I'm the General Manager of a retail store and employee turnover is high. How do I hire a good retention consultant?

If turnover is high in a retail store, I’d hire a consultant who diagnoses the problem before prescribing a solution. A good retention consultant should be able to distinguish whether your biggest issues are management, scheduling, pay, hiring fit, onboarding, workload, career growth, or culture.

Recent Gallup research is a useful reminder: 42% of employees who voluntarily left said their employer or manager could have done something to prevent the departure, with management relationships, organizational issues, career advancement, staffing/workload, and compensation among the major factors.

What to look for

Prioritize consultants who have:

• Retail/hourly-workforce experience. Ask specifically for examples involving stores, frontline employees, shift workers, or multi-location retail—not just corporate HR.
• A diagnostic process. They should want to examine turnover by tenure, department, manager, shift, reason for leaving, attendance, scheduling, and hiring source.
• Employee listening skills. Look for stay interviews, anonymous employee surveys, focus groups, and properly structured exit interviews. SHRM describes stay interviews as conversations designed to identify actions leaders can take to strengthen engagement and retention.
• Manager-development expertise. Don't hire someone whose entire solution is "raise wages." Manager quality is a major determinant of employee experience, and manager behavior can be a significant retention lever.
• Measurable outcomes. They should propose specific metrics—e.g., 90-day retention, annualized voluntary turnover, regrettable turnover, absenteeism, time-to-productivity, and turnover by manager.
• Implementation capability. You want someone who can help your managers actually change behavior, not just deliver a 60-page report.

Questions I'd ask each candidate

Give every consultant the same questions:

1. "Tell me about the retail organization most similar to ours that you've helped with turnover."
2. "What did you discover was causing the turnover?"
3. "What did you actually change?"
4. "What happened to turnover afterward, and over what period?"
5. "How did you establish that your intervention—not some unrelated factor—was responsible for the improvement?"
6. "How would you diagnose our store during your first 30 days?"
7. "How would you get honest feedback from employees who are afraid management will find out what they said?"
8. "What would you expect from me and my assistant/store managers?"
9. "What metrics would you establish before recommending solutions?"
10. "Can I speak with two or three former clients?"

That last question is particularly important. Call the references yourself and ask, "Would you hire this consultant again?"

Give them a small case study

Before signing a substantial contract, give your finalists something like:

"We have 80 employees. Annual voluntary turnover is 75%. Most departures occur within the first six months. Weekend staffing is difficult, and two department managers have considerably higher turnover than the others. What would you want to investigate first?" A strong consultant won't immediately say, "You need an employee-engagement survey."

They'll ask questions such as:

• What is turnover by manager?
• What happens in the first 30/60/90 days?
• What are the top stated reasons for leaving?
• What are the schedules like?
• How far in advance are schedules posted?
• What is starting pay versus competitors?
• How often do new hires quit before becoming fully productive?
• Are certain managers generating disproportionate turnover?
• What do high-performing employees say keeps them here?
• What do recent departures say they wish had been different?

That diagnostic mindset is what you're buying.

Be careful about the "retention consultant" label

I'd actually search under several titles:

• Employee retention consultant
• Workforce/employee experience consultant
• Retail HR consultant
• Frontline workforce consultant
• Organizational development consultant
• HR consulting firm specializing in retail

SHRM notes that external HR consultants can help evaluate employee-management practices, retention rates, workplace assessments, stay interviews, and related interventions.

And don't let the consultant make "retention" the only objective. You want healthy retention. Keeping poor performers simply because they don't quit isn't success.

How I'd structure the engagement

Rather than immediately signing a year-long contract, I'd consider:

Phase 1 — Diagnostic (2–4 weeks) Employee interviews/survey + turnover-data analysis + manager interviews + scheduling/pay/onboarding review.

Phase 2 — Action plan (2–4 weeks) Identify the 3–5 biggest controllable causes and prioritize interventions based on expected impact and cost.

Phase 3 — Implementation (90 days) Consultant works alongside you and your managers to implement the changes.

Phase 4 — Measurement (6–12 months) Track turnover and leading indicators against your baseline.

This also lets you determine whether the consultant is actually producing value before making a large commitment. SHRM specifically recommends using metrics such as quality of hire and retention to evaluate talent practices.

One thing I'd do before hiring anyone

Pull 12 months of turnover data and break it down by manager, department, tenure, shift, and reason for leaving. If you discover, for example, that 70% of your turnover comes from two managers or that most people leave between days 30–90, you've already given prospective consultants a much better problem to solve.

If you tell me your store size, type of retail, approximate annual turnover, and whether you're an independent store or part of a larger chain, I can also help you build a consultant selection scorecard and interview questions specifically for your situation.

Hiring a retention consultant can be a game-changer for retail turnover, but finding the right fit requires looking past generic HR speak and targeting people with actual frontline operational experience.

Here is a step-by-step framework to find, vet, and hire a high-impact retention consultant for your store:

• Identify your specific bleeding points : Determine if your turnover is happening in the first 30 days (bad onboarding), at the manager level (toxic leadership), or due to structural issues like scheduling and pay.

• Set clear deliverables : Decide whether you need an audit, a redesigned onboarding program, or a multi-month culture and leadership training overhaul.

• Industry expertise : Look for consultants who specifically understand hourly, shift-based, or retail workforces, rather than corporate tech office retention.

• Professional networks : Search platforms like LinkedIn using targeted keywords like "retail employee retention consultant" or "frontline workforce strategist."

• Industry associations : Check out professional groups like the National Retail Federation or local chambers of commerce for peer recommendations and vendor directories.

• Ask for retail metrics : Ask, "Can you share a specific example of how you reduced 90-day turnover in a high-volume retail or hourly environment by a measurable percentage?"

• Inquire about frontline realities : Ask how they design programs for people who aren't sitting at a desk or checking email all day.

• Evaluate their diagnostic approach : A good consultant won't pitch a cookie-cutter package right away; they will want to interview your current disgruntled staff, analyze exit interviews, and look at scheduling data first.

• Check cultural alignment : Ensure their proposed solutions are realistic for a retail store manager and floor staff to execute without adding an impossible administrative burden.

• Call past clients : Specifically ask previous retail clients if the consultant's strategies survived after the consultant left.

Would you like me to draft a set of interview questions to ask candidates, or help you outline a brief scope-of-work document to send to prospective consultants?

Hiring a retention consultant can give you an objective, data-driven blueprint to stop the revolving door on your sales floor . Because retail has unique pain points—like hourly shift dynamics, burnout, and scheduling friction—you want someone who doesn't just offer corporate HR platitudes.

Here is a step-by-step game plan for finding, vetting, and hiring the right retention consultant for your store.

1. Define Your Scope and Budget First

Before you start looking, pinpoint what you actually need fixed. High turnover usually stems from specific root causes that you can outline for prospective consultants:

• The Onboarding Gap: Are new hires quitting within the first 30 to 90 days?
• Managerial Friction: Do store supervisors need training on how to lead instead of just micromanage?
• Scheduling Pain: Is rigid shift-swapping or short-staffing burning people out?
• Compensation/Culture: Is local market pay or morale the primary culprit?

2. Know Where to Look for Vetted Talent

Skip generic job boards and look where organizational development professionals gather:

• Industry Associations: Check networks like the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) directory or retail-specific operational networks.
• Specialized Boutique Firms: Look for firms that explicitly focus on employee lifecycle analytics, exit interviews, and manager training (such as Retensa or retail-focused operations groups like Lotis Blue Consulting).
• Referrals: Ask General Managers at non-competing peer retailers or local chamber of commerce networks who they’ve brought in to audit workforce performance.

3. Key Questions to Ask During the Interview

When you interview candidates, put them through a rigorous vetting process to ensure they understand retail realities:

• "Can you share a case study where you reduced hourly/frontline employee turnover in a brick-and-mortar or customer-facing environment?"
• "What is your methodology for diagnosing the root cause? Do you rely on anonymous surveys, focus groups, or manager audits?"
• "How do you train floor supervisors and assistant managers to spot disengagement before it leads to a two-week notice?"
• "What kind of ongoing accountability or metrics do you track to prove ROI after your initial consulting engagement ends?"

4. Red Flags to Watch Out For

• The Cookie-Cutter Approach: If they propose a massive, one-size-fits-all corporate restructuring plan without first asking to look at your store’s exit data, scheduling software, or shift-level metrics.
• Over-reliance on "Perks": If their only solution is telling you to offer pizza parties or ping-pong tables rather than addressing systemic scheduling, pay compression, and management behavior.
• Vague Deliverables: If they cannot provide a clear timeline, a diagnostic phase, and tangible milestones (e.g., a 30-day audit report followed by a 90-day execution plan).

If you'd like to narrow this down, tell me:

• When do most of your employees quit (e.g., first 30 days, or after the holidays)?
• Is this a standalone local store or a corporate-backed regional chain?

I can help you tailor a specific list of diagnostic questions or metrics to hand to prospective consultants.

Hiring a good retention consultant starts with treating your turnover problem like a business diagnosis—not just looking for someone to run an engagement survey or deliver a generic “employee happiness” program. A strong consultant should identify why your employees leave and help you change the conditions causing turnover.

1. Define what problem you want solved

Before interviewing consultants, gather basic facts:

• Your turnover rate by: - Store/location
• Department
• Position (sales associates, supervisors, managers)
• Tenure (first 30/60/90 days vs. long-term employees)
• Exit interview themes
• Absenteeism trends
• Hiring volume and time-to-fill
• Employee complaints or recurring manager issues
• Scheduling, pay, workload, and promotion concerns

A consultant should be able to work from your data, not just offer a prebuilt retention package.

2. Look for retail-specific experience

Retail turnover has unique drivers:

• Store manager effectiveness
• Scheduling flexibility
• Customer-facing stress
• Seasonal hiring
• Limited career visibility
• Onboarding quality
• Recognition and coaching

Prioritize consultants who have worked with stores, hourly employees, and frontline leaders—not only corporate office environments. Some firms specialize specifically in retail retention and workforce issues.

3. Ask these interview questions

Good questions:

1. “What retail turnover problems have you solved before?”
2. “How do you diagnose why employees are leaving?”
3. “What data do you need from us before recommending solutions?”
4. “How do you separate pay issues from management, culture, or scheduling issues?”
5. “What measurable results have you achieved?”
6. “How will you help our store managers change behaviors?”
7. “What will success look like after 90 days and one year?”

Be cautious if a consultant immediately recommends:

• More recognition programs
• Team-building events
• Surveys only
• Generic leadership training

without first identifying root causes.

4. Evaluate their process

A strong retention consultant will typically include some combination of:

• Turnover analysis
• Employee interviews or focus groups
• Stay interviews with employees you want to keep
• Exit interview analysis
• Manager assessments
• Onboarding review
• Action plans with measurable goals

Exit feedback analysis and implementation support are common parts of retention consulting approaches.

5. Check references carefully

Ask for references from:

• Retail companies
• Similar store sizes
• Similar employee populations (hourly/frontline workers)
• Companies that had a turnover problem—not companies already performing well

Ask references:

• “Did turnover actually improve?”
• “Did managers adopt the recommendations?”
• “Was the consultant practical for store operations?”
• “Would you hire them again?”

6. Agree on measurable outcomes

Avoid vague goals like “improve culture.”

Better goals:

• Reduce 90-day new-hire turnover by X%
• Improve manager effectiveness scores
• Increase employee retention at specific stores
• Reduce vacancy days
• Improve internal promotions
• Increase engagement scores in problem areas

7. Consider different types of consultants

Depending on your situation:

• Small single-store or regional issue: An independent retail HR consultant may be enough.
• Multiple stores with systemic turnover: A firm with analytics, surveys, and workforce strategy capabilities may be better.
• Manager-driven turnover: Look for leadership coaching and store-manager development expertise.
• Hiring/onboarding problems: Look for talent acquisition and onboarding specialists.

A practical first step: interview 3 consultants and ask each to provide a proposed 30-day diagnostic plan before you hire them. The best candidate will usually spend more time asking questions about your stores than selling a solution.

Yes. For a retail store, I’d look for a consultant who can diagnose why people are leaving—not simply run engagement surveys or give generic “culture” advice.

1. Define the problem before hiring anyone

Give the consultant actual numbers, ideally broken down by:

• Voluntary vs. involuntary turnover
• Tenure: 0–30, 31–90, 91–180 days, 6–12 months, 1+ year
• Department, shift, and manager
• Full-time vs. part-time
• High performers vs. low performers
• Reasons given in exit interviews
• Absenteeism and scheduling problems
• Time-to-productivity for new hires

SHRM recommends examining turnover/retention by employee group and measurement period rather than relying only on one overall turnover number.

That information will also help you determine whether you actually have a hiring problem, onboarding problem, manager problem, compensation/scheduling problem, or broader workplace problem.

2. Look for retail-specific experience

I'd strongly prefer someone who has worked with hourly, customer-facing retail employees. Retail turnover has different dynamics from professional-office turnover, and SHRM specifically notes the importance of tailoring recruiting and retention practices to the hourly workforce.

Ask candidates:

“How many retail or hourly-workforce retention projects have you personally completed?”

“What were the turnover rates before and after your intervention?”

“Can you give me a client reference where you reduced frontline turnover?”

“What did you discover was actually causing the turnover?”

If they can't provide concrete before/after results, I'd be cautious.

3. Hire someone who will diagnose before prescribing

A good consultant should want to talk to current employees, not just management.

I'd expect a project to include some combination of:

• Confidential employee interviews
• Stay interviews
• Exit-interview analysis
• Manager interviews
• Review of schedules, pay practices and attendance
• Hiring/onboarding process review
• New-hire experience analysis
• Turnover data analysis
• Observation of store operations

Stay interviews are particularly useful because they ask current employees what would make them stay rather than waiting until they're leaving. SHRM describes them as structured conversations intended to identify actions leaders can take to strengthen engagement and retention.

4. Make them give you a measurable outcome

Don't hire someone whose deliverable is simply “recommendations.”

A stronger proposal might say:

“We'll identify the three largest drivers of voluntary turnover, establish a baseline, implement interventions with store leadership, and track 90-, 180-, and 365-day retention.”

Have them establish metrics such as:

Primary

• 90-day new-hire retention
• 6-month retention
• Annualized voluntary turnover

Secondary

• Absenteeism
• New-hire performance/time-to-productivity
• Employee engagement
• Internal promotions
• Manager-specific turnover

SHRM recommends using metrics such as turnover/retention, time-to-productivity, new-hire surveys and employee satisfaction to evaluate retention and onboarding efforts.

5. Interview the consultant as rigorously as you'd interview an employee

I'd score candidates on:

Don't make price the major criterion. A consultant who costs $20,000 but meaningfully reduces expensive turnover can be much cheaper than a $5,000 consultant who produces a PowerPoint nobody implements.

6. Watch for these red flags

I'd avoid consultants who:

• Promise a specific turnover reduction before seeing your data.
• Immediately recommend raises, bonuses, or perks without diagnosing the problem.
• Primarily sell personality tests or engagement surveys.
• Can't provide relevant client references.
• Have impressive corporate experience but no frontline/hourly experience.
• Can't explain exactly how they'll measure success.
• Want a long contract before doing a diagnostic.
• Blame employees rather than examining managers, scheduling, workload, hiring and onboarding.

7. Consider a short diagnostic engagement first

You don't necessarily need to hire someone for a six-month transformation.

I'd consider asking 3 consultants for proposals for a 2–4 week diagnostic. Have each one answer the same question:

“Why are our retail employees leaving, and what should we change first?”

Then choose the consultant whose diagnostic is most rigorous and whose proposed solutions are most practical for your store.

One especially important point: don't assume recruiting fixes retention. SHRM notes that turnover data can reveal issues with frontline leadership, onboarding, mentoring, career development and other organizational practices.

If you tell me your store size, approximate annual turnover, average employee tenure, and whether you're dealing mostly with part-time or full-time employees, I can also give you a consultant selection scorecard and interview questions specifically for your situation.

Here are top web results for exploring this topic:

SHRM Human Resource Vendor Directory·https://vendordirectory.shrm.org 107 Best Retention Companies | Reviews & Comparison selectionlink.com. Rating: 5/5 - (38 reviews). Select, Hire, Develop, Retain Top Talent. Employee Retention - Surveys : Reduce turnover and KEEP THE BEST through measuring engagement. It is a tricky t workinstitute.com·https://workinstitute.com Strategies to Reduce Employee Turnover & Improve Retention Strategies to Reduce Employee Turnover & Improve Retention. Employee retention is a company's ability to keep its existing workforce. Mitigating employee churn is crucial as it builds a stable, experi agilityportal.io·https://agilityportal.io/blog/employee-retention-consultant**Does** Your Organization Need An Employee Retention Consultant?The primary goal of an Employee Retention Consultant is to identify factors that contribute to high employee turnover and develop effective solutions to address them. Moving Mountains HR·https://www.movingmountainshr.com**Employee Retention Consulting** – Flexible HR Support Employee Retention Consulting That Builds Loyalty. Build a workplace where people feel supported, capable, and motivated to stay. Moving Mountains HR Consulting helps small and mid-size organizations Employer Flexible·https://www.employerflexible.com How Can HR Consulting Improve Employee Retention?It encompasses a range of services, from advising on best practices to implementing tailored solutions for employee engagement. At its core, HR consulting aims to optimize the relationship between emp CulverCareers·https://culvercareers.com**Employee Retention Consulting** - CulverCareers Our employee retention consultants will help you retain top talent and prevent costly turnover. Contact us today to learn more. The Reisner Group·https://www.thereisnergroup.com How to Hire a Store Manager Who Actually Stays - The Reisner Group The good news: high store-manager turnover is not inevitable. It is almost always the result of how the role is hired — not a lack of available talent. Below is the framework we use at The Reisner Gro Retensa·https://retensa.com**Employee Retention** Resources for HR and Business Leaders What are the latest Employee Retention Strategies? Stay ahead with expert articles, case studies, and proven strategies that engage employees and reduce turnover. Read retention best practices and lea Material Retail·https://www.materialretail.com**Employee Retention** in Retail : 9 Ways To Retain Your Staff Investing in employee retention can help small business owners: Reduce costs: Finding, hiring, and training · Boost productivity: A long-term employee will better understand your business, processes, The Retail Doctor·https://www.retaildoc.com 9 Ways To Increase Employee Retention In Your Retail Store Mix it up for employees who have been with you for a while; give them new duties, training, responsibilities, etc., and keep the employee engagement level high. 7. You hire the wrong people. Just beca

Yes. I’d treat this less like hiring a generic HR consultant and more like hiring a retail turnover specialist who can diagnose why people leave and then help your managers change the underlying causes.

SHRM specifically recommends measuring retention, using stay interviews/workplace assessments, and tying consulting work to measurable ROI.

1. Define the problem before you hire anyone

Give the consultant a clear starting brief:

• Current annual turnover rate
• Turnover in the first 30/60/90 days
• Full-time vs. part-time turnover
• Which positions/ shifts have the worst turnover
• Tenure of people who leave
• Exit-interview themes
• Absenteeism and scheduling problems
• Pay/benefit competitiveness
• Store-manager/assistant-manager turnover
• Your current hiring and onboarding process

This matters because the solution could be hiring better, but it could just as easily be scheduling, management, onboarding, workload, career progression, or compensation. Retail retention research points to predictable scheduling, consistent hours, flexibility, and manager relationships as important factors for deskless workers.

2. Look for these qualifications

I'd prioritize a consultant who has:

Retail/hourly workforce experience.
Someone who has primarily worked with corporate office employees may not understand the realities of store-level turnover.

Actual diagnostic experience.
They should be willing to interview employees, managers, and former employees—not simply hand you an engagement survey.

Experience with frontline managers.
Managers have an enormous effect on the employee experience, so the consultant should evaluate how your store leaders hire, onboard, schedule, coach and recognize employees.

A measurable methodology.
They should be able to tell you exactly what they'll measure and how you'll know the engagement worked.

Implementation capability.
Avoid someone who will give you a 75-page report and disappear. You want someone who will help implement changes and measure the results.

3. Ask candidates these questions

I'd use these as your interview questions:

1. "Tell me about the most similar retail turnover problem you've solved."
2. "What information would you want from me before making recommendations?"
3. "How would you determine why our employees are actually leaving?"
4. "How would you distinguish a hiring problem from a management, scheduling, compensation or onboarding problem?"
5. "What would you do during your first 30 days?"
6. "How would you involve our store managers?"
7. "What retention metrics would you establish?"
8. "What improvement would you expect to see, and over what timeframe?"
9. "Can you provide two or three references from retail clients with hourly employees?"
10. "What would you do if your analysis showed that management—not recruiting—is the primary cause of turnover?"

That last question is particularly useful. You want somebody willing to tell you an uncomfortable truth rather than somebody whose business model depends on selling you a particular solution.

4. Be skeptical of these red flags

I'd pass on a consultant who:

• Promises a specific percentage reduction in turnover before seeing your data
• Immediately recommends an employee survey without diagnosing the business
• Focuses entirely on compensation
• Has no retail/hourly workforce experience
• Can't provide comparable client references
• Gives you generic engagement recommendations
• Doesn't establish baseline metrics
• Can't explain how you'll calculate ROI
• Wants a long contract before doing a diagnostic

SHRM's guidance also emphasizes measuring outcomes and ROI rather than treating HR consulting as an activity unto itself.

5. Consider a short diagnostic engagement first

Rather than immediately signing a six-month consulting contract, I'd ask your finalists to propose a 30–45 day turnover diagnostic.

The deliverables should include:

Employee data analysis → employee interviews/stay interviews → manager interviews → hiring/onboarding review → turnover root-cause analysis → prioritized action plan → measurement dashboard.

Stay interviews are particularly useful because they ask current employees what keeps them there and what might cause them to leave—giving you an opportunity to intervene before the exit interview.

Then, if the consultant proves useful, extend the engagement into implementation.

Where I'd look

A good starting point is the SHRM Human Resource Vendor Directory, which includes HR consulting suppliers. I'd also ask your company's HR leadership, payroll/HRIS provider, other local retailers, and fellow GMs for referrals.

One important point: don't automatically frame this as a "retention consultant" search. The best candidate may describe themselves as an employee-experience consultant, workforce consultant, retail HR consultant, organizational-development consultant, or frontline workforce consultant.

If you tell me what type of retail store you run, roughly how many employees you have, and your general location, I can also look for actual consultants/firms that specialize in retail turnover and give you a shortlist with what each one appears to specialize in.

Hiring a retention consultant can be a game-changer for retail turnover, but you need someone who understands the unique hourly, seasonal, and shift-based challenges of the retail industry.

Here is a step-by-step guide to finding, vetting, and hiring the right retention consultant for your store:

1. Define the Scope and Objectives
   • Identify root causes (e.g., is it onboarding, scheduling friction, or compensation/culture?).
   • Set clear deliverables (e.g., an audit of current exit interviews, a redesign of your 30-day onboarding, or manager coaching).
2. Source Specialized Candidates
   • Look for consultants with a proven track record in retail, hospitality, or high-turnover hourly environments rather than generic corporate HR consultants.
   • Search through professional networks like LinkedIn using keywords like "Employee Retention Consultant" or "Retail HR Strategist."
   • Check independent consultant marketplaces or platforms like the Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI) or Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) directory for certified professionals.
3. Screen for Relevant Experience
   • Ask for case studies showing how they reduced turnover percentage in a similar retail or shift-work setting.
   • Inquire about their methodology for measuring success (e.g., tracking 90-day retention rates, employee Net Promoter Scores).
   • Ensure they focus on frontline manager training , as retail retention is heavily driven by direct supervisors.
4. Ask the Right Interview Questions
   • "What specific strategies have you used to improve retention among part-time or hourly retail staff?"
   • "How do you audit a store's current culture and scheduling practices without disrupting daily operations?"
   • "Can you share an example of a time a retention strategy failed, and how you adjusted?"
5. Establish Clear Metrics and Timeline
   • Agree on a trial phase or a defined pilot program (e.g., a 60-day diagnostic and recommendation phase).
   • Tie project milestones to measurable outcomes, such as decreasing 30-day attrition by a specific percentage over six months.

To help narrow down your search, could you share:

• How many employees your store currently has?
• Whether you are looking for a local consultant to be on-site or an independent/remote strategist?
• What you suspect is the primary driver of your turnover?

To hire a good retention consultant, you need someone who specializes in retail hourly/frontline employee engagement, onboarding optimization, and store-level cultural audits.

Essential Steps to Hire a Retention Consultant

1. Define your core pain points by analyzing exit interviews, peak turnover windows (e.g., first 30 days vs. 6-month mark), and manager-to-employee friction points so you know what specific expertise the consultant needs.
2. Source specialized candidates through networks like the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Directory or by searching for organizational development consultants who explicitly list retail, hospitality, or high-turnover frontline industries in their portfolio.
3. Screen for retail-specific experience because corporate retention strategies do not work on a sales floor; they must understand shift scheduling, associate pay structures, seasonal rushes, and store manager burnout.
4. Request case studies and metrics during initial interviews to see proven examples of how they reduced turnover percentages or improved 90-day retention rates in similar brick-and-mortar environments.
5. Define a phased scope of work starting with a short diagnostic audit (store visits, data analysis, and surveys) before committing to a long-term overhaul or training program.

To help narrow down the search, let me know:

• What is your approximate store headcount?
• Are employees leaving mostly within the first 30 days or later on?
• Are you looking for a consultant to train your managers or redesign your entire onboarding process?

Yes. For a retail store, I’d look for a consultant who diagnoses the reason people are leaving before prescribing a retention program. High turnover can come from very different causes—manager behavior, scheduling, pay, hiring mismatch, onboarding, workload, lack of advancement, or the employee experience. SHRM specifically recommends analyzing turnover by factors such as manager, job, tenure, and reason for leaving rather than treating turnover as one overall number.

1. Look for a retention/employee-experience specialist—not just an HR consultant

Your ideal consultant should have demonstrated experience with:

• Retail or other high-volume, frontline/deskless employees
• Hourly employee turnover
• Store-level manager effectiveness
• Recruiting and selection
• New-hire onboarding and the first 30/60/90 days
• Scheduling/workload issues
• Employee engagement and "stay interviews"
• Career paths and internal promotion
• Exit-interview and turnover-data analysis

This retail-specific experience matters. SHRM's research on deskless workers, for example, highlights the important role managers play in the employee experience and retention.

2. Ask them to diagnose before they recommend

I'd be wary of someone who immediately proposes an engagement survey, bonus program, or leadership training.

Instead, ask:

"If you came into my store tomorrow, what information would you want before telling me why we're losing employees?"

A strong answer should include things like:

• Turnover by tenure—especially first 30/60/90/180 days
• Voluntary vs. involuntary turnover
• Turnover by manager/department/shift
• Exit-interview information
• Absenteeism and scheduling data
• Hiring-source and quality-of-hire data
• Employee interviews or focus groups
• Compensation and local labor-market comparisons
• Onboarding practices
• Store-manager and supervisor practices

SHRM recommends looking at turnover patterns by manager, job, tenure and other employee characteristics to identify the underlying problem.

3. Make the consultant give you measurable outcomes

Don't hire someone for "improving morale." Put numbers around the engagement.

For example:

90-day diagnostic

• Identify the top 3 causes of voluntary turnover
• Identify the employee populations with the highest risk
• Establish your current baseline

6-month intervention

• Reduce voluntary turnover from X% to Y%
• Reduce 90-day new-hire attrition by X%
• Improve manager effectiveness score by X%
• Increase retention of high-performing associates by X%

Also ask how they'll distinguish correlation from causation. A consultant should be able to tell you whether, for example, employees are leaving because of scheduling—or whether scheduling is merely correlated with another underlying problem.

4. Interview 3–5 consultants and ask the same questions

I'd use questions like:

1. "Tell me about a retail client where you materially reduced frontline turnover. What was the starting point, what did you do, and what happened?"
2. "What percentage of your work is with hourly/frontline employees?"
3. "What data would you want from us before making recommendations?"
4. "How do you determine whether the problem is hiring, management, compensation, scheduling, onboarding, or something else?"
5. "How much time will you spend actually talking to our employees?"
6. "How do you measure whether your recommendations worked?"
7. "What would you expect our store managers to change?"
8. "Can I speak with three former/current clients with similar turnover problems?"
9. "Who specifically will do the work—not just sell me the engagement?"
10. "What happens if your initial diagnosis turns out to be wrong?"

That last question is particularly revealing.

SHRM recommends evaluating a consultant based on the expertise and experience relevant to the specific project and also advises checking practical matters such as insurance and any subcontractors who will work on the engagement.

5. Be careful about the "employee survey consultant"

A survey can be useful, but a survey isn't a retention strategy.

I'd want the consultant to combine quantitative data with confidential conversations with employees. "Stay interviews"—asking current employees what makes them want to stay, what frustrates them, and what might cause them to leave—can uncover information that conventional exit interviews miss.

6. Consider whether you actually need an outside consultant

Before spending substantial money, you could do a quick internal diagnostic.

Pull your last 12 months of departures and make a simple spreadsheet with:

Employee → hire date → departure date → manager → position → shift → voluntary/involuntary → stated reason → tenure

Then calculate:

• Overall turnover
• Voluntary turnover
• 90-day turnover
• 6-month turnover
• Turnover by manager
• Turnover by position
• Turnover by shift
• Turnover by month

You may discover something striking—for example, 70% of your departures occur within the first 90 days and almost all are under one supervisor. That's a very different consulting problem from "our employees don't feel engaged."

SHRM specifically recommends tracking retention/turnover by narrower employee groups and monitoring the point at which new employees tend to leave.

What I'd look for in your situation

Because you're a retail GM, I'd prioritize a consultant with this profile:

Former retail HR/operations leader or organizational consultant + significant hourly/frontline workforce experience + proven turnover-reduction results + strong data/diagnostic skills + willingness to interview employees and managers.

I would not make "SHRM certification," an impressive website, or a generic "employee engagement" methodology the deciding factor. Evidence that they've fixed a comparable retail turnover problem is much more valuable.

If you tell me your store type, approximate employee count, annual turnover (even a rough estimate), and whether the problem is mostly new hires or experienced employees, I can help you build a consultant scorecard and interview questions specifically for your store.