Employees complain about lack of investment in technology

In the retail sector, 40 per cent of employees on the shop floor feel that their employer is not investing in the technology they need. 20 per cent believe that this is evidently not a priority. This is according to the study "Frontline Retail Revealed: Motivations, Technology Attitudes and Insights", for which 2 000 retail employees, including 300 in Germany, were surveyed on behalf of Scandit, a provider of smart data capture solutions.

According to the authors, the study reveals a clear investment gap. While employees would like to see more investment in supporting technologies, they believe that companies are not doing this to a sufficient extent.

Finding and retaining staff remains one of the biggest challenges in the retail sector. The study shows, among other things, that the work-life balance (56 per cent) and competitive salaries (54 per cent) remain the most important factors in motivating employees worldwide. Easy-to-use technologies (41 per cent) are also among the three most important factors that increase loyalty.

For many employees, staff shortages and increasing workloads are another major problem (38 per cent), particularly in grocery stores (44 per cent), drugstores and perfumeries (41 per cent) and DIY stores (41 per cent).

Increasing use of technology

Technology has become an important part of everyday working life for frontline workers, with the study revealing some interesting details about device usage and training. For example, more than two-thirds of sales employees worldwide rate their devices as important or very important to their job. Across all age groups and retail sectors, the decisive factors for the smartphones and scanners used are that they can be used for various tasks (70 per cent), provide access to product information (67 per cent) and are intuitive to use (52 per cent).