Picture this. You have cleaned, stored, and lugged into your local supermarket a bag full of soft plastics. Only to find the bin is not in its usual spot.
After wandering around looking for it for a while you ask a retail assistant where it is; they explain in a bored voice that the bin kept overflowing so they just removed it into the storage at the back. Will they bring it back out you ask? Probably not is the response… too much hassle. True story.
The chief sustainability officer (CSO) who did all the hard yards to sell in this initiative, find the right partners, set up the new processes and fund it would have a blue fit. And yet why should the retail assistant handle someone else’s rubbish and clear up around the bin; what’s in it for them?
This intersection between head office-driven sustainability initiatives and in-store activation of said initiatives is one I find fascinating. Hence my slightly compulsive mystery sustainability shopper behaviour. I am often to be found wandering around stores looking for signage and bins linked to sustainability initiatives I know the retailer has, having read about it in the sustainability report, seen it on LinkedIn, heard the CSO talk about it at event or found out about it on Green Retail World.
I quiz retail assistants about said initiatives: where are the bins, how do the schemes work, how popular are they, what happens to waste?
Dozens of these trips have led me to understand that in the majority of cases (there are some exceptions) the gulf is very, very wide; with retail assistants knowing very little or having relatively little interest in in-store sustainability initiatives.
Some other experiences from the front-line:
- The beauty retailer with a well-advertised refill scheme where the staff member had no idea how the refill process worked when I asked, at check-out while buying an expensive glass refillable bottle, how to get refills.
- The pharmacist where the assistant refused to take my empty blister packs (which I had trekked in and queued up to hand over) professing no knowledge of the scheme. When I returned later to try again a different assistant took them from me and put them in the right bin behind the counter.
Without the support of retail staff, even the best planned retail sustainability initiative will fail. The hard work done by product design, marketing as well as carefully created (and sold in) collaborations with third parties and hard fought for buy in from senior leadership all wasted as the schemes fail to scale and will (likely) be shut down.
This crucial employee audience are literally the difference between an initiative sinking or swimming. Not to mention whether a brands sustainability credentials are supported or risk being seen as greenwashing.
And when retail staff are engaged and knowledgeable, sustainability initiatives will thrive, sustainability credentials are supported and brand loyalty will likely increase. Here are some positive experiences from the front-line:
- A wine retailer where the man at the till talked at length (and with passion) about what happened to the corks that I bought back in to be recycled.
- A pharmacist who engaged with my daughter (at check-out) about how she could save her pocket money if she bought in empties for recycling through the in-store scheme as she could earn points and use them towards her purchases.
- A leading sportswear retailer where the help desk assistant explained to me – in detail – their Second Life scheme and even tried to cross-sell a different sustainability offering.
Where is the challenge? What is clear from my discussions with sustainability leads is that engaging retail teams directly is organisationally tricky.
The sustainability team can’t reach them at the water cooler, through the usual ‘green champions’ network, or at the lunch and learn sessions because they are remote. Access is gated through the relevant department head who, understandably, wants retail assistants to focus on the main job at hand (i.e. selling new stuff) and makes sure they are not overly taxed.
And the current trend to downplay sustainability comms internally and externally is definitely not helping.
But this employee communication and engagement gap needs to be filled. It is crucial that in-store staff can clearly communicate about sustainability initiatives, have visibility of the impact that they make and are rewarded for engaging consumers with them. As Chris Allen, director of sustainability & circular economy at Decathlon, tells me: “If last-mile efforts fail, the whole initiative fails – that’s why front-line engagement with retail staff is central to our circular strategy.”
The incoming UK deposit return scheme is going to provide ample opportunity for ALL of us to see how important retail staff engagement is in the retail setting to circularity initiatives. This scheme will survive or fail based on how bought in and engaged in-store assistants are with the programme.
They will be at the front-line taking back bottles and storing them or managing (potentially temperamental and misused) machines where bottles are taken back, dealing with credits (and customer complaints about credits) from mum and pop stores through to huge supermarkets.
Check back next week for part two of this series, where – among other thoughts of mine – you’ll gather best practice insights from Nicholas Connell, head of resale at Decathlon UK, on how to activate retail staff to ensure retailers’ in-store circularity initiatives don’t sink but swim.
Tam Hussey is the founder of Halo by Design.
She has spent more than 20 years creating employee and consumer engagement initiatives and programmes for businesses across the world, and is now using these skills to support companies in reaching sustainability goals. Contact Tam on LinkedIn.
[image credit: Halo by Design]
