The digital talent shortage in retail careers
The simplest question in a changing retail environment remains ‘how do companies meet customer expectations?’.
Many customers have digital expectations. Accordingly, companies must be digitally fluent or risk alienating the customer.
Having all of a company’s digital knowledge within an ecommerce team is no longer sufficient to keep up. Digital knowledge is needed in marketing, merchandising, the supply chain, customer service, HR, PR and beyond.
With a limited pool of digital talent so quickly snapped up by pureplays and companies willing to attract with high wages, it’s hard for retailers to simply employ ‘digital staff’ to plug these gaps.
Shop.org, the digital side of the National Retail Foundation (NRF) has written an open letter to retail CEOs about perfecting the talent mix, and much of it echoes what we’ve been writing on Econsultancy.
So what can CEOs do to address this talent shortage?