A retail management job will provide you with the opportunities to make your store work and make you in charge of it. you will be in charge to interact with highest level corporates to the lowest level sales person. A retail manager is responsible for various tasks such as interacting with customers at entry level, communicating with merchandisers who deliver merchandise for the store, visual presentations, products, customers service, and sales team, etc.
A merchandiser has various responsibilities to look after. Though a retail manager interacts most of the times with customers in the store but once or twice in a week he has to be the corporate environment.
In this article, you will learn about the job responsibilities in retail management, the advantages, and disadvantages of having a retail manager’s job.
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Job responsibilities of a retail manager
A retail manager is responsible for both smooth operations and financial success of a store. however, resolving customers complains and keeping them pleased with the services of the store is also an important responsibility of a retail manager.
There can be more than one manager in larger stores like department stores or supercenter. These managers are responsible for a particular department or area in the store. on the other hand, in smaller stores, only one manager runs all the operations.
The turn over rate of employees in the retail sector is quite high and a retail manager is responsible for interviewing, hiring, and training new employees. usually, a retail manager works more than 40hours a week and work for even longer hours in the holiday season.
Followings are the job responsibilities of a retail store manager.
- Provide knowledge to staff related to products.
- Interview, hire and train new workers like clerks, customers services associates, and cashiers, etc.
- Prepare the schedule for the workers of the store.
- Motivate sales person to reach a sales goal.
- Assigning specific works to workers such as cleaning, dusting, sweeping, etc.
- Place orders for the warehouse to different vendors.
- Keep the control of inventory.
- Maintain a connection between higher management and lower staff.
- Notify staff members about the policies and procedure.
- Interact with customers whenever required.
- Helps clerks and cashiers with the work in rush hours.
- Listen and resolve the issues between employees or customers and employees.
- Prepare performance report of each employee and present it to higher management.
- Prepare weekly financial performance report of the store for higher management.
- Plan and prepare display in store.
Advantages of working as a retail manager
A retail manager’s job is a dream job for everyone who wants to pursue a career in retail. If you come to know that there is an opening for the post of retail manager in your store you would want to apply for it first thing in the morning.
If you are lucky you will get a comfortable job where you never have to clean toilets ever again plus you will be making a lot of money. There are many more benefits of working as a retail manager. Let’s learn about them one by one.
1) More money
The first and foremost benefit of having a managerial job is more money. Your position as a manager will make you liable to get big pay cheques. In the United States, people in retail make $9 per hour on an average which makes it $18,700 annually.
But if you get promoted to managerial position your pay will get doubled. According to a salary comparison website PayScale, people in retail management earn between $27,000 to $40,000.
2) More Responsibilities
It feels good when you are trusted to make important and big decisions. You will be responsible for ordering supplies, keeping inventory in check, making employees schedule, and taking care of the budget. In addition to this, you will also be responsible for interviewing people, hire them, and give promote them.
If you are happy to take these responsibilities then you will also enjoy perks come along with these responsibilities.
3) More Experience
You can turn your retail job into a career by getting the job of retail manager. If you work hard and right you can get promoted to the general manager or even district manager. Then you will be looking over more than one store in your area.
Depending on your skills and intelligence you can move to office jobs too. However, your experience as a manager can also be used to get jobs elsewhere. For example, if you want to switch job from food industry to apparel industry your experience would help you to get a job and you will be trusted to lead a team.
Disadvantages of working as a retail manager
As every flower has thorns similarly the role of retail manager also comes with various disadvantages.
1) More pressure
On one side you will be pressurized by your store owner to cut on the store expenses and on another side there will be your employees who would want you to increase their paychecks or extend their vacation period. You will be the one who will be questioned first whenever anything will go wrong in your store.
From the smallest task like when the toilet overflowed to employees called for off on same shift will be your responsibility to take care of it. if you are good at handle pressure and working under pressure than you can work at this position without many difficulties
2) More tough decisions
Making a tough decision is part and parcel of the job position of a retail manager. For example, if money is being stolen from the cash counter then you will be responsible to find out the culprit or firing one of them even if you like it or not.
Sometimes managers have to make a decision which is not appreciated by their employees for the sack of the organization. Therefore, you are required to build some skin to be that job position. Otherwise, you will find it difficult to survive in this job.
Trying looking for some other jobs because you are not made for managerial jobs.
3) More work
As a retail manager, you will be required to work on weekends, nights and even on holidays. You will have to miss many family occasions because your job will not allow you to attend them. therefore, get used to working all the time.
You will miss the times when you could call day off to go out with your friends or family. Being a manager, you are required to do a lot of work and day off might result in more complications for the rest of the week. A restaurant manager, on average work for 60 hours a week.
Even you will be getting paid bigger but on hour basis you will notice that many of your employees will be making more than you.
