The Instability Of In-Store Associates Takes Its Toll

Despite its normal connotations, “disruption” has become a sought-after state in the retail world. Any tech innovation that upsets the status quo isn’t destabilizing to what came before but rather a welcome addition to merchants’ new bag of sales tricks. However, when it comes to in-store automation, many of the country’s largest retailers are struggling to find any clarity in the rush toward retail’s brick-and-mortar future.

In fact, the fate of the in-store employee looks less and less stable by the day, despite retailers’ best efforts to avoid it.

The trouble starts in just how associates in B&M stores should be asked to function in a retail landscape that demands more — more time, more resources, more shipments fulfilled — from every moving part. The answer seems simple for many brands: leverage the product and know-how of physical store fronts as de facto omnichannel fulfillment centers.

However, that jack-of-all-trades schema for in-store associates might be under attack in California. The state’s Supreme Court recently ruled that a heretofore undefined provision in California’s labor regulations should be reinterpreted as mandating “suitable seating” accommodations for any employee whose duties can otherwise be adequately completed while sitting down. Cashiers, customer service associates and possibly even security guards in the Golden State might suddenly have the option to be off their feet for eight hours a day — a change that Jason Goldberg, vice president of commerce at digital marketing firm Razorfish, says will challenge the very idea of what in-store employees are supposed to present to the proverbial consumer.

“Retailers have always liked the notion of employees standing to feel more open to approach from shoppers,” Goldberg told Retail Dive. “It’s certainly true that people feel more comfortable engaging each other at eye level, so it can be awkward when a customer is standing and has to look down at a seated store clerk. The idyllic model has always been Mr. Olsen from ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ standing at the front of his shop to greet and help customers.”

Luxury retailers and those that can prove that upright in-store employees enhance their customer service abilities will likely be exempt from installing La-Z-Boys at each checkout station, but the ruling serves as a reminder that the associate can’t be reduced to a cog in a larger omnichannel machine just yet — at least, not as some avant-garde merchants may be in favor of.

But that’s all supposing a simple fact: Retailers are looking to downsize their in-store associate pools. While it’s true that legacy brands, predominantly of the brick-and-mortar variety, are falling out of the market at a rapid pace, others, like Walmart, for example, have thrown their weight behind seemingly quixotic projects in an omnichannel world. Just last week, Walmart announced that it would be bringing back its well-known cadre of in-store greeters. Two-thirds of all Walmart locations will soon have the vested, smiling associates at entrances and exits, though their duties this time around seem to be more in line with receipt checking and theft prevention than delivering hearty welcomes and directing customers to the right aisles.

So, Walmart brings back a pool of employees whose duties are far from related to converting sales and enhancing the in-store experience, and those same greeters might have the option of kicking back in a moderately comfortable chair. Quite the chain of events for a retail landscape moving toward automation, isn’t it?

On the whole, this instability and uncertainty over the in-store employee’s role has not been exceedingly kind to the workers themselves. For every legal victory or rehiring spree, there are multiple instances of retailers trying to push a square peg into a round hole and tasking in-store employees with fulfilling online orders. Though this might seem like a proper reallocation of resources toward evolving digital sales goals, a study from The O Alliance found that associates, and especially commission-based employees, are struggling to adapt to this reality. If they do complete their fulfillment duties, it comes at a severe cost to their morale, as picking and packing isn’t necessarily seen as their job to begin with. For employees working off commission, they might even hold costlier items back from being shipped in the hope of an in-store client setting his or her sights on it instead.

It’s a scenario that Andrea Weiss, cofounder of The O Alliance, called on retailers to solve before its effects become too tough to handle.

“Full commission may not be warranted, but unless dedicated hourly staff role is created to handle store-level fulfillment, some form of pick-and-pack incentive must be created to align associate behaviors with the new omnichannel expectation created by store fulfillment,” Weiss told RetailWire.

Welcome to the dark side of innovation — one where automation is still too far off but in-store associates and the retailers that employ them still feel its destabilizing effects.