Burnout is on the rise among frontline retail workers this holiday season. Can technology help?

The holiday shopping season is in full swing.

For frontline retail employees, that means it’s one of the busiest, most stressful times of the year, made even more challenging due to economic uncertainty and AI-powered tools altering consumers’ shopping habits.

And it seems many are already burned out: 69% of retail workers surveyed by Accenture reported being exhausted ahead of the holiday season, a time when half feel overworked, stressed, or burned out.

“Being in retail is a tough job. Just gotta say, you’re dealing with the public,” said Jill Standish, Accenture’s global leader of retail, who noted that the top stressors cited by retail employees included dealing with lines and crowd control. “Especially this time of year when you start to get a lot of traffic in stores, it can be tough.”

This exhaustion is impacting workers’ performance. Frontline respondents to a UKG survey said they’re less productive and more likely to make mistakes, call out sick, and look for a new job when burned out.

“That’s why I think it is so important for retailers to understand this, because they’re not only going to do better for their people, but they’re also going to do better for their businesses,” said Rachel Barger, president of go-to-market at UKG. “It’s the holiday season. You’re supposed to be giving joy. How can you be giving joy if you, as the employee, aren’t feeling that way?”

In a high-turnover industry like retail, burnout can exacerbate attrition. This year, 68% of retail leaders cited retaining frontline employees as a concern, per Accenture’s survey.

Experts who spoke with HR Brew said that technology—particularly around staffing and scheduling logistics, as well as generative AI tools that assist with product availability and knowledge—can be leveraged to help alleviate employees’ frustrations.

Creating more flexibility. Inconsistent scheduling and shift swapping have long been issues in retail, issues that are likely to worsen this holiday season if retailers pull back on hiring as expected. Adopting tech tools that can help give workers more agency over their schedules can help alleviate burnout, experts said.

“Even basic tools like scheduling, making sure we understand what the patterns are for staffing, and then allowing the teams to actually control their own staffing. That does a huge, huge improvement on morale,” Standish said, explaining that employers that do that are “putting the power back into that frontline worker so they can manage their family and manage their time. I mean, you think about it, they’ve got a Christmas too and they’ve got to manage their own schedule.”

Many employers, including Starbucks, Gap, and Walmart, have already adopted such tools for their frontline workers. Now, AI technology can potentially help further streamline the process.

“How do you empower the frontline worker to say, ‘This week, this is my preferred schedule,’ and actually use AI to build the schedule out, understanding work conditions and labor laws and meal breaks and all that good stuff?” said Barger.

On the floor. Inventory management has been a high priority for retailers this year, as they strive to make product information as up-to-date as possible. Some AI tools, designed for these retail spaces, could possibly aid with inventory management, as Retail Brew previously reported.

Consumers are already using these tools: 66% of consumers have used generative AI shopping tools within the last three months—double from the year prior—and 70% of those who’ve used the tools heavily said they’ve made them less reliant on frontline employees, Accenture’s survey found. Retailers see an opportunity to use them too, with nearly half of those surveyed planning to create brand-specific generative AI tools this year. Yet three-quarters of frontline staffers surveyed said they don’t have access to these tools for their jobs.

“If tools are out there for consumers doing their own purchasing, why wouldn’t we make them available to the frontline worker?” said Standish.

AI can help with more than just inventory management—it can also equip retail workers with the information they need to answer consumers’ questions about products they may not know a lot about, according to Standish.

“People [consumers] have a lot of questions, especially if it’s a complex selling environment, like, think of anything to do with electronics, think of anything to do with appliances, or even DIY,” she said. With easy access to product information—like details about warranties or where an item was manufactured—frontline workers can spend less time researching or asking colleagues questions and more time strengthening their rapport with customers. “I think the conversation, one-to-one, really matters. It can really make a difference.”