Empowering managers: A field guide to retail success

JD Dillon (00:12):

Howdy friends, how are you today? It’s great to see you. Welcome to the 51st episode of In The Know, your 25-minute deep dive Into the modern employee experience and what we can do to make it better. I’m JD from Axonify, and today’s episode is all about managers. Now I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t we just talk about managers back in episode 49 when Monica Rothgery was on the show? We did, but it’s my talk show, and we’ll talk about whatever I want. But even more important than my preferences is the reality that frontline managers are the most important people in the workplace, and they’re struggling. My team at Axonify is getting ready to publish our 2024 Deskless Report. Our last report dropped in late 2022 and reflected how frontline workers and organizations were reacting to the challenges presented during the pandemic.

(01:02):

This year’s report is all about the shift from reaction to strategy. We’ll highlight the parts of the frontline experience that have improved over the past few years, as well as the areas where people continue to struggle. And spoiler alert, the number one area for improvement in the frontline workplace right now is managers. Right now, 67% of managers feel like they’re making it up as they go—at least some of the time. Nearly half of frontline managers are struggling with burnout and desperately looking for more help. That includes better labor budgets, consistent expectations and training on critical topics like conflict resolution and collaboration. The biggest reason I loved Monica’s book, Lessons from the Drive-through, is that it reflected the everyday reality of what managers face because it was written by someone who did the job and then became part of the corporate team.

(01:57):

Well, here’s the deal. I happened to find another book that was written by someone who did the job of a retail store manager for 20 years, but in this case, they didn’t go to the corporate side. Instead, they saved part of the conversation and used their skills to reinforce proven practices as a champion of frontline managers. In fact, I’d say this is a book every retailer should buy for their store managers, and it’s also a book we’ll be giving away to a few of our live viewers on LinkedIn after the show wraps up today. But first, let’s talk to the author. Please join me in welcoming our special ITK guest Kit Campoy. Kit is a retail expert with two decades of experience leading store teams with brands like Tillys, Anthropologie, Lucky Brand Jeans and PacSun. Today, she’s the voice of the frontline who shares her people-centric approach to crafting a compelling retail story through a popular substack and in partnership with a variety of SaaS retail tech companies. And then, in 2023 Kit published The Retail Leaders Field Guide, a how-to handbook for retail leaders covering everything from how to set up your store’s backroom to creating a kick-ass culture that keeps employees engaged and customers coming back. Kit Campoy, you’re in the know. How are you doing?

Kit Campoy (03:05):

Hey, I’m doing so good. Thank you for having me, JD. Thank you for the invite. I’m super happy to have this conversation today.

JD Dillon (03:13):

My pleasure. Thanks for joining us and sharing your insights. So we’re going to spend a lot of our time together talking about your book and the insights that retailers and really any frontline-focused organization can take from it to enable and empower their managers. But I’d actually like to start at the end of the story because the last section of your book is titled “You Got This”, and that’s a phrase I noticed that you use a lot in your writing. So what does “You Got This” mean to you when it comes to enabling frontline teams and especially frontline managers?

Kit Campoy (03:45):

When you’re running a retail store, when you’re in retail management, you don’t really get told that you’re doing a good job very often or even that you did things right. You’re kind of just told you did this wrong or this is what you need to do better. So this is just what my colleagues and I would say to each other when we got up the phone. It’s a crazy day, but you got this. Retail leaders don’t hear that very often from their bosses, that kind of boost of encouragement, motivation, I believe in you, you can do this. I see you, your job is hard. Since they don’t hear that from their bosses often, they get to hear it from me, someone who knows.

JD Dillon (04:36):

Absolutely. A great sentiment to kind of theme the conversation for today. So your substack is titled “The Voice of the Frontline”, and we’re going to include a link in the description and show notes so people can subscribe and check it out. But one of the most popular posts on your substack is called “Retail leaders already do it all, stop asking them to do more with less.” And of course this idea of doing more with less, which I equate to kind of stripping the organization down to the essentials, looking for ways to boost profits through efficiency oftentimes at the expense of the workforce, it’s been a huge theme coming out of the pandemic. And in this article you say that retail managers have reached a breaking point. So what does it feel like as a manager to hit this point? And then how does burnout impact your ability to do your job, to run an effective operation and to do more with less?

Kit Campoy (05:30):

What it feels like is just sweat rolling down your back. You are helping three customers at once. They have to wait because you’re stretched so thin. It means maybe not even taking your break or taking your lunch break late because you’re at the cash register, you’re trying to help get the line down. My lunch was 30 minutes typically when I ran retail stores. If you have to go get food, that means you come back and you have about 10 minutes to eat it and get back on the floor. At the end of the day, I would come home and eat a peanut butter sandwich and follow my face because I didn’t have the bandwidth really to think about, oh, I need groceries, planned meals. I didn’t have the mental capacity to do that because I was stretched so thin and I was so burnt out.

(06:28):

For companies, that means that mistakes are going to be made. So when I worked for one company, I was so burnt out and I got scammed by a customer. It was someone that we knew was a known scammer and everybody was like, look out for this person. She’s a known scammer. I was so tired and so burnt out that I got scammed. And then later, a few years later when I was running my own store, one of my co-managers got scammed by a customer and I wasn’t so concerned about the scam, I was concerned about the manager. So I sat down with her and I was just like, Hey, I’ve been there and it’s really frustrating, so I’m not mad at you, but I’m concerned if you need a few extra days off, let me know. Just let me know what you need. So it’s bad for the managers and it’s also bad for the company because we make more mistakes.

JD Dillon (07:37):

When I started my career, I managed movie theaters and theme parks in the beginning, and I honestly thought that being tired all the time was part of the job because of course it’s Thursday, so I have to work until 3:00AM to get inventory done. Or of course, it’s the holidays, so I need to work 14-hour shifts in order to make sure the team is okay. I never really considered the trade-off between what I was giving to the organization and to my team and what I was getting back until after I decided to leave. So I’m curious, do you think corporate teams get this? Do they know that this is how a lot of frontline managers think? And does the corporate team understand what it takes for a store manager to do their job well and how they’re feeling about it right now?

Kit Campoy (08:25):

I don’t think so because if they truly understood what that feels like, I think they would allocate more resources. I think they would allocate payroll. I think they would give raises. When I first took one of my stores, we were so busy that we were the highest-volume store in our district. And my first question was, how come I don’t have another manager? We were just kind of barely making it. We could do all the things and we could do them well, but that didn’t give me any time to develop other managers or to recruit or to do other things I should be doing. And I just think there’s this big disconnect between the people at the corporate office and the people in the field. And also remember that the people in the field don’t really get the option to not come into work a lot of times or to call out sick.

(09:35):

I can’t tell you how many times it was just like, well, you have to work six days because someone else called out and the store has to open. You have to go. So in an office job, you kind of have the luxury of like, ah, I think I’m going to take the day off. But in store management, you really have to be there. I had a manager quit with no notice on me, and it was just like, well, I guess I’m working every single day until we figure this out. So yeah, I think there’s a huge disconnect there.

JD Dillon (10:11):

I still remember a time when I was an assistant manager at the time and I was so out of it. I was sick at the time and I was literally laying on the floor of the manager’s office and they had to physically remove me from the building because again, I didn’t connect the dots between taking care of myself and what it meant to do the job. So I think it’s easy for people to not either know what it’s like to be in this position, or do the job. If you’ve never done it yourself, or even if you have and maybe it’s been a while or you’ve been in different positions in the organization, you can often lose that connection even if you know what the job is, you lose that feeling of what it’s like to do that job now. And that’s why I think again, it’s a great idea to take a look at your book.

(10:55):

So those out there, watching us today, if you want to get a better idea of what it is like to be a frontline retail manager, that’s why you have to grab a copy of Kit’s book, The Retail Leaders Field Guide, and that’s why we’re going to give away two copies right now to our LinkedIn live viewers. So if you’re in the chat on LinkedIn, type “You Got This” in the chat. And after we wrap up today, we’ll pick two random viewers to send a copy of Kit’s book. So watch out for your dms on LinkedIn. When I think back to those early days of being a frontline manager, another thing that I remember, besides being half passed out on the floor at one point, was pouring over financial reports. I remember going over revenue targets and, in my case, the movie theater concession sales and box office projections because that drove our attendance projections and then that drove our labor hour budgets. I also remember having a decent amount of freedom when it came to the decisions I made related to those results, because there were certain numbers I had to hit every quarter, but how I hit them was mostly up to me. I ran my own sales contests. I made adjustments to seat counts to drive box office revenue. At one point, I refused to execute a layoff that corporate mandated because I said I’d find another way to hit my labor budget without firing a bunch of people. And I did it.

(12:12):

And when I speak to frontline managers today, and when I go on places like Reddit and I read the comments that people make, I don’t get the sense that the same freedom and level of ownership that I had 10 or 20 years ago is still there. So I’m curious to get your thoughts. Do you think corporate teams trust managers to run their businesses, or do you think that the corporate team underestimates their frontline managers?

Kit Campoy (12:36):

I think they’re underestimated for the most part. I don’t think they’re really trusted, but I think that’s the fault of the corporate office because when you pull all the training, all the leadership training from the frontline and you don’t provide that anymore because you don’t want to spend the money on it, then that leads to mistrust. Then you don’t trust those people to be autonomous and make those decisions and do the job that they were hired to do. I’ve worked for a lot of companies where I had a lot of freedom and then I worked for companies where it was like, do this, execute this, check this box, sign here. I think with all the cutting of the resources, it’s getting a lot more across the board of check this box, do this thing you weren’t hired to. Not think of new ideas and different ways to do things. You’re just hired to execute, and that’s really going to hurt. I mean, it already has hurt the retail industry. They can’t find CEOs to run companies because they didn’t train anyone to do the job. So yeah, I think unfortunately a lot of times store leaders aren’t given the freedom to make decisions and try new things.

JD Dillon (14:07):

That’s a great point about the talent pipeline side of the story, right? If you don’t build the capability on your frontline at the key holder level, system manager level and store manager level, who takes over as regional manager? Who takes over as district when those people retire? Who then moves into the corporate role? It’s not just about your budget and goals for this quarter, it’s about the long-term health of your business. And unfortunately, a lot of times it’s easier to think about this quarter and celebrate this quarter as opposed to what might happen to us in two to five years if we don’t make the necessary investments now. You mentioned a piece that connects to this already and what I think is the biggest topic of conversation around frontline work, especially what I see workers themselves talking about online, and it’s staffing. But it’s not the inability to hire and retain frontline workers as much anymore.

(14:57):

It’s about labor budgets and not having the ability to hire and schedule as many people as needed to run the operation. I see frontline workers frustrated because they’re expected to handle a longer list of tasks for the same pay and end up getting burned out. And then the manager, as you mentioned, is the one who picks up the slack. So being short-staffed, I think in a lot of cases has moved from a problem to being a strategy in certain organizations. Could you reflect a little bit more on how staffing challenges and labor hour reductions impact a manager’s ability to hit the goals that corporate needs them to hit?

Kit Campoy (15:35):

Yeah. Well, if we’re not staffed then that means I am a cashier. If we don’t have the people, then I’m ringing that up, I’m grabbing shoes, I’m doing all the jobs of a sales associate, which is fine. I can do that twice a week or something. I can do that on a Saturday, that’s great. But then I don’t really get to do my job. I don’t really get to oversee, I don’t get to have the conversations with my other leaders. I don’t get to dig into the P and L reports. I don’t get to dig into the planning of the business, all that stuff. So if you’re not fully staffed and your store managers and store leaders are running around doing the jobs that you should have hired sales associates to do, you’re going to make less money.

(16:33):

You just will make less money. I’ve had both scenarios where I’ve had a store fully staffed, extra managers, extra payroll hours for a million different things, and we made a ton of money. Everything clicked and people didn’t get burnt out and people were really happy. And then I’ve seen the flip side of that too, where they got rid of a manager, they cut all the payroll hours, we couldn’t hire as many people every quarter. It was like, oh, pull your payroll back 5%. You can only do that for so long and then it will absolutely impact your ability to make the volume that you want to make.

JD Dillon (17:20):

What’s interesting is I’ve also seen the other side. At one point, I was part of an opening team in a new location, and we were purposefully overstaffed because of the experience that the corporate team wanted to deliver during that initial period of time. It was kind of the other side of ridiculous where I didn’t know what to do with people at that point. It’s a great problem to have, but it’s one of those seeing both sides of the equation where I can see where you could easily perceive this as not being the best use of resources. But then when you go the other direction, it becomes immediately apparent how the shift in investment and resources is impacting not just the customer experience, but also the employee experience. And then like you mentioned, the manager experience. So if we look at labor hours and proper staffing as the biggest things that corporate can likely do to try to make the manager’s life easier and to help the manager be able to do their job well and achieve their goals, what would you say is maybe another one or two things that when you look at the corporate team and how they can better take care of and enable managers, what else do you think that they could be able to do to improve the manager’s job?

Kit Campoy (18:24):

I think they could visit the stores more often and spend a day there. Spend a day working alongside the store leader because store leaders can only bubble up so much information. We’re busy every single second of the day, so things are going to fall through. And maybe the store leader doesn’t think something is that important because they see it all the time. They see it every day. It’s like, yeah, whatever. But if one of the executives or if one of the regional managers comes to work alongside them for the day, they might see something that’s really important that the store hadn’t thought to call out. So I think spending time in stores is a big one. Also listening to the retail leaders and believing what they’re saying. I had an instance recently where someone from the corporate side, I was just saying, retail leaders are burned out. They need more resources. And then this person told me, well, it’s ultimately the job of the store leader to make sure the store is clean and to get all this stuff done. And I said, it is, but we really don’t have the resources to make that happen. And this person told me that I should find another job that I should go work for another company.

(19:55):

And that’s not the best attitude. I think you should really listen to them and believe what they’re saying when they tell you they need stuff. They’re not just being whiners.

JD Dillon (20:09):

It comes back to that question earlier of trust. Do you trust people to run their business? If they have the experience, knowledge and skill to do the job and then report back intelligently and informedly to say, “If I need more help and what that help is because we’re in search of the same goal, I’m not just trying to make my life easier. I’m trying to hit the numbers and the outcomes that are expected of me.”

(20:32):

For me, all these pieces start to snap together in really interesting meaningful ways. But I want to touch on two more topics before we wrap up our conversation. One is training. So in my background as a frontline manager, I’ve had a lot of those figure it out as I go experiences. In one case, I didn’t get sent to the formal training until months after I was in the job. In another case, I went on my days off because my boss just wouldn’t schedule me for training. I felt like I needed some of that information, so I just willed my way into that experience. I’m curious what your perspective is on where training fits and kind of the reality of being a frontline manager and a retail store manager. What types of learning and skill development opportunities are actually most useful for someone in that role, whether they’re new in the job or maybe they’re more experienced in the job?

Kit Campoy (21:26):

If you can get everybody together in the same place, that’s ideal. Really. I think the best setup that I had was, I worked for a company where all the store leaders would get together twice a year. So once for back-to-school planning and once for holiday planning. Three times a year would’ve been better. But twice is better than nothing. It’s really important for store leaders to get together with their peers because we don’t get to do that very often. When you’re a store leader, you’re the only person in your store that does your job, so it’s important to talk to other people that are doing your job. And two to three times a year is great. It was holiday planning, and then they would always do a leadership training. And I remember one year they showed us Simon Sinek’s keynote, “Start with Y,” and that was revolutionary for me.

(22:34):

I brought that back to my team. I was so excited about it. Any kind of leadership training like that, any kind of just telling people about the different kinds of leadership. What is servant leadership? What are the attributes of that? Why is that important? How can you use that with your team? How can you show empathy? All these different things, leaders in stores don’t typically get that training. Getting deep into leadership, I had to do it on my own. It wasn’t really until I started writing, reading and researching about leadership that I found all of this stuff and a lot of it I was already doing with my teams, but I didn’t have the language for it. So that is super important. Just giving people the language to talk about leadership and to talk about team building I think is so important.

JD Dillon (23:35):

I’d say a lot of it comes down to, like you said, that the exposure to new ideas is not just part of the day-to-day. I get stuck in the four walls of my location in the day-to-day tasks, the things I have to do, the fires I have to put out. Sometimes it’s about exposure to new ways of thinking, new practices and new skills that just weren’t top of mind for me. Then there’s that other point you echoed around that connection piece, which oftentimes as a frontline manager, you can feel like you’re on an island. In certain cases, I was very benefited by the fact that I worked on larger frontline teams. I might’ve had 10 managers on my team with me, so we could learn from one another. I learned a lot about what it means to be a good frontline manager from my peers as opposed to from my boss or from the learning and development function or what have you.

(24:24):

But I think there are a lot of cases where, if you’re working in a smaller footprint, you might be the only manager in your location. The next location might not be until the next town. And my question often becomes, well, how many problems have already been solved by people you just don’t know are there? Or it wasn’t part of the formal training? A lot of times that kind of connection piece, that peer group peer learning, I think plays a critical role in the development and problem-solving relationship that managers have. And that connects to the last question I have for you, which is, I think one of the things that suffers is part of this conversation when it comes to things like doing more with less is the community aspect of the workplace. We get so focused again on the task list that we fail to recognize the importance of things like relationships as part of the formula for success in a frontline workplace. So my question becomes, could you talk about the importance of community in a frontline operation, like a retail store, how the manager plays a role in fostering community and where corporate comes in to help the manager improve that sense of community?

Kit Campoy (25:31):

It’s so important because when you’re working in a store, you go through a lot of wild experiences. Customers can yell at you, people don’t show up. We go through a lot that’s kind of traumatic. And so you have to really believe that the person next to you has your back. Managers need to lead from the front, be on the floor with their team and do the job of the team with the team, whether it’s helping customers, fitting rooms, shoes or cash. Whatever it is, do all the things. Work alongside people. It kind of goes back to the like, “You Got This”. It’s kind of like, “I Got You.” We’re going to get through this together. And also just someone asked me what would be a good leadership training course, and I said, honestly, be cool to people. Just be cool to people.

(26:41):

If they’re five minutes late, don’t yell at them. Don’t let them be, but say “Hey man, can you just think you can get here on time? What’s going on?” Just be cool to people. Just treat them kindly. I treated everybody like I was the big sister. Yeah, I’m going to make sure you do your job and we hit these sales goals, but we’re going to have a really good time while we do it. That’s culture, that’s creating the community that makes people want to come to work. And then as far as how corporate can support that, I think I would say don’t throw Friday corporate parties and put it on Instagram while your teams get nothing. It doesn’t mean that you have to buy your frontline team’s pizza every Friday. You don’t have to do that. But don’t put it out there on social media that you’re all partying and having a great time at corporate. And we’re like, you’re pulling away our payroll. Is that why you’re pulling away our payroll? We had these discussions many times over the course of my career, did you see what corporate’s doing? How come they get all that stuff? So I think if you’re doing stuff like that for the corporate office, I think you should think about the frontline as well and how you can do something for them that’s fun and not just make it about the corporate office.

JD Dillon (28:12):

I think that comes back to one alignment in terms of how you facilitate the culture of the organization, but also enabling pieces of the organization to facilitate their own version of what culture and community means for them, because it’s just a different environment working in the frontline versus working in the corporate office. But one of the best things about my background, when I went from frontline roles into corporate roles, is that during the busy periods, I went back because I had the operational capability, and supported the operation. So I was there doing the job and not, well, I can take time off even though it’s the busiest time for the organization, but maybe not for my particular function. So I think we could do another half an hour on pizza and how organizations mess that particular one up when it comes to how to properly recognize people.

(29:04):

But again, I think that’s why it’s so important for the corporate team, instead of trying to enforce what culture community means as this huge organization, it’s about enabling the frontline teams to say, I’m going to give you the tools and resources to enable what community means for you. Because even two different stores can have two meaningfully different cultures because cultures are people and it’s different people that make up the community there, and that community changes over time based on who the manager is and who the employees are and whatnot. But there’s one more thing I want to touch on before we sign off, and that is we’re heading into the holiday season right now. Sales during the period of October to December can make up anywhere between 20 to 40% of a company’s annual revenue in retail. And this year, we’re looking right now at sales projections that year over year looks positive, but we also have consumers who are very price conscious, still reeling from inflation, looking for the right deals and shopping accordingly. So that means retailers are going to need their store teams, including lots of seasonal staff to execute flawlessly if they want to hit their sales targets. So when you’re thinking as an experienced retail manager heading into the holiday season, what’s one or two things the corporate team could be doing right now to help their managers get ready for this season?

Kit Campoy (30:23):

I think just be transparent about what you have coming up as far as what deals are you thinking about running? What events are you thinking about running? What is your marketing going to look like? All that kind of stuff gets the store team psyched to see what you have planned. Then, when we start to see it roll out, we’re like, oh yeah, it’s here. That’s really exciting. Just even for us like getting the holiday gift cards and stocking our gift card station, all that stuff, we were like, yeah, cool. It’s here. So I think just being transparent about that and then being really clear about, I think there’s a part in the book where I talk about seasonal hiring and just operationally how to do that, right? How to plan for that, how many people will you need? Literally map it out.

(31:25):

I would say give your store manager and your hiring manager, whoever does that in the store, a couple of hours to actually plan for that stuff together and to talk about what that’s going to look like and when are you going to do your orientations and how are you going to make people feel welcome in the store and all of that stuff. Two hours of planning really goes a long way to getting the store leader, the co-manager and the other leaders in the store feeling really good and excited about holiday hiring versus an overwhelming feeling of like, oh, this is one more thing we have to do. When you get the time to plan it all out, you’re all in the loop and you’re all looking forward to it, then it’s fun and it’s like, oh, we can’t wait to hire all these new people.

JD Dillon (32:22):

Absolutely. When you provide the right resources, that level of transparency and communication, have a plan and a strategy and involve people in that, it can actually be fun to be very busy in that type of period. Some of the most fun times I had as a frontline employee and frontline manager were those busiest times, and I remember Christmas time in the Magic Kingdom, right? It’s a magical time to be there. It’s incredibly busy and stressful, but when you’ve got the plan, you’ve got the resources, you’ve got the team in place, it can be a lot of fun for both customers as well as your frontline team. So thank you again, Kit, so much for joining us today and being a vocal champion for the frontline workforce, especially frontline managers. Before we let you go, can you tell people how to connect with you and grab a copy of your book, The Retail Leaders Field Guide?

Kit Campoy (33:05):

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m there just about every day. My website is KitCampoy.com, and the book is available on Amazon in paperback or digital form.

JD Dillon (33:19):

Awesome. Thank you again so much to Kit Campoy for sharing her insights and experience into the critical role frontline managers play within our operations. If you’re watching live on LinkedIn, keep an eye on those DMs because we may be sending you a copy of The Retail Leaders Field Guide after the show. And if you had a good time today, be sure to subscribe to ITK. Head over to Axonify.com/ITK to sign up for show announcements and reminders. You can also check out all 51 episodes of the show over at the Axonify YouTube channel or listen to In The Know on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, I’ve been JD. Now you’re in the know. And always remember to ask yourself the important questions: Do you know what they say about working in retail? Once you’ve seen one retail job, you’ve seen them-mall. I’ll see you next time. In The Know is produced by Richia McCutcheon. Visual Design by Mark Anderson. Additional production support by Andrea Miller, Tuong La and Maliyah Bernard. The show is written and hosted by JD. ITK is an Axonify production. For more information on how Axonify helps frontline workers learn, connect and get things done, visit Axonify.com.