A new approach to retail staffing in South Africa

Laurent Homeyer, Industry Advisor, Retail and Hospitality, Workday. Image supplied

It’s worth noting that most of the trends identified apply across geographies, albeit with different contexts - such as the labour shortage, for example.

While there are many more job seekers than jobs in SA, so companies should have no problem finding candidates, the question for local businesses is: can you find the right candidates?

Finding the right employees among a huge number of applicants is never easy, and even when you do, how do you make sure that you're able to retain them?

Remember, there is a cost to hiring someone, in terms of aspects like on-boarding, training, and equipping them with uniforms.

Add to this the reality that employees often take weeks or months to become fully productive in a new role, and you face a temporary dip in outcomes. If that employee then leaves within the first 90 days - a common occurrence in retail - you're essentially losing money.

So, how do you create an environment where employees feel confident and engaged, while also reducing churn?

Skills vs jobs

The answer lies in shifting focus from jobs to skills. By prioritising workforce agility, you can empower employees to transition across roles within the store, optimising your workforce utilisation and providing clear, meaningful career pathways.

South Africa has suffered the loss of many critical skills due to what is called the ‘brain drain’. This is exacerbated by the rise in importance of technology.

Most jobs, including those that in the past were considered manual ones, now require some level of technology skill. Your employee may need to use a handheld device to do an inventory check or use an iPad to perform a sales advisory.

So, at the very least, they need to know how to use such tools, meaning retailers should build a strategy to train their staff around such technologies.

Identifying hidden skills

I am already seeing companies I work with changing their approach to people management and people development. They are realising that employees - even part-time ones - can have unrecognised skills, or have done different jobs in an organisation that have allowed them to build additional skills.

Many organisations often underestimate the potential they already have within their workforce. While they may believe they understand the competencies of their employees in their current roles, they rarely dig deeper to uncover untapped skills or hidden capabilities.

In reality, organisations are likely sitting on a vast reservoir of hidden talent—skills, experiences, and capabilities that could be put to better use with the right insights and strategic planning.

By gaining a clearer understanding of employees' broader skill sets and aligning them with opportunities, organisations can unlock this talent to drive innovation, agility, and performance.

The key is to encourage a culture of continuous learning, adaptability, and discovery—one that enables employees to grow, transition, and contribute in new ways.
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If you are able to identify these, and then map their potential and identify the pathways between their existing job and where you would prefer to employ them, you can determine how they can acquire the relevant skills, and understand what the correct material content, coaching, or training your business needs to provide to get them there.

Most of the companies I have worked with adopt a very vertical approach. Essentially, they look at growth as a direct progression: the employee is a sales associate, so they will become a team leader, then a deputy manager, and finally a line manager.

However, this approach no longer works effectively in today’s world.

Mapping skills to training

Staff today may expect to move in a different, more horizontal direction, for instance, while others may not even be aware that they are able to do that. Furthermore, your recruiter may not even know that they have potential candidates already inside the company.

This is why it is imperative that SA retailers, and their recruitment agencies, seek to identify the skills within their organisations, and then map the company’s job catalogue to the skills that are required.

With this achieved, it is easy to map the training content in regard to the skills required to build strong pathways between the employees you already have, and the future workforce demands your organisation expects to face.

For large retailers, the challenge lies in scaling this approach across a vast workforce. That’s where the right technology can make a difference. Modern workforce platforms allow businesses to capture and validate employee skills while mapping them to organisational needs.

By maintaining a comprehensive record of all employee skills and certifications—not just those tied to their current roles—organisations can uncover opportunities for growth and development that employees may never have considered.

This approach empowers employees, builds career paths, and ensures businesses are optimising the talent they already have to meet evolving business demands.

At the same time, your organisation gains access to new skills, and employees are able to grow both horizontally and vertically within your enterprise. This is something I like to refer to as the true democratisation of opportunities within retail.