How to deal with retail manager burnout

Running a retail business is challenging in almost any situation. The opportunity for manager and owner burnout is real every day, regardless of company size. Often, retail manager burnout isn’t recognized until it’s too late.

By burnout, I mean the person in question loses drive and focus to the point where their health is in question and the business suffers.

How to identify burnout

Watch your people. Communicate with them regularly on a business and personal level. Evaluate your manner, decisions and interaction with others. Watch for telltale signs:

• Poor quality business decisions.
• Unexpected errors in daily operations.
• A change of energy for work and retail.
• Fatigue.
• Talking to your team about the potential for the problem. Bring it up in team and management meetings. Ben is open about talking to key employees about it.

It is vitally important that retail business owners are on the lookout for these and any symptoms relevant to the situation. Catching burnout early on is key to resolution. The risk of not catching it early is that a good and valuable employee will leave the business.

How to address someone suffering from burnout

Once you’ve identified someone experiencing role burnout, immediate action is essential to their well-being and the future of the business.

If the size of the company allows it, hire a professional to work with the employee. Follow the professional’s advice to the letter.

If yours is a smaller retail business and you can’t afford a professional to help you with the situation, consider these suggestions:

Understand the key stressors in your manager’s role and look for ways to remove or adjust them so they are no longer stressors.

Consider some personal time away from the business to recharge.

Consider participating in professional manager training that can help you fulfill your role with greater personal satisfaction and therefore less stress.

Carefully assess the workload and allocate additional resources so that no one person is left with too much.

Take on the role yourself to gain a personal understanding of your situation.

Stay close to the employee by talking to him regularly and involving him in decisions about the solution.

How to protect your business and people from burnout

Review the business from top to bottom and inside out, looking for processes and lawsuits that place an unfair personal burden on team members.

Also look at the role of each employee and find ways to provide variety in terms of workload and focus of work, as it could help everyone have a more enjoyable work experience.

Make sure all employees take their full annual vacation entitlement each year.

Participate in off-site team activities that give your people a chance to blow off steam. Good activities are going to sports games together, bowling, hiking, or a good meal out.

Create opportunities for a change of pace in the work schedule: dress-casual days, days when the company pays for everyone’s lunch, job swap days when people change roles in the company.

Set up a chill out space in the retail store somewhere if you have the space. This should be a place your people can go to if they feel completely stressed out and need some time out of their role to relax.

Promotes personality. One of the main stress factors in retail is the need to conform to a corporate style. Encourage your people to be more of themselves. This gives us back the responsibility of hiring better people who more naturally meet the needs of the business.

Retail manager burnout is real and challenging for any retail business. The time spent protecting the company and its employees against this will be a good investment for any retail store.