One of the most important aspects of immersing yourself in the professional world is the way in which you work. How you work. At what pace do you work. Do you work harder or smarter?
These are questions everyone has to ask himself or herself once in a while, especially if you’re transitioning careers, and you realize you might need some polishing in certain areas.
If you’re working in the retail business you definitely need to ask yourself the aforementioned questions. I’ve already blogged ad nauseum about the stress and rigors of the industry, and determining what type of work ethic you possess is key. And when you establish that, your key will help you unlock a whole new world of possibilities (as long as it’s more productive and less lackadaisical).
I’ve also blogged about payroll and scheduling extensively, especially differentiating what happens during both light and heavy flows of traffic in stores.
However, nothing is more important than how each individual works. It can either make or break tasks for day depending on whom you assign them to.
If one person (whether it’s an associate or a manager) doesn’t complete them, it can have a domino effect, which can include other tasks getting postponed, less coverage on the sales floor, and then scheduling differently the next day. You might never realize how much emphasis should be put on how people work, specifically one person.
That’s what leads us back to the beginning in a sense: choosing the right people to work for you. Even though it is retail, and many don’t view working in a store as an actual job, it’s imperative to hire the most sensible, hard-working people from the get go. If not, you’ll not only have a slower associate working for you, but it will affect the entire team. And at the end of the day, managers will have a problem with it, and eventually it will be the store manager who has to be held accountable.
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