Management

Employees at a Baltimore-area Apple store have voted to unionize, making it the first of Apple's 270-plus stores in the U.S. to join a union. In the election, 65 employees at Apple’s store in Towson, Md., voted in favor of being represented by the union, known as the Apple Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (CORE),…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss an article recently published by Total Retail titled, “How Retailers Can Stay Profitable Despite High Inflation,” authored by Hilding Anderson, head of retail strategy, North America at Publicis Sapient. The article shares five ways that retailers can leverage the headwinds caused…

With an inflation rate that’s higher than we’ve seen in years, retailers are grappling with increased costs, reduced pricing power, and decreased consumer spending — a perfect formula for declining profitability. How a retailer responds in these challenging financial times can set the course for its success or permanent decline, so the stakes are high. Digital…

This summer Walmart is piloting a new College2Career program, which will give young professionals the chance to fast-track their careers by helping to run a multi-million-dollar business: one of its Walmart stores. According to a blog post on Walmart.com, the program is for recent college graduates and current college students within 12 months of graduating,…

Starbucks said it will hike wages for tenured workers and double training for new employees as the company and its CEO, Howard Schultz, seek to beat back the union push from its baristas. However, the coffee giant will not offer the enhanced benefits to workers at the roughly 50 company-owned cafes that have voted to unionize.…

Grocery chain Hy-Vee says it will ask up to 500 of its employees to move from corporate-level jobs to retail positions at its stores. The move comes after the company already eliminated 121 corporate-level positions in March. Hy-Vee says 102 of those employees were offered retail positions. In addition to shifting employees' jobs, the company…

What do retail workers want? This is the question I’m hearing from every retailer I’ve spoken to in the past year. As we strive to find some sense of post-pandemic normalcy — or at least start to understand what our new normal looks like — retail organizations are struggling to battle rising costs and heightened…

“Greater competition, increasing consumer demands, a tight labor market, new compliance legislation, and a workforce expecting more from employers — all are making life difficult for retailers around the world.” Sound familiar? Of course it does. The truth is “upheaval” is the standard state of business. “New technologies disrupting business as usual” is a complaint…

Experiential e-commerce retailer Zappos.com has appointed Scott Schaefer as its new CEO, effective immediately, according to a statement released by the company on Wednesday. The move comes two years after late Zappos founder Tony Hsieh stepped down as CEO in August 2020 after 21 years leading the business, and a few months after its most recent…

The Great Resignation, which began in earnest in mid-2021 following the onset of year two of the pandemic, is continuing to send shock waves throughout the U.S. economy and its workforce. According to a recent study by human resources consultancy Korn Ferry, if this crisis is left unchecked, the United States could miss out on…