Personnel

Wayfair plans to announce on Friday its second major round of layoffs in less than six months, as the online retailer continues to deal with falling sales and supply chain tangles. The expected cuts follow a 5 percent layoff by Wayfair in August. The earlier round of cuts was part of a $500 million cost-saving plan, but Wayfair executives…

A new law in New York will require companies that operate distribution centers to be more transparent about their work requirements, aiming to protect warehouse workers from possibly unlawful quotas. Gov. Kathy Hochul last week signed the Warehouse Worker Protection Act, which is modeled after a similar, first-in-the-nation law signed in California last year. The New York…

The retail industry is facing a labor shortage, and companies are thinking creatively about how to solve staffing challenges. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are more unfilled jobs than unemployed retail workers and many employees left the retail and hospitality industries for good during the pandemic. The natural seasonality of retail adds…

The events of the last few years — Brexit, the pandemic, The Great Resignation, a cost-of-living crisis — have caused evolving challenges that continue to ripple through the retail industry. One of the biggest causes for concern for businesses today is a mass shortage of workers as people switch to remote or at-home working, decide…

Quiet quitting is a trending topic across corporate America. And the retail sector is experiencing its own wave of workers eager to set boundaries with employers. Whether you call it quiet quitting, coasting, or plain old checking out, unmotivated employees aren’t new. Workers who lack support, resources, and work-life balance also lack incentive to go…

SHEIN, the global fast-fashion e-commerce company, said it would commit $15 billion to "improving standards" at suppliers' factories in the wake of allegations of labor exploitation among its factory workers in China. The Chinese company, which was founded in 2008 by entrepreneur Chris Xu, was recently the subject of a U.K. documentary that claimed employees…

The Great Resignation. The rise of e-commerce. The supply chain squeeze. These are just the latest in a string of challenging issues facing the retail industry, with a possible recession looming on the horizon. Retailers have rebounded from economic downturns before, however, relying on an economic recovery will not be sufficient without a workforce ready…

Employers across every industry should be creating equal opportunities for their frontline employees. One of the ways this can be accomplished is by adopting the concept of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). But what does DEI truly mean? It can look different for each company, but essentially, as BuiltIn put it, "DEI is any policy…

With national labor challenges lingering, the retail industry is among those hit the hardest by “The Great Reshuffle” ­— formerly known as the Great Resignation. In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that the quit rate in the retail industry was hovering close to 4 percent over the summer, just behind the leading leisure…

Perpetual and increasing competition, economic fluctuations, and constantly changing consumer expectations strain the retail sector harder than most industries. To combat these challenges, retailers have turned to technology — from analyzing big data to better connect with consumers to launching omnichannel strategies to reach customers at every point of their respective purchase journeys. More recently,…