As shopper attention becomes more difficult to capture during the holidays this year, retailers are looking for ways to stand out.

In 2020 and 2021, consumers shifted online and discovered how personalized digital shopping can be. Now that we’re in 2022, holiday shoppers are looking to recapture this type of experience in-store, with 80% of consumers wanting personalization from retailers, according to an Epsilon survey. The following strategies can help businesses add personalization to the buyer experiences through employee engagement:

Considered purchases are especially difficult for customers to navigate without a human touch, so one way to leverage employee engagement is to train them in the product benefits of your highest selling products.

A key component of this training is focusing on the solutions the product provides instead of the features. Marketing principles emphasize that showing consumers the transformation that specific benefits will bring them is more effective on sell-through rates than just pitting brands with similar features against each other.

One of the best ways to instill these values through training is to create fun short-form content. For employees, micro-learning keeps them actively engaged because it doesn’t feel like a long monotonous PowerPoint presentation. According to research from EdApp, the average retention rate from micro-learning is 70% to 90% in contrast to 15% from traditional learning.

Forward thinking brands will see that the benefits of these training methods will equip employees to provide an in-store experience that feels personalized beyond what digital customer experience can offer.

Some companies call their employees family. Even better is to treat your employees like customers, as this creates the mindset that employee engagement and retention is of key importance. Losing customers is often top of mind, but the experience for them begins with employee interactions.

The ripple effect of an employee that feels acknowledged can impact retention and team morale. According to Atlassian, celebrating wins can improve a team’s sense of well-being by up to 16 percentage points. This leads to better performance and team building.

Some ways to put this into practice are to celebrate team and sales milestones, address employee feedback quickly, and reward loyal employees. These methods are similar to how you would treat loyal customers.

Zappos is famous for happy customers, but few people know that their culture fosters happy employees as well. Employees that are more engaged remain motivated to go the extra mile by providing personalization across customer interactions in both digital and physical customer experience.

Forward thinking brands see training frontline employees will equip them to provide an in-store experience that feels personalized beyond what digital customer experience can offer.

Karl Haller leads IBM’s Consumer Industry Center of Competency, where he works with retailers and consumer goods companies worldwide to digitally reinvent their businesses and operationalize the use of advanced capabilities across their enterprise. Karl has over 25 years of experience in retail, fashion, and consumer goods, and has served in executive positions in Strategy, Customer Engagement, and Marketing at Brooks Brothers, Tommy Hilfiger, The Limited, and Doner Advertising. Karl began his career in the strategy consulting practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

It’s time to talk turkey.

The holiday season is upon us, and with rising inflation and supply chain snafus, grocery customers are looking to bring their traditions to the table for less.

For some, this means shopping earlier and more often. For others, it means leveraging time and money-saving technology like curbside pick-up and loyalty app promotions. And for grocery store workers - well, it means there’s a whole lot more complexity to deal with.

The role of grocery store workers already changed significantly during the pandemic. No longer viewed as simply staff members who fill shelves and operate cash registers, grocery workers took on a new importance: essential workers, who were called on to keep their customers healthy and safe.

Now, frontline grocery workers are grappling with even more changing customer expectations as well as an onslaught of new in-store technology implementations.

These shifts have not been without challenges or added stress. In fact, 2 in 5 retail workers were considering leaving the industry as of last summer, according to field enablement platform provider Zipline.

But these challenges are manageable, especially if retailers look to open, consistent communication as a means of retaining grocery employees and keeping them engaged and happy in their jobs. Studies show that increased employee engagement results in an 18% increase in productivity.

The result of these factors has been the formation of the next generation of the grocery workforce: a community of essential employees who, when they are given the right communication tools, feel happier, more loyal and more prepared to tackle every new aspect of their jobs.

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, retail companies - especially grocers - have been dealing with an unprecedented labor shortage. Talent is in short supply as more employees are choosing to leave roles in retail altogether in favor of less stressful roles elsewhere.

It’s now more important than ever for grocery chain executives to focus on how to take care of their employees. From a communication standpoint, this means giving frontline employees a voice, ensuring they understand the company’s purpose, and making it as easy as possible for them to complete daily tasks and be successful in their roles.

Communication became more critical than ever. But, up to that point, communication in the grocery industry, as in many other areas of retail, had been fragmented; it mostly consisted of emails, in-store signage, store huddles and other outdated methods of communication.

To remedy this, some retailers found that a centralized communication platform was a useful tool because it puts store communications all in one place, with an easy-to-understand dashboard, and targets messages to employees based on location and role.

Grocery chain Hy-Vee deployed San Francisco-based Zipline’s communication platform in the early days of the pandemic. The platform quickly became the retailer’s primary communication method, and in turn helped its stores stay open at a pivotal time.

Hy-Vee President and CEO Randy Edeker has used Zipline to connect with every associate, every week, via a video message, to show his appreciation and support for Hy-Vee’s workforce throughout the pandemic. “For the most part, we are such a better company because of how we communicate today,” says Edeker.

According to Retail Info Systems’ annual Grocery Tech Trends report, more than half (54%) of grocers are increasing their year-over-year tech spend in 2022. Historic supply chain issues, labor shortages, and the ongoing Covid-19 health crisis are currently pushing grocery store operations to the limit. In order to maintain a safe, memorable, and engaging customer experience, grocery retailers must look towards the future. And the future is better technology.

For instance, many grocers are reporting a slew of POS investments over the next 12 months. Point-of-sale upgrades are the foundation on which most in-store technology enhancements are built. Without an up-to-date POS, grocers can’t process contactless payments, execute click-and-collect orders, or allow for self-service checkout – all things customers have come to expect from their neighborhood stores.

But a POS upgrade also requires immense coordination between grocery headquarters teams, vendor teams, and frontline workers. Implementing a new POS often means several registers must be offline for hours at a time, requiring workers to perform more manual workarounds. Stores need to be staffed up to deal with these complexities, which usually requires on-call shifts. Business as usual grinds to a halt but customer expectations remain high – and frontline employees are caught in the crossfire.

In today’s consumer environment, it’s imperative that grocery retailers are prepared to support this next generation of grocery workers with more sophisticated modes of communication.

Emily Lane is Head of Content at Zipline, helping best-in-class brands bring their corporate strategies to life in stores through better communication. Prior to Zipline, Emily spent 10 years managing store communication at major retail brands like Gymboree, Gap and Old Navy.