Employee Engagement in Retailing

Abstract

The retail sector in India is fast growing with the economic development of the country and the consequent increase in consumption. The organized retail sector is growing faster in India as the industry was dominated by traditional retailing for a very long time and currently many corporate players are setting up their retailing companies. The changes in consumer classes too with the desolate and the deprived population shrinking rapidly have been impacting the growth of organized retailing positively. Retailing is a people-centric business – people serving people, that is, sales people in retailing serving customers who are people with their tastes and preferences. Many retail organizations in India have grown in the last score of years and Future Group is the one which has attained leadership position in organized retailing in India. The group has got Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, fashion @ big bazaar, Foodhall, Home Town, Ezone and Central as its key retail formats and till recently Pantaloon Retail India Ltd. The Future Group currently has as many as 30000 (thirty thousand) employees in all the formats it operates. The dynamics of its people engagement policies and practices applicable to such a large number of employees may be of any researcher’s interest to study and it is worthwhile to make an attempt to understand and study the various aspects of employee engagement. The exponential growth of the Retail Formats of Future Group was supported by robust Employee Engagement Policies like Educational Initiatives. A random sample of beneficiaries of these initiatives was interviewed to assess the effectiveness of the engagement initiatives on Organizational Development of Future Group. The effectiveness of these initiatives can be used for benchmarking the best practices in retail industry.