Trust issues: why retailers need to prioritise staff wellbeing
Chris Brook-Carter, chief executive of the Retail Trust
Issues with mental health are causing three quarters of retail workers to underperform at work.
That’s according to research for the Retail Trust’s new health of retail report which also found one in six people have been forced to miss at least a day of work in the last year because of poor wellbeing.
And every sign shows younger retail workers and call centre staff may be coming under even more mental strain. 80% of young people we surveyed for the report said they have experienced deteriorating wellbeing in the last year while nearly half of call centre workers reported often feeling lonely at work. Almost one third have taken time off in the last year due to poor mental health as a result.
Meanwhile, we also discovered worrying rises in rates of anxiety and sleep-related issues, and increases in the number of people feeling overwhelmed and struggling to think clearly, across the retail workforce as a whole.
While many of the people we spoke to blamed customer abuse for a decline in their wellbeing, we don’t think these mental health issues are specific to people working in the retail industry. Many are caused by general trends in society, such as the cost-of-living crisis, ongoing global insecurity, and the after-effects of the pandemic.
The challenges we all experience at home, whether around our health, relationships, finances or money, will end up having an impact on our work too. And getting help or even knowing where to turn to deal with mental health problems or financial struggles is becoming even more difficult as the state and NHS becomes increasingly overstretched.
But retail is the largest employer outside the public sector, so the impact that this is having on performance, absenteeism and staff turnover in our industry will be reflected across the rest of the workforce as whole.
Our health of retail report, made possible thanks to our partnerships with Foot Anstey, Nutun, Peoplesafe and Sabio, outlines some of the ways employers can make a difference. It shows the importance of more mental health training, improving workplace cultures and providing staff with more self-help tools to manage and measure their wellbeing.
And it underlines the business imperative for doing so, when it comes to developing more hopeful, happy and healthy employees who will ultimately perform better at work, take less time off and be less likely to leave their jobs.
Later this month, we will be bringing together employers from across the sector for the Retail Trust’s fifth annual leaders’ summit in London to explore what needs to remain top of retailers’ wellbeing and engagement strategies going into 2025 to better support staff. We’d urge any retail leaders to join us on 24 October to share their ideas and examples of best practice and learn from others in the room.
These are challenging times but my belief is that the retail sector has the opportunity to lead the way when it comes to putting the wellbeing of our people first and showing the true value of a healthier and more resilient workforce.
Register for the Retail Trust’s leaders’ summit on 24 October in London here.
