Articles/research on employee satisfaction, turnover, etc. in retail

July 15, 2014 7:30 PM

I'm creating a proposal as an exercise to increase the retail employees at my place of employment a significant amount in two years. This would bring them in line with higher paying retailers such as CostCo and Container Store. Please link me articles, employee surveys or research studies that support higher wages/benefits for retail employees related to employee satisfaction, decreased turnover, increased engagement and other similar metrics.
posted by OnTheLastCastle to Work & Money (2 answers total)

This might be a place to start. People may have used the statistical and survey information in their dissertations. You can search data.gov for government data statistics

I thought this one was interesting though a 3 years old. http://www.shrm.org/research/surveyfindings/articles/documents/11-0618%20job_satisfaction_fnl.pdf

If you enter into Google "free downloadable data employee satisfaction, or employee turnover, you will probably get the data sets and charts you are looking for. Put the free in there and it won't cost you anything. The GAO.gov site may have something. but i think that last link will be helpful.
posted by Jewel98 at 7:56 PM on July 15, 2014

Coincidentally, my economist friend was just posting about this on Facebook!

Not an academic article, but maybe useful for background and pointers to more research: The economic case for paying your cashiers $40K a year.

She also suggested searching on the term "efficiency wage", and mentioned that Ford Motor Company did this in their early days to get people showing up for work and reducing retraining costs. Maybe something to look into for the historical perspective.
posted by fussbudget at 4:46 AM on July 16, 2014