Streamlining retail IT operations: Tackling high employee turnover with automation

The retail industry is notorious for high employee turnover. In Britain, staff turnover in retail sits at over 50% and McKinsey says it’s worse in the US, with a turnover of frontline retail staff hitting at least 60% over recent years. But, in an industry where employee numbers and turnover are influenced by multiple factors including seasonality, the student job market, and demanding working conditions, what steps can IT teams take to offset these challenges?  

For IT teams, this turnover presents a unique set of challenges, including frequent onboarding, offboarding, and data security management. However, automation tools like CloudM Automate and CloudM Archive can significantly ease these burdens.

Here’s how retail IT teams can leverage these tools to stay ahead of the turnover curve.

Automating onboarding and offboarding to save time and reduce errors

Frequent turnover means that retail IT teams often face the repetitive task of onboarding and offboarding a significant count of users each month. This is not just a logistical challenge, but also a financial one, as each transition demands time and resources.  

CloudM Automate allows for:

Customer Success – How one retailer saves 44  days per year

A multi-brand retailer faced a challenge – four brands each with different, largely manual offboarding processes were causing delays, errors, and incurring additional costs. With CloudM they could streamline and automate offboarding, providing a consistent process across all brands that was managed centrally. In the five years that the group and CloudM have worked together, our offboarding workflows have saved them an estimated 218 working days – that’s 44 days every year.   

Read the case study

Handling high turnover with scalability and consistency

Seasonality and the student job market mean that retailers’ IT teams are regularly handling a fluctuating workforce. Tools like CloudM can manage this turnover at scale, by:

Efficient handling of large volumes: The set-and-forget automation offered by CloudM ensures that onboarding and offboarding seasonal workers and students is simple.

Consistency across locations and brands: For large retailers with multiple stores, or multi-brand organizations, these tools allow IT teams to apply consistent processes and policies, regardless of the employee’s location.

Leveraging data archiving for compliance and cost-efficiency

Retail businesses often need to retain employee data for legal or operational reasons. Combining the powerful offboarding automations of CloudM Automate with CloudM Archive helps IT teams through:

Embracing automation to alleviate IT challenges

In a fast-paced retail environment where turnover is inevitable, automation tools like CloudM Automate and CloudM Archive can relieve IT teams of the repetitive tasks that come with constant onboarding and offboarding. By embracing automation, retail IT departments can improve efficiency, enhance security, and maintain smooth operations—even amid high employee churn.

Key Takeaways:

• Automating onboarding reduces IT workloads and minimizes human errors.
• Automated offboarding strengthens security by preventing former employees from retaining system access.
• CloudM Archive ensures compliant, cost-effective data storage with the customer retaining full ownership and control of their data.
• Scalable automation tools help manage large volumes of temporary or seasonal staff efficiently.

Incorporating these tools allows retail IT teams to stay agile and focused, even in the face of constant employee turnover.