Cut Turnover Costs With Retail Employee Retention (2026)

A single resignation can cost far more than the hours it takes to replace a shift—especially in retail, where turnover is baked into the job. If you want stronger retail employee retention, you need a plan that starts at hiring and continues through growth, pay, and day-to-day engagement.

In November 2025, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (JOLTS) reported a quits rate of 2.7% for retail trade (seasonally adjusted). Turnover costs can add up quickly: the Work Institute estimates total turnover costs at about 33.3% of an employee’s base salary. In short, employee turnover costs you time and money.

Retail is a unique workforce, made up of part-time retail employees, full-time head office employees, contract distribution channel workers, and everything in between. Minimizing turnover across all these departments is important to grow your best talent and keep your operation running smoothly.

Employees move on for a variety of reasons, some of which are out of your control. But improving retail employee retention where you can is about identifying at-risk employees and building the conditions that make staying the obvious choice.

Increasing Employee Retention

Employee retention risk can be significant in many organizations, which makes it important to identify what makes employees happy and what makes them stay with an organization long term.

Let’s take a closer look at what you can do to address employees who may be at higher risk of leaving and what they need to stay.

1. Hire Carefully

It can be tempting to fill an empty seat or get someone behind the register as quickly as possible, but taking your time to find the right person saves time, money, and headaches down the road. The Wall Street Journal recommends that employers interview and vet candidates carefully, not just to ensure they have the right skills but also that they fit well with the company culture, managers, and co-workers.

For some additional help with hiring and keeping the right retail employees, read Shopify’s detailed hiring strategies in Retail Staffing 101: How to Hire, Train, and Retrain the Right Employees.

2. Offer Career Advancement

Employees thinking about leaving an organization often state that they feel stuck in their current role. In practice, a common driver of attrition is the belief that advancement requires changing employers.

Without a clear career path or opportunities to develop skills, employees look outward to other companies for a promotion or role change.

This is especially prevalent with millennials (born 1981 to 1996, per Pew Research Center). In a study, Gallup uncovered that 93% of millennials say they left their employer the last time they changed roles.

So give your employees a clear path to climb the proverbial ladder. Have regular discussions about opportunities within your organization, make a sustained effort to promote internally, and consider offering mentorship programs to pair up employees so they can learn new skills.

If your retail business offers these and similar opportunities for career advancement and education, encourages an open dialogue about promotions, and rewards employees for performance, it creates an opportunity to pick up millennials who are leaving previous companies for greener pastures.

3. Increase Responsibility

When any kind of employee proves their reliability, consider giving them a promotion or position of leadership. Offering retail workers more responsibility can make them feel more empowered and engaged, which helps curb that dreaded turnover rate.

According to When I Work, scheduling software for retail and service organizations: Increasing responsibilities with an...employee demonstrates that you trust and value them.

That trust can go a long way to help ensure your employees stay put—and it’s a practical lever you can pull quickly when you’re trying to improve retail employee retention without overhauling your entire operation.

Learn more about customer retention strategies and why they’re important.

4. Money Talks

This might seem obvious, but often employees are looking for more money to stay at their current organization. Gallup found that 44% of employees say they would consider taking a job with a different company for a raise of 20% or less. Regular raises and bonuses are an important way to keep your best employees happy and decrease the chance of them looking externally for more money.

Financial stress can also affect focus and productivity at work. If it fits your team and budget, consider offering optional financial education (like budgeting basics or retirement-plan walkthroughs) or pointing employees to reputable local resources.

5. Keep Things Interesting

Boredom is dangerous for any business — bored employees are less engaged, less productive, and are complacent with the status quo.

Offering employees the opportunity to learn new skills, participate in workshops, attend educational classes, shadow a co-worker, or lead a new project increases the engagement and passion that they have about coming to work.

Plus, unhappy employees are more likely to start looking for a new gig, and work stress can increase job-search behavior.

Of the employees that think about leaving, the ones most likely to follow through with it are the risk takers in the group. These workers love change, love trying new things, and are a valuable part of any business — driving movement and momentum within the organization.

Most employees in the high-retention-risk group say they enjoy new experiences, embrace change and are happy to take risks to get more out of life.

6. Perks and Company Culture

Many of the world’s top employers offer company perks and rewards, including free food, gym memberships, parties, flex-time, techy tools, and even nap rooms. But what is the benefit of these brag-worthy company perks?

Aside from helping you attract the best talent and differentiate yourself from all the noise — a great company culture helps you retain talent and increase productivity as well.

Research from Gallup found that engaged employees did better than their less engaged co-workers in the areas of attendance, safety, performance, and employee turnover rates. These employees that were more engaged were also more productive and less likely to leave, but just 32% of U.S. workers are engaged in their jobs.

The key to increasing engagement at work is to promote employee well-being in all aspects of their lives, and you can measure that wellbeing through an employee’s sense of purpose, social relationships, financial security, community involvement, and physical health.

Not every company is the same and can offer the same perks, but there are ways to increase employee engagement and well-being big and small. From holidays get-togethers to employee of the month programs and team-building sporting events, there’s an infinite number of ways to reward your employees that work so hard.

Next, you’ll want a simple way to tell whether these changes are actually improving retention—or just feeling good in the moment.

How to Measure Happiness

It’s important to have a dialogue with your employees to determine their satisfaction and see if your efforts to increase employee retention are working. Plus, you don’t ever want to feel blindsided by losing employees that you otherwise thought were happy.

One-on-One Meetings

Regular one-on-one meetings between employees and supervisors are a great way to check in, get a feel for what’s going on, and provide a platform where employees feel like they can have a discussion.

Starting a conversation about wages, hours, or advancement can feel daunting, and just having a set time to talk with their supervisor can put employees at ease and prevent built-up frustration.

Regular huddles or stand-ups with small teams can also be a great way to check in on employee morale.

Employee Surveys

Large companies have used employee surveys to gauge employee satisfaction for years. Conducted by outside surveyors, these questionnaires provide employees with the anonymity to be honest and forthcoming in their answers.

An issue with employee surveys is how often organizations write off the negative responses as bad apples exaggerating their unhappiness. So if you’re interested in starting an employee survey, prepare to listen and have an open mind about the responses and suggestions from your employees.

Exit Interviews

Not all turnover is avoidable. While it’s hard to say goodbye to someone who has chosen to move on, it’s also a great opportunity to learn about their experiences at your company in an open dialogue.

Exit interviews are the perfect time to ask why an employee is leaving, what they liked and disliked about working there, and what they would have done differently.

Looking Forward

Any information you gather from your workforce is invaluable to creating a better environment for current and future employees — helping you minimize employee turnover in the future. But it’s not realistic to expect a 0% turnover rate for any business, especially a retail storefront.

Remember to also focus on hiring and training the right people, and growing a great all-around organization that will organically attract the talented, hard-working employees you’re looking for.

Turn retention tactics into a repeatable system

Lower turnover isn’t just about one perk—it’s about building a workplace where people can grow, feel trusted, and see that performance is rewarded. When you hire carefully, create real advancement paths, and measure morale consistently, you reduce churn and protect the time you spend training new staff.

Pick two actions to implement this week: (1) schedule recurring one-on-ones or team huddles, and (2) define one clear next-step role (and the skills needed) for your strongest associates. Then review what you learn from surveys and exit interviews monthly and adjust.

If you’re ready to build a more resilient retail operation—one that supports your team and your customers—set up your store and systems with Shopify and start improving retail employee retention today.