Chicago, IL and New York, NY | January 25, 2023 10:00 AM EST

Poor Education Benefits, Physically Stressful Conditions and Poor Company Reputation Top Reasons to Quit

Lotis Blue Consulting (formerly Axiom Consulting Partners), a corporate advisory and business transformation firm, has released a comprehensive new report, Lotis Blue Future of Retail Workforce Study, analyzing the current state of the retail workforce. The study investigates ways the current macroeconomic environment has influenced retention trends for the retail workforce; factors that are becoming important to employee retention and loyalty; changing motivations for leaving a job; and primary attractors of unionization in retail.

Research for the Lotis Blue Future of Workforce Study was conducted in Fall 2022 and surveyed more than 1,000 employees at 300 retailers including in apparel, big box, grocery, fast casual dining, specialty, convenience store, home goods, luxury apparel, and electronics sectors. The report evaluates how strongly various aspects of the Employee Value Proposition (EVP), which are employer offerings, and employee experience are influencing retail employees’ decision to stay, consider leaving or leave an employer.

“Our most recent study doubled the size of our survey panel, giving us the opportunity to examine the findings alongside the Spring 2022 results to get to more nuanced findings across a larger pool of retail employees,” noted Lotis Blue Consulting partner and study author Aaron Sorensen. “From this, we found several key factors of the employee experience that were most compelling in the decision to stay or leave, including fairness in pay practices and promotions. We were then able to take that data and use it to predict an employee’s decision to stay or leave an employer with some 90 percent accuracy.”

The study contains insights related to:

1. A ranking of the top 10 drivers in employees’ decision to stay, consider leaving, or leave
2. What proportion of employees intend to stay 5 years or more
3. By how much and why the cohort considering leaving is trending upward
4. Unionization in retail
5. Education benefits as an important turnover driver

“While we found that between the April 2022 and late November 2022 surveys, most of the top 10 decision drivers to stay, consider leaving, or leave remained the same, there were some important changes in what is more and less important to employees,” noted Garrett Sheridan, CEO of Lotis Blue Consulting. “The future of retail employment looks bright, but employers will need to make changes to retain their talent and keep them healthy, safe and motivated.”

For more information, visit the Lotis Blue Future of Retail Workforce Study.