PetSmart, Autozone dish on frontline worker engagement and retention strategies

During the height of the pandemic, it was common for retailers and the public generally to throw support behind frontline workers who had to work in-person and didn’t have the option of working from the comfort of their couch.

At the time, nearly four years ago, companies faced pressure to increase the pay of their frontline hourly workers, and many eventually followed through as a result. But nearly four years later, frontline workers are leaving their jobs because some believe pay has not kept up with inflation, as Retail Brew previously reported.

• In the past year, 29% of retail workers said they had switched jobs, according to the Global Frontline Workforce Pulse Report that surveyed 5,615 frontline workers.
• The most common reason cited for leaving a previous role was better pay.

But pay is only part of the story. A Gallup poll found that 2021 was the first annual decline in engaged employees, down from 36% to 34%—a trend that only continued in 2022, when the rate was 32%. The Global Frontline Workforce Pulse report found that the 29% attrition rate was the lowest among industries covered.

That could be why retailers like PetSmart and AutoZone have taken steps to boost employee engagement through new communication channels and initiatives meant to bring its workers into the fold and bridge the gap between frontline workers and the corporate headquarters.

“AutoZoners always put the customers first, we know our purchasing products, and our stores look great,” Michelle Borninkhof, AutoZone’s SVP and chief information officer, said at NRF earlier this month. “When we think about those three simple things that we can rally our team around, it was really, ‘How do we give them the tools to be able to do that, and be able to effectively communicate in an ever-changing retail world?’”

All bite, no bark: Over the past year, PetSmart has experimented with a new associate communication tool called Central Bark, which comes with a user dashboard that gives workers information about company resources and benefits, access to forums where employees can discuss tasks and responsibilities among themselves, and their work schedules.

• Prior to Central Bark, which was introduced last February, PetSmart used an intranet website called The DISH to communicate to its frontline workers, but it was only available on desktop, making it hard for all 50,000+ employees to access it in real time, Theresa Lee, PetSmart’s VP of HR talent, culture, and strategy, told Retail Brew.
• In the 11 months PetSmart has made Central Bark—which is optional for employees to join—available, Lee said the company is seeing 4% engagement on posts, which is higher than the 2% goal that was outlined at the start, with 70% of PetSmart’s employees on the app.

“For us, adoption is still a key focus, even almost a year after launch because of the turnover that I’m sure you all are aware of in retail,” Lee said during the NRF panel discussion. “We prioritize our production consistently to ensure that we’re capturing new associates.”

Get in the zone: Part of AutoZone’s strategy in modernizing communication with employees is getting rid of analog, aging, and paper processes used to track things like workers’ schedules, Calandra Cleveland, director of information technology and customer satisfaction, said.

• AutoZone is in the process of sunsetting its use of IBM Lotus Notes, the collaborative software platform created in 1989.
• Cleveland mentioned that the company is assessing how it can better communicate its management action plan, which varies from region to region. As of now, AutoZone uses a lot of email correspondence, but not even every employee has an email address with the company.

“Now we’re targeting communications very specific to the Autzoner at the store,” Cleveland said. “We’re able to target those regions as well as the training, the processes—how we think [about] any other thing to do from a communication perspective.”