Cooperation on working time and further training - ways of recruitment and retention in Danish retail trade

Book by Anna Ilsøe and Jonas Felbo-Kolding

In recent years, Danish retail trade has experienced an increasing challenge with regards to recruiting and especially retaining personnel. After the 2012 amendment of “Lukkeloven” (the law concerning opening hours), many shops have extended their opening hours, additionally they have found it necessary to hire more young employees on part-time contracts in order to cover opening hours during evenings and weekends.

In some places, the high proportion of young part-time employees have led to high staff turnovers and increased recruitment costs. Though the young part-time employees are easy to recruit, they often hold their job for a relatively short period of time and are hard to retain in the long run. This means that recruitment and retention of permanent staff becomes even more important.

It remains an open question how the retail industry can strengthen recruitment and retention at  shop floor level? This book addresses whether close cooperation between managers and employees on working time issues and further training can contribute to this. For instance, should cooperation between managers and young part-time employees differ from cooperation between managers and permanent staff? These questions are answered on the basis of six in-depth case studies of manager-employee cooperation in Danish shops conducted in 2013.

The book is published by FAOS, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, June 2014. 

Download the book (in Danish only)