About one in five people in the U.S. labor force is employed in retail, accommodation, or food service, according to recent estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Failing to invest in the skills and abilities of this massive workforce translates to billions of dollars in lost revenue for the economy.
Recognizing this, ATD and ACT Foundation recently partnered to conduct research on the skills that retail, accommodation, and food service professionals in different job roles need to master for success. This research also determines which competencies are most crucial for companies to address—in other words, where the biggest skills gaps are. The project also looked at building leadership pipelines, taking a snapshot of organizations’ programs to develop high-potential employees and prepare them for advancement. To gather this information, in August 2016 ATD and ACT Foundation surveyed 121 professionals who manage, design, or deliver training in these industries.
The project used the National Retail Services Initiative’s (NSRI’s) Competency Model as a framework. The model, which was released in 2016, separates store, hotel, and restaurant employees into four job families—entry role, advanced role, manager role, and leader role—and identifies competencies for each job family.
Customer Service Training Is Key for Entry Role Employees
For entry role employees (such as cashiers, sales associates, front desk associates, servers, and cooks), customer service was rated by survey participants as the most important competency for employees to have. However, the extent to which entry role employees actually possessed customer service skills did not match its importance, and this should be a critical area of focus for training programs.
Gaps in Leadership and Critical Thinking Skills for More Advanced Employees
For advanced role, manager role, and leader role employees (together, these three families include key hourlies; assistant store or unit managers; and store, hotel, and restaurant managers), the biggest gaps between a competency’s importance and the extent to which employees possess it emerged for leading people and critical thinking. This finding suggests that leadership development programs and exercises on identifying and solving problems should be a priority.
For manager role employees, communications also showed a large gap. While these individuals may have experience addressing customer needs, they may not be as seasoned at managing other employees or managing business units. For this group, training on skills such as coaching; giving actionable, targeted, and timely feedback; and negotiation could be valuable.
The study found that for all job families, six competencies in NRSI’s model were rated relatively high in importance: communications, drives for results, customer service, adaptability, critical thinking, and technical/occupational. Leads people, the only other competency in the model, was rated highly for every group but entry role. However, the model specifies it does not apply to entry role employees, while the other six competencies apply to all job families. Indeed, none of the competencies should be ignored by organizations and their programs. Employees may need to master more specific areas of expertise depending on their actual titles and types of employers, but these competencies can be viewed as foundational across job titles and companies.
Most Organizations Have a Development Program for High Potentials
Having looked at training for success in a specific role, the research turned to the question of whether companies have formal programs to develop high-potential employees. Of survey participants, 58 percent said yes. Note that of those who didn’t have a program, the majority indicated that a program had at least been considered before. Such programs can build leadership pipelines, as well as help engage, retain, and attract top talent.
ATD’s Partnership With ACT Foundation
ATD and ACT Foundation hope that the findings from this research partnership will help develop better tools to serve those who develop, train, and hire talent in the retail, accommodation, and food service industries and employees in these industries. ACT Foundation is a national nonprofit dedicated to helping young people achieve education and workplace success. Working with today’s business, education, and philanthropy leaders, as well as tomorrow’s visionaries, ACT Foundation invests in research, programs, and partner networks to increase educational and economic opportunity, particularly for low-income, high-school, college, and young adult students working while learning.
ATD and ACT Foundation are presenting some of the research findings in October 2016 at I AM RETAIL, a retail-focused summit that brings together employers, thought-leaders, education and instruction providers, resource developers, and working learners, to collaborate in shaping the workforce that powers the future of retail services from hospitality, lodging, and tourism to restaurant, logistics, and information technology industries.
