Measuring the productivity of your retail staff can not only help you get insight into how each individual employee is performing, but will also give you an idea of how your business stacks up against others in the industry. By tracking retail worker productivity over time, you can set goals and targets for your business, monitor progress and assess if your efforts to improve performance have been effective.
If you are looking to begin tracking the productivity of your retail employees, consider starting with the following metrics to establish a baseline of their performance:
Total Dollars Sold Per Hour
A starting point for measuring your retail employees’ productivity is to measure each individual on the number of sales they make per hour of work. If your point of sale system allows for it, separate all transactions by the employee who performed them, and divide their total sales volume for the day by the number of hours they have worked. This average dollar amount per hour should give you much-needed insight into how an employee is performing.
Average Items Per Sale
Tracking this metric can help you see which of your employees are most skilled at up-selling. Consider the average number of items each staff member sells in one transaction to see who is doing an effective job at selling complementary items to customers.
Customer Service
Tracking which of your employees receive the fewest – or most – complaints can give you insight into how your employees are performing. If a certain employee is receiving a substantial amount of complaints or poor reviews from customers, it may be time to take corrective action.
Implement Time Tracking
Introduce a system that allows employees to more accurately track the time they spend on individual tasks to help you get a better picture of which projects or roles require the most time. For example, a time tracking system could help you determine that stocking shelves with product for your weekly promotion actually takes your employees three hours, when you had only allotted for 2 hours. Additionally, you can use this data to compare productivity between workers and identify your standout employees.
Review Regularly
Every quarter, review which metrics you are using to measure the productivity of your workers and gather data to establish a baseline level of productivity. Once you have this measurement, you can track progress and determine where improvements need to be made. Any time you make significant changes to your staff or major changes to how your business operates, remember to take another baseline so you can set new goals for your staff and your business overall.