As current employment reaches over 6 Million people and retail continues to be one of the few industries that are still recruiting, it often surprises me that that the more mature workforce continues to be disregarded by many leading retailers.
Having been a Manager in several store’s, primarily in young fashion, I have always found it a challenge having an extremely young team. Whereas some retailers deliberately try to recruit people who fit in with their ‘brand culture’ and will therefore showcase their product to the best effect, this can be offset with employees who are unreliable, uninterested and simply unable to grasp the hard work which IS retail!
This is not to tar all young people with the same brush, merely to emphasise the skills set of the more mature workers, which sometimes just cannot be found in younger staff. Is this maturity learnt through life skills or simply that the older employee has a more balanced and realistic approach to work?
Reading an article in ‘You’ magazine from ‘The Mail on Sunday’ – ‘The Egos Have Landed’ by Elisabeth Wilson’ this really hit a nerve with me. She quotes a recent article in ‘The Economist’ which stated the Generation Y’s, born in the 80’s and 90’s have known only economic boom years and have largely ended up ‘spoiled, narcissistic layabouts, under the illusion that the world owes them a living’
Again, this does not apply to all people born at this time, however, in my experience the ‘Generation Y’s’ are genuinely shocked by the physical hard work that most shop workers have to do, the long and unsociable hours and have a habit of doing the very least work wherever possible. The ‘world owes me a living’ attitude is often highly visible to the customer and manifests itself in a sales team that are simply disinterested in the job they are being paid to do. This generation also seems to lack some basic skills that as an employer, you would assume a member of your staff might have.
I remember being actually lost for words, when a member of my team came to me to tell me that the vacuum cleaner was broken. When I suggested to the 19 year old that maybe the bag needed changing, she was visible stunned. This was the first time she had attempted such a task and genuinely didn’t know that vacuum cleaners had a bag!
Compare and contrast this to the more mature employee. They are more likely to have run a household, therefore contributing to many, many life skills. These may include managing a budget, bringing up children and they also are more likely to have learned some tact and diplomacy along the way.
‘B & Q’ has been one of the few retailers that seem to have grasped the benefit of an older and more experienced team and certainly when you visit their stores, it is gratifying to be talking to someone who has knowledge and passion around what they are selling.
That may, in fact, be the key to why it would be good practise in the retail trade to see whether a more mixed age range of staff, would suit all sectors within the trade. Surely it is in the stores best interest to have a team who wants to be there and enjoys and takes pride in what they sell?
Customers have also recently reported that they find it intimidating being served by extremely glamorous and young sales staff. The ‘grey rinse brigade’ is a long gone fallacy and with older people these days being far more active, mobile, fashionable and not to mention demographically that they will continue to become a bigger and bigger slice of the population - Maybe it’s time for retail to realise the ‘Mature can be Magnificent....’
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