Retail and wholesale depend on frontline managers. Are employers setting them up to succeed?

Article Summary

• Why rising labour costs and lean staffing increase retailers’ and wholesalers’ reliance on frontline managers
• What research tells us about management impact, promotion decisions and operational overload
• How employers can assess whether managers have the preparation, authority and support to perform

Every labour hour is under scrutiny in retail and wholesale.

The four-quarter average for UK retail employment fell to 2.79 million jobs in the first quarter of 2026, 66,000 fewer than a year earlier and the lowest level on record. The British Retail Consortium estimates that increases in employer National Insurance and the National Living Wage added £6.5 billion to retailers’ employment costs over 14 months. Fewer roles and higher labour costs leave less room for error in scheduling, deployment and retention.

Wholesale faces its own version of the squeeze. The Grocer’s 2026 Big 30 report describes businesses absorbing inflation, increased employment costs and new regulation. A 2024 Scottish Parliament debate, drawing on evidence from the Scottish Wholesale Association, also highlighted low margins, recruitment difficulties and rising food costs at a time when businesses need to invest in operational efficiency and supply-chain management. One large fresh produce wholesaler reported difficulty filling roles despite offering fixed shifts, permanent contracts and pay above the minimum wage.

These pressures show up in the daily work of store, depot and warehouse managers. They must translate central plans into workable shifts, maintain service and availability and deal with absence, performance, safety and employee concerns. Many are doing so while operating with less spare capacity and greater pressure to protect margin.

Managers affect the numbers

Frontline management can have a material effect on productivity. Research using data from two multibillion-dollar retailers found that individual managers accounted for between 25% and 35% of the variation in productivity across stores. Moving from a manager ranked among the bottom 10% for performance to one ranked among the top 10% increased overall productivity by between 22% and 82%, an improvement roughly equivalent to adding a fifth employee to a team of four, according to the same University of Chicago working paper.

Recent UK evidence also connects managers with retention. The Retail Trust’s Retail People Index for the first quarter of 2026 found that relationships between managers and employees had reached their highest level in 18 months. Even so, 49% of distribution-centre workers and 47% of store workers remained a flight risk, compared with 36% of head-office employees, while 40% of distribution and store employees also went into work despite feeling physically or mentally unwell in comparison to 30% of their head office colleagues. Better local relationships help but managers cannot compensate indefinitely for weak job design, unstable staffing or limited progression.

The manager role therefore needs to be examined as part of the operating model. Store performance is influenced by footfall, product mix, local labour markets and competition. Depot and warehouse results also depend on demand patterns, transport, stock flow and technology. Within these conditions managers determine how work is allocated, how quickly problems surface and whether people can perform consistently under pressure.

Promotion is not preparation

Retailers and wholesalers often promote from the frontline. Done well this retains operational knowledge and creates a visible route for progression. Yet being highly effective in a store, warehouse or depot does not in itself show that someone is ready to manage people. The new role requires them to set expectations, address underperformance, handle conflict and make fair decisions while keeping the operation moving. These capabilities need to be assessed and developed rather than assumed.

Investors in People’s cross-sector research, The Broken Ladder, suggests that employees see the difficulty clearly. Seventy-four per cent described middle management as stressful and 51% regarded it as a high-stress, low-reward job. When asked what would make management roles more desirable and sustainable 55% selected preparation and training before taking the role, 49% wanted realistic workloads with fewer administrative responsibilities and 38% identified continuing coaching or mentoring.

The findings cover the wider UK workforce rather than retail and wholesale alone but they speak directly to frontline roles where the consequences of poor preparation quickly appear in labour deployment, service and turnover.

When labour is cut, the work remains

Training will have limited impact when the role itself is overloaded. UK retail research based on interviews with frontline managers found that excessive workloads and conflicting expectations shaped how they used their time. Closely monitored operational targets tended to take precedence, while appraisals, employee development and other longer-term people responsibilities were delayed or adapted.

Although the fieldwork was conducted in 2012 and 2013, more recent research has found the same underlying pattern. A 2024 study of frontline managers found that operational needs were prioritised over performance management, influenced by the signals and support managers received from elsewhere in the organisation.

The response is understandable when a manager is judged on today’s queue, availability figure or labour percentage. But this can also create tomorrow’s performance problem.

Wharton research into grocery labour makes a related operational point. Its study of leading retailers argues that people should be understood as an asset whose deployment affects revenue, rather than solely as a cost to be reduced. The retailers studied were looking at process improvement, automation and better staffing decisions as ways to increase productivity while protecting their ability to serve customers.

The same discipline should be applied to the manager role. Technology can simplify forecasting, scheduling, reporting and routine administration. But poorly designed systems can duplicate data entry and transfer work previously handled by central functions to the frontline. Before adding another responsibility employers need to establish what will stop, what can be simplified and which decisions genuinely belong at site level.

Build support into the operation

The essentials can be assessed. Managers need clear accountabilities, authority that matches those accountabilities and timely support when an issue exceeds their expertise. Preparation should begin before promotion and continue through practical coaching, peer learning and feedback once the manager is in post. Their workload must leave enough time to observe the operation, address performance and develop the team.

This remains a wider UK management problem. The CIPD’s 2025 Good Work Index found that only 60% of managers believed they had the training and information needed to manage people well while 59% said they had sufficient time. In a multi-site business uneven support can become a hidden variation: one site has an experienced regional manager and functioning systems while another is left to improvise.

The We invest in people framework provides a practical way to examine whether frontline managers have the conditions required to perform. Its indicators look at whether managers understand what is expected of them, invest time in managing performance and receive the development they need. They also consider whether people have enough information and authority to make decisions within their responsibilities.

An assessment can show where the formal management model differs from daily experience. In a multi-site operation this can reveal inconsistent workloads, support or decision-making authority that may remain hidden in aggregate performance data.

Frontline managers cannot remove every commercial constraint. They can make better decisions within those constraints when the role is properly designed and supported. For retailers and wholesalers watching every labour hour and percentage point of margin the real test is whether managers spend their time carrying organisational friction or improving the performance of the operation.

Frontline management readiness checklist

• Priorities: Do managers know what takes precedence when service, labour, compliance and people demands conflict?
• Workload and systems: Does the business know what is consuming managers’ time and whether technology and central processes are reducing work or adding to it?
• Authority: Can managers make the staffing and operational decisions for which they will later be held accountable?
• Preparation: Are people assessed and developed for management before promotion, rather than trained only after problems emerge?
• Performance: Do managers have protected time for feedback, underperformance and employee development?
• Support: Can managers reach HR, regional leadership or specialist support quickly when an issue exceeds their experience?
• Evidence: Does the organisation compare manager workload and support with turnover, absence, service and productivity across sites?

Explore further research and practical insight for retail and wholesale employers in the Investors in People Retail and Wholesale hub.

Sources

1. 1.BRC, Retail employment falls as costs rise, June 2026. https://brc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/corporate-affairs/2026/ungated/retail-employment-falls-as-costs-rise/
2. 2.The Grocer, Big 30 wholesaler report and rankings 2026: a heavy load to bear. https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/rankings/big-30-wholesaler-report-and-rankings-2026-a-heavy-load-to-bear/715850.article
3. 3.Scottish Parliament meeting, 25 September 2024. https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/official-report/search-what-was-said-in-parliament/meeting-of-parliament-25-09-2024
4. 4.Robert D. Metcalfe, Alexandre B. Sollaci and Chad Syverson, Managers and Productivity in Retail, BFI Working Paper No. 2023-64, 2023. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Managers-and-Productivity-in-Retail.pdf
5. 5.The Retail Trust, Retail worker wellbeing shows signs of recovery as manager support improves. https://www.retailtrust.org.uk/news/retail-worker-wellbeing-shows-signs-of-recovery-as-manager-support-improves/2190.article
6. 6.Evans, Samantha (2015), Juggling on the line: front line managers and their management of human resources in the retail industry. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-06-2014-0066
7. 7.Kendra Hill and Geoff Plimmer, Employee Performance Management: The Impact of Competing Goals, Red Tape, and PSM, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1177/00910260241231371
8. 8.Marshall Fisher and Santiago Gallino, The Wharton School, The Future of Retail Grocery Store Labor. https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Future-of-grocery-store-labor-06142024.pdf
9. 9.CIPD, Good Work Index 2025. https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/reports/2025-pdfs/8868-good-work-index-2025-report-web1.pdf