Retail HR is moving with the times.
As companies in the industry seek to appeal to the modern workforce, people leaders are investing more and more in innovative software solutions that are revolutionizing the way they manage, engage, and develop employees.
So what are the must-haves in your ‘tech stack’ as a people leader in HR? What software will help you create a better employee experience for everyone from head office to the shop floor?
In this blog, we take a look at some of the best HR software for retail companies, and provide some insights to help you find the right platforms for your needs.
As frontline companies have looked to rival some of the flexibility provided to employees in remote and hybrid roles, it’s become more essential for people leaders to provide employee scheduling software for retail teams and their managers.
These platforms make it easier for retail workers to indicate their preferred schedules, change shifts, and generally balance their work around their other commitments. Here are some of the best options on the market right now.
Used by over 355,000 workplaces worldwide, Deputy is one of the most popular retail scheduling software tools around, with a broad range of features to facilitate shift swapping, leave management, and fair workweek compliance. It provides task management for retail teams, and even real-time employee engagement surveys, too.
One of our favorite features of the platform is its Demand Forecasting tool, which helps store managers and people leaders determine how much staff they need at different times and days of the week more easily, so they won’t be left short staffed.
Deputy also recently added a new suite of tools called DeputyHR, which provides features to enable hiring, onboarding, document management and collecting employee feedback.
Why we love it: One of the best things about Deputy is its playful, user-friendly interface, which makes it easy for employees to understand the software and make the most of its features.
We’re also big fans of their social media team’s Shift Worker Sunday initiative, launched last year on November 26. On this day, Deputy and other companies (including Guusto) encouraged people to say thank you to shift workers, and celebrate the vital contribution they make to our society.
When I Work offers simple scheduling software for retail stores of all sizes. The platform offers a wide range of integration options with other retail HR software platforms, and also serves a team messaging app.
Why we love it: One of the best things about When I Work is its pricing, starting out at just USD$1.50 per user monthly. This is somewhat lower than a lot of its competitors, making it a more accessible option for smaller retailers, or even bigger companies who need to keep costs under control when serving large workforces.
Quinyx’s suite of features is similar to others in this list, offering tools for scheduling, task management, time tracking, and data-driven demand forecasting. What makes it among the best retail scheduling software tools we’ve seen is how easy it allows managers to automate scheduling. It will create schedules for you based on your forecasted needs and employee availability and preferences, while still providing your team with the flexibility to swap shifts as needed.
Managers can even automate task management, automatically matching their to-do lists for the day to the most suitable team members.
Why we love it: Store managers have a lot to do, and it’s great to see a tool that takes a lot of the pain out of shift planning for them.
Improving communication is another high priority for forward thinking retail people leaders. Communication flows in retail environments are often ad hoc and mostly verbal, relying heavily on store managers to connect the head office and the frontline staff.
This creates a lot of problems. As one manager said in the Axonify Deskless Report for Retail, “Communication usually starts with our general manager, then it’s disseminated throughout the employees. But a lot of times it doesn’t get all the way down to where it needs to.”
Purpose-built corporate communication software for retail companies is helping to bridge this gap, facilitating communication both ways and helping to connect employees across the company. These are some of the most effective platforms for the industry.
Beekeeper is widely regarded as one of the best retail communication software platforms out there, helping teams in the industry collaborate, manage tasks, and access information with ease in a deskless environment.
The platform also has brilliant integration capabilities, easily connecting to widely used HR software systems like UKG, Dayforce, Slack, and others.
Why we love it: One thing we really admire about the Beekeeper team is how passionate they are about serving the frontline. They truly view their product as a crucial tool to help modernize the sector and improve employee experience. So much so that they even host the Frontline Success Summit conference every year, which connects thought leaders from across the deskless workforce to share insights.
‘Built by retailers, for retailers’, Zipline is a retail communication software platform that also provides tools for store audits, task management and learning and development.
One of its coolest features is the Zippy chatbot, an AI-powered knowledge base that serves as a ‘co-worker in your back pocket’, providing employees with easy access to product and location-based knowledge, or any other questions they have. Content can be tailored by role, too, so you can provide everyone from district managers to cashiers with the most important information they need to do their jobs effectively.
Why we love it: While other communications apps are designed for multiple frontline industries, Zipline is laser-focused on the retail sector, meaning its solutions are uniquely tailored to the needs of your employees.
Yoobic is corporate communication software for retailers with a difference. In addition to providing easy staff collaboration and product information, it also has specific features to better enable head office to stay connected with the frontline. Your HR comms team can easily share updates, while you can also improve promotion execution by sharing guidelines around specific sales or events.
Area managers, meanwhile, can use the app for store visits, delivering reports within the platform instantaneously. Not only that, but Yoobic helps to gamify productivity and performance with challenges, quizzes, and rewards.
Why we love it: Yoobic lets you use your communications tool to really impact performance and drive the results your company wants.
Blink is an ‘employee super app’ that centralizes employee communication and engagement, and includes both 1-1 and group messaging, a communications feed, and even basic recognition and employee engagement tools.
Why we love it: Blink is one of the most beautifully designed retail communications software programs we’ve seen. Your employees will love its slick, user-friendly interface.
With the current talent shortage in the sector, people leaders need to work harder to keep employees, and get them to think of retail as a long-term career rather than just a stopgap.
One way of doing this is by investing in upskilling and developing talent, helping employees to move forward in their careers and grow as professionals.
As a result, specialized learning management software for retailers is becoming more common. A few companies are doing great work in this space, developing mobile-first tools that are perfect for employees on the frontline.
TalentCards is a mobile microlearning platform designed for deskless environments. Rather than have your employees take time out of their shifts to sit in long training sessions, the software delivers short tutorials through their devices that can be completed with a commitment of as little as 5 minutes per day.
This learning format can be especially valuable when training seasonal staff, as you can get them on the floor faster during busy periods.
Why we love it: It’s great to see a platform that clearly understands just how busy and fast-paced the retail environment is, and provides training that can be tailored around that.
If you’re looking for more robust learning management software for retail, Disprz is a great option. The platform can be used for everything from skills development to compliance training.
Its frontline enablement tools are particularly impressive, offering mobile-first onboarding solutions and even enabling team members to do sessions with trainers remotely, so your head office team could effectively connect with and train employees in the field.
The setup also includes detailed analytics, so you can evaluate the job-readiness of new hires based on how successfully they complete training modules.
Why we love it: Disprz’s data-driven approach makes it easier for people leaders to measure its effectiveness, and attach clear KPIs to the program.
Another mobile-first retail HR solution, Playerlync has tools for onboarding, ongoing L&D, and even team communications. Originally built for professional football teams, the app takes a performance driven approach to upskilling employees. Its robust content management system makes it easy to tailor training to different departments.
Why we love it: Playerlync’s sales enablement features are great for retailers, providing your floor staff with a wealth of product information on the go.
FLX Frontliner is an on-demand learning app that allows retail teams to access training workflows to boost performance throughout their careers. Your team can stay up to date on everything from product knowledge to the latest industry trends, while also having instant access to tutorials around critical compliance policies, like health and safety or loss prevention.
Why we love it: One of the FLX’s best features is its easy facilitation of peer learning, as employees can access videos from colleagues offering tips and tricks in their specific areas of expertise.
This means if you have an employee who excels in a particular area in one of your stores, they can share their knowledge to every one of your branches.
Axonify has actually expanded its product offering to become a more complete retail HR software platform incorporating communications and operations features, but its core functionality is still as an LMS for the frontline.
It offers multilingual onboarding and training which can be tailored to specific departments and roles, with robust insights to help people leaders and managers track progress.
Why we love it: Axonify’s outcome-focused approach helps to drive upskilling in retail teams effectively, and your team can use it to take a truly data driven approach to L&D.
With retail recruitment so challenging right now, a number one priority for a lot of HR teams in the industry is making finding talent easier. Onboarding is also a crucial piece of the puzzle, as getting new hires off to a good start is crucial to retention. Here are a few options for people leaders looking to invest in these areas.
While Workstream is a comprehensive platform that provides HR software for retail companies to manage payroll, communications, and engagement among other things, its greatest strength is arguably its recruitment and onboarding tools.
Workstream helps you diversify your employee sourcing by enabling you to find candidates through both physical and digital channels via a centralized app, provides smart screening to narrow down your field, and even streamlines interview scheduling.
Once you have candidates in the door, the platform makes onboarding a breeze, too, by allowing you to digitize documents and automate onboarding messaging to improve the experience of new hires.
Why we love it: The Workstream team clearly understands that recruiting for retail needs to be approached differently than other industries, and tailors its solutions for the process.
Grayscale is a messaging app that retail recruiters can use to streamline recruitment and onboarding using AI. The Grayscale chatbot will send automated messages to candidates and new hires, and answer any questions they have at every stage of the process.
Why we love it: Hiring in retail is very much an ‘always on’ job, but this app helps to make it easier on your team, while also providing a better candidate experience.
With the rising cost of living over the last few years, hourly workers in industries like retail have been hit harder than most. As many of these employees have somewhat low salaries, they’ve had to stretch to make things work.
As a result, many retailers have started adding financial wellness software to their offerings for employees, equipping them with more flexible access to their pay, as well as education and tools to better manage their finances.
Branch is one of a number of retail HR software platforms that offers employees early access to earned wages in order to deal with unexpected expenses.
The app also offers free financial wellness tools for your team to help them keep track of their spending and cashflow, and even set up savings goals.
Why we love it: Branch allows retail employees to have flexible access to their paychecks when needed, but helps them do so in a responsible way, offering advice and guidance to avoid overspending.
Similarly to Branch, Immediate offers instant access on-demand to earned wages, while also providing a range of financial tools to help employees track their spending.
One more unique feature is its Prescription Savings tool, which helps employees in the United States save up to 80% on prescription medications. With prescription drugs costing up to $1,200 per person per year, that’s a huge saving that could really make a difference to your employees.
Why we love it: Immediate have clearly taken the time to really consider the needs of employees, and provide tailored financial solutions that benefit them.
DailyPay is another earned wage access platform that offers retail employees easy access to pay when they need it. One unique feature of the platform is that the company offers a DailyPay prepaid Visa card as an alternative to using the app.
Why we love it: The prepaid Visa option makes the system more inclusive for all of your employees, including team members who don’t have pre-existing bank accounts. It can also help improve adoption among employees who are less tech-savvy, and may find using a traditional bank card more accessible.
While many of the retail HR software platforms we’ve mentioned in this article specialize in specific areas, there are also a number of providers who are working to create all-in-one workforce management solutions for the sector.
These platforms can encompass everything from HRIS, to payroll, to communications and scheduling, and a lot more. If you’re looking to keep your HR tech streamlined and centralized, these might be for you.
While UKG does not exclusively cater to frontline organizations like other platforms in this list, they are one of the most widely used HR software providers in retail today, serving almost two-thirds of the NRF Top 100 retailers.
And as one of the most comprehensive workforce management platforms on the market, UKG does provide solutions tailored for the industry, including automating scheduling and time tracking, workforce analytics, earned wage access, and many of the other features offered by other providers on this list.
Why we love it: UKG offers best-in-class software and has a proven track record of serving the industry effectively.
Formerly known as Ceridian, Dayforce is another well-established workforce management platform that serves a range of industries, but also includes specific retail HR software solutions like scheduling, mobile training, and earned wage access.
Why we love it: Dayforce is reliable, robust, and effective, with a range of features to suit any retail organization. The fact that it’s popular across several sectors means it will likely be familiar to some of your team already, too, making implementation and adoption easier.
Unlike most HR and payroll systems, Jem is designed specifically with deskless workers in mind. That means mobile-friendliness is at the core of all its features, with employees having easy access to payslips, company communications, and schedules through WhatsApp. The platform also offers earned wage access and other financial wellness tools.
Why we love it: Mobile-friendliness is crucial for the deskless workforce, and Jem takes it even further by pushing everything you need through WhatsApp, rather than requiring employees to download a standalone app.
Shopl is an all-in-one workforce management solution that incorporates scheduling, task management, time and vacation tracking, and workforce communications.
At store level, managers and employees can use it for everything from managing their schedules, to coordinating and creating checklists for daily tasks like restocking shelves or taking inventory. HR teams, meanwhile, can use it to streamline communications to employees and to manage PTO and other leave.
Why we love it: HR professionals in retail who are responsible for multiple locations will love the real-time reporting they can access on attendance, as well as the ability to automate PTO management.
It might take an entire blog to describe all the capabilities Oracle offers as a HR platform for retail companies. The AI-assisted platform helps people leaders and other retail professionals with everything from scheduling and time tracking, to payroll, to talent development and evaluation. It also provides recruiting assistance, and the ability to create tailored onboarding experiences.
Why we love it: Oracle’s capabilities don’t just stop at people management, and its cloud applications also provide solutions for supply chain management, POS, and other crucial retail functions. Having all of these capabilities serviced by one provider could be a cost-effective and streamlined solution for many retailers.
Connecteam offers retail employee scheduling software, communications tools, and task management all in one app. It can also serve as employee engagement software for retail companies, allowing you to seek feedback, organize events and even share basic recognition seamlessly.
Why we love it: Connecteam actually makes their app completely free to teams of under ten people, making it a gift for very small one-store operations. But it can also allow larger retailers to pilot the app in one location or department before rolling it company-wide. We take a similar ‘crawl-walk-run’ approach at Guusto, and find it can be a great way for retailers to get started with little risk.
WorkJam is an incredibly comprehensive retail HR software solution, facilitating communications, scheduling, task management, learning, and engagement. It also offers earned wage access, and can even be used to post team huddles, allowing your leaders to reinforce your company values and the importance of your frontline staff’s roles on a daily basis.
Why we love it: One of our favourite things about WorkJam is that their team has clearly put a lot of thought into reinforcing positive, people-first values through their app. Workjam content can be geofenced so it’s only accessible onsite, promoting healthy work-life balance while also ensuring compliance with regulations. The app also provides robust language-translation features to help promote inclusion among diverse retail teams.
According to an Axonify survey, up to 64% of frontline workers in industries like retail view recognition as one of the key drivers of success.
Unfortunately, a lot of employee recognition platforms aren’t built with deskless workers in mind. Employees have to navigate points systems and desktop apps that aren’t easily accessible or understandable, and may even be unable to be included in the program if they don’t have a company email address. This automatically excludes a large portion of the retail workforce. Fortunately, there is one option on the market that’s built with retail in mind…
That’s us! Designed to serve both office and deskless employees, Guusto helps retailers build recognition programs that really work for their industry. Our open-loop platform means no company email is required, and we use gift cards with real dollar values, rather than confusing points systems.
We also offer a range of flexible delivery options, including printed gifts, TV displays for your break room, and even the option to automate awards and send them to the employee’s manager.
Guusto’s pricing works for retailers, too. A lot of other platforms require companies to pay a subscription fee for every employee, and give them each a budget for peer-to-peer recognition. This can be prohibitively expensive for retailers with thousands of employees.
Our platform, on the other hand, only requires you to pay for users that send recognition, meaning you can run programs where only managers have budgets, budgets are concentrated with your HR department, or whatever works for you. If you do want a peer-to-peer recognition program, we offer Shoutouts, our non-monetary recognition system, as a cost-effective alternative to a budgeted program.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how to build a program that works for your industry, get Employee Recognition for Retail: The Complete Guide. In this eBook, we detail:
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