In this episode of Retail Tech Podcast, I interview Mike Zorn of WorkJam -- a cross platform mobile app that empowers employees and employers in the area of workforce engagement. Mike and I discuss valuable employee engagement strategies, how to reduce turnover rate, and how to retain your top employees and salespeople. We also take a look ahead into the future of the gig economy, why computers won't steal everyone's jobs, and what's in store for users as voice recognition software becomes more prevalent.
Everyone knows that retailers have a major challenge in finding and retaining great staff for the stores and yet not many people, including retailers, are doing much more that "expecting" people getting paid minimum wage to always be happy , uplifting and super helpful for customers! Obviously this is wishful thinking and the list of things retailers should be doing dofferent is long. But, there are immediate benefits we can provide the staff by utilizing the power of mobile software to help make the jobs (and lives) of the staff a little easier and less stressful.
Empowering employees by providing internal software that's easy, intuitive and mobile may not add to their take home pay but it is a major positive to tell the staff we care about them, and in return they will care more about our business and our customers.
Employee engagement software such as provided by Workjam is a step in the right direction all retailers should look into. Actually the right software will not only make your employees happier, it will make the entire store more efficient ultimately reducing expenses.
This interview had a lot of good points and some of the highlights were:
00:20 overview of workjam and Mike's role as a VP of workplace strategy
02:35 4 phases of retail staffing cycle
07:00 workjam's role in helping minimize turnover
14:10 how the gig economy is changing retail
19:05 facing challenges in the gig economy
20:30 importance of human customer service interaction
22:00 How the shopping industry will adapt to change
23:40 customer experience
25:30 Looking ahead to the evolution of workjam
29:20 retail innovation in amazon go, Alibaba, etc and taking advantage of proximity to customers
31:30 generational differences in utilization of technology
35:50 voice recognition technology
38:20 Roadmap for workjam in 2018
40:00 The process of training new customers adopting workjam
I hope you enjoy this interview and please do subscribe to the newsletter and share if you do! Also feel free to recommend great companies and leader for future interviews.
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