Despite being deemed “essential,” frontline retail workers continue to navigate challenges around work itself. Lagging support from their employers is leading to worse mental health and engagement outcomes. And with retail workers disproportionately represented by women and people of color—who also remain underrepresented in leadership—these issues further exacerbate persisting health inequities for historically marginalized communities.
Supporting the retail workforce requires a nuanced and tailored approach that fulfills their core needs. As employers explore their future investments in their workforce, it’s important to understand what distinguishes their retail workers’ experience and ways to meaningfully support their mental health—beyond perks and benefits.
Retail has been one of the worst industries for worker mental health
Before the pandemic, Mental Health America’s Mind the Workplace 2018 Report revealed that retail scored among the lowest when it came to industry-specific negative outcomes related to mental health, burnout, finances, manager support, and overall wellbeing. Since the pandemic, the challenges to retail workers’ mental health have only grown amidst ongoing COVID-19 exposure risks and growing economic volatility, inflation, income inequality, and more.
Mind Share Partners’ latest 2023 Mental Health at Work Report in partnership with Qualtrics found that retail workers were more likely to experience mental health symptoms and for longer durations, compared to all respondents. In fact, 69% reported at least one symptom and nearly half of them said their symptoms cumulatively lasted five months to the entire year.
Five challenges impacting frontline retail workers' mental health
Based on industry and academic research, as well as Mind Share Partners’ work with multinational retail clients, we’ve observed five key distinguishing factors that set retail workers apart from the general population:
1. Work-life balance
Retail workers, like many shift workers, often face unpredictable work schedules along with early morning or late-night shifts—both of which can disrupt work-life balance, exacerbate work-family conflict, negatively impact mental health, and disturb physiological functions like sleep, rest, cognition, and more. But there are positives, too. Some retail workers report an ability to clearly distinguish when work starts (when they’re on-site) and when it ends (when they leave). This is compared to office, knowledge, and other workers who tend to see a blur between work and life, particularly when their work can be done remotely. That said, not all retail workers experience this benefit. Store managers, while they may not be actively on-site, may need to be available to respond to work-related situations at all hours of the day.
2. Autonomy and flexibility
Retail workers often have highly systematized workflows and processes, and may not see as much opportunity to exercise their voice or have autonomy around ways of doing work. When workflows are disrupted, this can have a cascading effect on retail workers, too, who are managing high work demands. This combination of high demands and low control is a recipe for a plethora of negative health outcomes—mental and physical.
3. Financial strain
Retail workers represent among the lowest-paid jobs in the U.S. The industry also has high rates of turnover, employment instability, and variable access to benefits afforded to full-time or salary employees. Thus, many retail workers report hardships around financial security, finding affordable housing, navigating social security, or paying for mental health benefits—even with insurance.
4. Lack of accessibility to mental health resources
Because retail workers often work on-site with minimal time in front of a computer, awareness of and accessing mental health resources can pose unique barriers. HR sending an email blast doesn’t have the same reach. Holding a training, webinar, or even employee resource group meeting during work hours faces the same problem when retail workers have to be available to customers or “on the floor.” Decoding the complexities of the company’s Employee Assistance Programs, health insurance, resources, and more often needs to happen on personal time outside of work, with less assistance from a manager or HR.
5. Growing industry-related stressors
Finally, retail workers face unique challenges tied directly to their roles at work. Those in stores are often on the front lines of an increasingly belligerent and confrontational customer base. In a new study, the Retail Worker Safety Report, nearly two-thirds of retail employees surveyed said they feel apprehensive about safety risks like theft and hostile customers. Those in distribution centers are predisposed to higher rates of workplace injury. Store managers, often serving as the primary support system to their junior team members, are often tasked with answering employees’ questions about housing security, responding to customers, calling support for a mental health crisis, and more.
How can managers and leaders support the mental health of frontline retail workers?
Therapy, time off, and a meditation app—these resources certainly can help, but may only have a temporary benefit. Here are five ways to meaningfully support the mental health of your workforce: to get started as you infuse mental health support into your employee experience.
1. Ease the financial strain
Retail workers are often lower paid, have less job security, and many do not have access to full-time benefits. Easing financial strain doesn't only mean raising wages, but also extending healthcare benefits to all workers, creating emergency funds for workers who face unexpected financial expenses, and more. While education around financial literacy is a common option that may demonstrate some utility, if workers aren’t fundamentally being paid a livable wage, they will continue to struggle with their health and wellbeing.
2. Address work-specific stressors
These strategies will vary by company, role, and more. Here are a few examples. For store workers, investing in greater protections for workers against unruly customers is one start—a shift away from the conventional “the customer is always right” mentality. For distribution centers, meaningful time for rest or proactive screening for physiological wear and tear targets their high physical work demands. With some workers not even having time to use the restroom, a meditation booth is the wrong approach. For store managers, finding ways to delegate responsibility for calls, set clearer norms and boundaries, and better-equipping non-managers to navigate situations on their own can ease the burden of 24/7 availability.
3. Promote mental health at every part of your employee journey
Whether it be naming mental health as a value during recruitment, discussing personal working styles during onboarding, sharing mental health resources after busy periods, or including signage around mental health in break rooms, there are many ways to weave in mental health throughout an employee’s tenure—as well as their physical landscape of work itself. Consider when, where, and how encouragement, discussion, and resources around mental health would ideally occur, and tailor your strategies to align with these areas. Learn more ways to embed mental health into your employee journey.
4. Relentlessly pursue ways to foster autonomy, flexibility, and worker voice
Given the highly systematized nature of retail work, it can be challenging for workers to feel a sense of agency, ownership, and voice over their work. Again, there are a variety of ways to achieve this. Scheduling and shift coverage can be done communally. Ideas around improvements to stores and distribution centers can be sourced from workers themselves as starting points or voted upon in decision-making. Similarly, simply holding regular space to talk about issues at work—while exploring solutions—can create a feeling of inclusion, camaraderie, and influence over their working conditions.
5. Equip managers on industry-specific challenges
Much like retail workers are on the front lines of their business, their managers are on the front lines of workers’ needs—who helps the helpers? Many are faced with troubleshooting a whole range of work, personal, and life issues. Equipping managers to traverse these scenarios with confidence can ease the strain they are burdened with in their efforts to be supportive managers. You can equip managers through simple guides and explainers around company resources, and empower them with both the funds and decision-making power to mobilize support for their team. You can also create a “warm” phone line managers can call for guidance when faced with emergent situations. At Mind Share Partners, we offer custom manager training and can partner with you to upskill and inspire confidence around supporting employee mental health at work.
Taking Action
Retail, like many industries, faces its unique combination of stressors and bright spots that paint a distinct picture of workplace mental health. Creating true change and real support for retail workers often means tackling an organization’s culture and systems as well as equipping its agents of change with the right knowledge and skills.
Mind Share Partners has worked with national and global retailers to equip their people with the knowledge and skills to support mental health at work. From navigating conversations about mental health, to ways to create psychological safety, to cultivating ways to embed flexibility into the cultures and systems of work, we tackle the root cause of mental health challenges at work proactively, beyond mere crisis prevention.
🌟 Additional readings and resources
[Read] “How the retail sector can boost employee mental wellbeing at work,” WTW
[Read] “Please Don’t Quit: New Data From Zipline show Declining Mental Health Among Retail Associates,” Zipline
[Read] “How to Manage Employee Stress in Retail Work,” Monster
[Read] “The diversity imperative in retail,” McKinsey
About the Author
Bernie Wong, Principal & Senior Manager of Insights, Mind Share Partners
Bernie leads the curation, development, and institutionalization of the organization's expertise and perspectives on workplace mental health, and leads full-service training, advising, and transformation projects at organizations like BlackRock, Syneos Health, Tinder, and more. He has led national studies on workforce mental health, and is a widely published author, having written for Forbes, Harvard Business Review, HR Dive, and more.
Prior to Mind Share Partners, Bernie spent his career dedicated to mental health across a variety of disciplines, including human-centered design at Hopelab, a social innovation lab for youth wellbeing; in education at Stanford Continuing Studies; and in editorial writing for the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Bernie also served as the Vice President and board member for Prism Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds Asian and Pacific Islander LGBTQ+ students and organizations.
Bernie has a Master of Health Science (MHS) in Mental Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and in Sociology from UC Berkeley.