A Day in the Life of a Connected Store Manager

39% of retailers struggle to maintain effective communication throughout their organization. When a business is spread across different locations, with several layers of management between the C-suite and frontline employees, connecting the whole organization to operate like a unified machine is a challenge.

Without connection, store managers are left in the lurch between the demands of customers, confused and unproductive employees and pressure from HQ.

On the other hand, a well-connected store manager acts as a pivotal piece of the successful retailer’s puzzle. Supporting employees to deliver an outstanding customer experience, ensuring the implementation of audit feedback and delivering the vision communicated by HQ.

This blog post will detail what a day in the life of a connected store manager looks like.

Related: A Day in the Life of a Connected Retail Employee

7:30am: Prepping for the day ahead

Arrive at work and unlock the store. Pull out your phone and open your digital workplace app for a quick review of what is expected of your team today.

In addition to checking any direct messages from HQ, you can use the company newsfeed to see any updates concerning your store.

Greet your team as they arrive, clock in and begin working through their opening checklists.

9:30am: Reviewing a new display

As customers begin to arrive, you’ve already briefed your team and checked they understand priorities for the day.

One of your team members has set up a new campaign display as per instructions from HQ. You check the display, take a photo of it, and send it to HQ for approval in your digital workplace app. The HQ team annotate your photo with any feedback, so both you and your team are confident that you have it exactly right and your team can fully focus on spending time with customers for the rest of the morning.

You take a photo of the display and post to the company newsfeed so that all stores and head office can see an amazing example of the fantastic work that store associate did.

11am: 1:1 with a team member

You have a quarterly 1:1 with one of your team members today to review their performance and plan how they can progress within the company. Ahead of the meeting, you check the associate's badges and competencies in your digital workplace app to see how well they are performing against objectives.

12pm: Assigning tasks and implementing feedback 

Yesterday you had a store visit from a district manager who did an audit of your store. They filled out a digital audit form with their feedback, which you have received via your digital workplace app.

You’ve been assigned an action plan for the areas you need to work on, including various tasks to complete and training to upskill your team. You assign the tasks to your team members, ensuring they are marked in order of priority so your team can work most efficiently.

The relevant training courses have already been assigned to your team by the district manager, and you are able to see in real-time which employees have started it, so you can encourage and help them with their learning where needed.

The district manager was planning on coming back tomorrow for the second half of the audit, and you quickly ping them a message in the chat function of your digital workplace app to confirm the time they will arrive.

1:30pm: Celebrating exciting news

Over the weekend the team went out for a meal together to celebrate a team member on buying their first home! They took some pictures all together and posted them in the 'Communities' section of their digital workplace app, a place for more informal communication amongst teams. You like and comment on the photo, congratulating the store associate for achieving a life milestone.

2pm: Onboarding a new recruit

A new joiner has arrived for their first shift, looking a little apprehensive but excited to get started. After showing them around the store and introducing them to their new colleagues, they start getting up to speed with the microlearning courses you’ve assigned them in the app they’ve already downloaded to their mobile phone.

As the app is in a familiar social-media format, they get their head around how to use it quickly and you assign them their first task: tidying and sanitizing one of the shelving units. 

The new recruit can’t remember the process for re-stocking the shelves after cleaning them and is unsure how the different products should be arranged. They open up their mobile workplace app and watch a 2 minute video explaining how products in this section should be displayed.

Using a mobile digital workplace means that employees are able to learn on the job without leaving the store floor, picking up information incrementally and immediately applying it to their work. As microlearning with repetition improves information retention, the new recruit is set up for success as they will remember more information, can work more autonomously and will be brought up to speed faster.

Related: Microlearning Examples: 7 Ideas to Elevate Your Workplace Training

4pm: Filling out an incident log

One of your team tells you that while helping some delivery drivers move some new stock into the stockroom, they almost slipped on a puddle on the floor and injured themselves. When you go to investigate, you realize that the puddle has come from a leak in the stockroom ceiling. 

You open your digital workplace app and fill out a digital incident log, citing the incident as a near-miss. In a few clicks you also fill out a maintenance request explaining the problem and requesting for it to be fixed, which is sent directly to the maintenance team.

15 minutes later you get a notification letting you know that a member of the maintenance will come and fix the leak at 5pm. Additionally, HQ has received your incident log entry and has sent out a weekly task to all stores to check stockrooms for hazards.

6pm: Reviewing the day’s work

The last customer has left the store, the doors are closed and the team is working through the closing checklist.

You pull out your phone and review the day’s sales and operational data. You can easily compare data ranges such as employee training metrics, sales KPIs and task efficiency to see how well your store is meeting expectations.

One of your team members has upsold significantly more than average this week, so you give her a shout-out on the company newsfeed to show that you value her efforts. You notice that your team have been taking longer than expected to set up and close down checkouts at the beginning and end of the day, so you assign all of your team members a refresher training for this task to complete tomorrow morning.

Before locking up and going home, you check the calendar in your digital workplace app for the rest of the week and month to remind yourself of any upcoming missions, events, courses or requests to be aware of.

Want to see how your store managers would benefit from feeling more connected? 300+ retailers including Vans, Lacoste, Boots, The Kooples, Lancôme, Peloton and Lidl trust YOOBIC’s digital workplace solution to connect their store managers to the rest of the organization. To find out why, book a demo!