Study: Retail Industry Lands on Employees’ ‘Most Frustrated About Pay’ List
USA Today conducted a keyword analysis (from November 20 - 28, 2023) of more than three million Glassdoor reviews of 500 large employers in 25 industries to see where pay came up the most frequently, along with the commentaries on employee pay.
The analysis uncovered that the retail industry ranks No. 8 as the industry where employees are most frustrated about pay overall. Transportation and Logistics ranked No. 9 and Packaged Goods No. 15.
IT, Internet, Software & Services landed at No. 21 on the “rate of pay frustration by industry” list, but also landed at No. 5 on the list of industries where employees are “least frustrated about pay.”
When USA Today looked at companies with the fewest worker complaints about pay, In-N-Out Burger (No. 2), Amazon (No. 5), and CPG company Mars (No. 8) all made the list.
Pay Perks
While rate of pay certainly has its impact on turnover and inevitably the customer experience, retailers can also consider adding other pay-related perks to increase employee satisfaction. Editor Maia Jenkins recently spoke with Michael Spataro, chief customer officer at Legion, about the benefits of earned wage access in a webinar.
Spataro shared that a study they did two years ago found 2% of hourly workers said they would leave their current employer and go to another employer if they had earned wage access, but this year, 42% of those employees said they would consider leaving their current employer and going to another employer because they had earned wage access.
“If you actually provide that capability within your store, you're building loyalty because not only are you thinking about that employee from the perspective of providing the service that you expect them to provide your customers, you're also providing them with the tools they need to create the right balance in their life and get access to wages in real-time,” he noted.
Retailers offering early access to pay include Macy’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods and JCPenney, which puts limits on access to early pay, to ensure that at week’s end, the worker will still get a paycheck.
Early access to pay, a feature of several workforce management apps, “is an extension of a conversation around flexibility," Andre Joyner, senior VP and chief human resources officer at JCPenney, says. It gives the associates the option for early wage access, and that has been very well received, says JCPenney’s Joyner.
USA Today’s Methodology
To establish negative sentiment about compensation, USA Today said it counted mentions of “pay,” “salary,” “compensation,” and “money,” in the cons section of employee reviews for each employer. And, to establish the frequency of negative mentions, it divided the total mentions of those four keywords by the number of reviews of a given employer. This established its “mentions per review” metric.