comes next. If the only route up is to wait for an area manager to leave, ambitious people find their own route, usually at a competitor.
Pay that's fallen behind
Pay rarely makes someone leave on its own, but it decides where they go once they've decided. If your managers are paid below the market, the first recruiter who calls them has an easy job.
A retention strategy that works
You don't need a programme with a name. You need a few habits, done consistently.
- Review pay against the market once a year, before people have to ask. If you're behind, close the gap or explain honestly when you will.
- Train area and regional managers to coach their store managers as well as audit their stores. Most retention problems sit one level above the person who leaves.
- Publish rotas early and protect days off. Treat a short-notice change as the exception it should be.
- Give every manager a next step, even if it's a bigger store or a project at head office. Talk about it at every review.
- Ask people why they stay. Exit interviews tell you why people went. Stay conversations tell you what to protect.
When you do need to replace someone
Even the best-run business loses good people. When it happens, move quickly and be honest with yourself about why they went, so you don't hire into the same problem. If the brief changes because of what you've learned, change the job description too.
Talk to us
We recruit store, area, site and operations managers for retail and hospitality brands in the UK and abroad, and we hear from managers about why they move all the time. If you'd like a straight view on what it takes to hire and keep good people in your business, book a call with one of the directors. You can also read how we recruit for hospitality and leisure and retail stores and operations.