Modernizing Retail Work: Meeting the Expectations of the Next-Gen Workforce

Across retail, labor challenges aren’t just a seasonal headache, they’re a structural crisis. Turnover rates remain persistently high (around 60% for most retailers); wages continue to put pressure on margins; and younger generations are increasingly uninterested in the manual, repetitive tasks that have long defined frontline retail work.

By 2035, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, digital natives raised on technology, will make up more than 59% of the global workforce. These future employees expect autonomy, purpose, and tools that match how they live and work. In fact, 80% of digital natives prefer jobs that allow them to engage with cutting-edge technology.

Yet many retailers still rely on manual processes for essential store operations such as scanning for out-of-stocks, pricing errors, and ensuring planogram compliance. These tasks are foundational to strong sales and a positive shopper experience, but they’re tedious, time-consuming, and often inconsistent, especially when store teams are stretched thin. Store associates often avoid them or seek roles that eliminate this kind of repetitive work. Nearly one-third of workers cite unengaging, low-value tasks as a key reason for leaving.

Despite this shift in workforce expectations, most retailers haven’t adapted their operating models, including job responsibilities and supporting technology. This disconnect makes it harder to attract and retain talent.

A Smart Response to Rising Costs

Retail turnover exceeds 60% in the U.S., outpacing most industries. This isn’t just a staffing issue, it’s a strategic risk. Every departure creates downstream costs in hiring, training, and operational disruption, which can lead to missed sales, lower service levels, and inconsistent execution. A recent study by McKinsey indicates that it can cost up to $10,000 to replace a single frontline worker. Reducing attrition and retaining workers by creating more purposeful roles isn’t just good for morale, it’s critical for protecting margins.

And it’s not just turnover. The retail talent pool itself is shrinking with nearly half of retail workers looking to leave their jobs and exit the industry entirely, making it even more difficult to fill skilled roles like CGO, pricing, or merchandising.

At the same time, retailers face growing margin pressures. Since 2020, hourly wages for frontline workers have risen more than 20%, with further increases expected as more regions raise minimum wages. Combined with macroeconomic forces like inflation, supply chain volatility, and tariffs, labor cost increases compound the urgency for smarter staffing models.

In this environment, retailers simply can’t afford to allocate valuable labor to low-impact, manual tasks. Instead, teams need to focus on higher-value activities: fixing inventory issues (not finding them), improving fresh execution, supporting omnichannel fulfillment, and most importantly, serving customers. Automation makes this shift possible, increasing operational efficiency and making in-store roles more dynamic and fulfilling.

Driving Better Execution At Scale

Shelf conditions are the foundation of retail execution. If products are out of stock, mispriced, or in the wrong place, even the strongest supply chain or marketing campaign can’t deliver results.

Retailers need a solution that can:

• Automate labor-intensive shelf scans, eliminating the need for associates to manually check for out-of-stocks, pricing errors, and planogram compliance (tasks that can consume 20+ hours per store per week).
• Improve shelf accuracy and consistency, removing the variability of manual audits. The accuracy and completion of traditional store audit varies widely depending on store resourcing or task prioritization. This can leave parts of the store unchecked leading to missed sales and poor experiences.
• Reduce pricing errors without adding headcount. This directly addresses one of the most visible frustrations for shoppers and a top source of lost margin during promotions.
• Redeploy labor to higher-impact work, freeing up time for customer service, inventory management, and omnichannel support.
• Elevate in-store roles by removing repetitive tasks and creating more engaging, tech-enabled jobs helping retailers attract and retain talent in a competitive market.
• Upskill associates faster by providing data-driven, actionable tasks that make it easy for associates to perform the right task at the right time, enabling even new hires to perform like experienced team members.

This is where Simbe delivers immediate value.

Automating the Tasks That Undermine Engagement

Retailers can’t afford to let their most valuable resource, the store team, spend time on tedious, low-impact tasks. Simbe’s Store Intelligence™ platform helps shift that balance.

Through autonomous robots, fixed sensors, and RFID, Simbe automates the daily grind that frustrates workers and slows down execution. Our multimodal platform includes:

• Tally, the autonomous shelf-scanning robot that roams the store capturing real-time data on out-of-stocks, pricing errors, and planogram compliance.
• Tally Spot, fixed-point sensors that deliver high-frequency scans in high-risk, high-turnover zones like endcaps, promos, or fresh displays where issues often go unnoticed until it’s too late.
• Tally RFID, a fully autonomous solution for tracking tagged inventory with unmatched precision, critical for departments like apparel, electronics, and seasonal.

Together, these tools provide full-store visibility so store teams can stop hunting for problems and start solving them. Associates receive prioritized, data-driven tasks such as fix this price, stock this shelf, relocate this item, freeing up time for higher-value work, including helping customers.

This isn’t just about operational efficiency. It’s about making retail roles more engaging, tech-enabled, and human-centered—designed to attract and retain a workforce that values impact over repetition.

Simbe automates the invisible work that drains morale and replaces it with meaningful action. It’s better for store teams. And better for shoppers.

Future-Proofing the Retail Workforce

Solving retail’s labor challenge will require more than short-term incentives. It demands a redesign of frontline roles that aligns with the values and expectations of the next generation.

Simbe helps modernize store operations by automating tedious tasks and equipping store teams with actionable insights. This shift improves execution, strengthens retention, and enhances the shopper experience.

In today’s complex and competitive landscape, the smartest labor investment may not be your next hire—it may be your next robot.

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo today.