My Dream Job Became a Nightmare of Constant Connectivity
This could be why you're losing your best leaders
A retail leader reached out to me to tell me her story.
As our personal time continues to blur with work, I hope you’ll read her compelling story. Understand that when you push too hard, you can end up losing your best people.
Here is her account.
I was a store manager with a successful discount retailer for over seven years. I grew up with the company. I started when I was sixteen years old as a part-time associate. Pretty quickly, I became the it girl in my districts.
A young store manager who knocked every visit out of the park. I turned challenging stores into successes. I was a subject matter expert in driving sales, developing teams, and operational efficiencies.
I became a certified district trainer, training all assistant store managers who were on-boarded in our district and in neighboring districts.
I spearheaded charity campaigns and assisted in the grand opening and relocation of stores. I was on track to become a district manager and had completed several stretch assignments to prove myself.
In every store I led, my team and I killed it in all our metrics. I couldn't wait to take the next step from store manager to district leadership. My DM and I had continuous conversations about me moving forward with the company, and I was given a mentor and a timeline for when it would occur.
Things were amazing! And then something happened this year that made me give my notice and step away from my 15-year retail leadership career.
And I wonder if I'm crazy.
The group chat
I returned from a leave of absence this year after having my baby. It was rough coming back to work at first, but honestly, I needed it. I was ready.
I was thrilled to put my energy into something that wasn't changing diapers and doing laundry.
Before I gave birth, the stores in our district had a group chat on our personal phones. The chat included our district manager and our district loss prevention manager. It was used moderately. It was a way to communicate operational reminders and share goals.
I never minded. I was always the first one to answer. My phone is attached to me. But since my return from my leave of absence, I have noticed that something has changed.
The intensity of the group chat was clear.
It was more direct, more threatening, and went from an "ever so often" chat to every two hours.
Constant reminders of meeting loyalty program goals, customer service, operations, and sales. All business metrics updated directly to my personal device over 10 times a day or more.
There was always talk of store managers getting a "work phone," but it never happened. So here I am, a leader amongst leaders, and I am embarrassed to say I felt lost.
Work never ended
In the beginning, I would immediately answer the group chat. There were often times I was in my baby’s dimly lit room at 8 p.m. giving a bottle with one hand and rapidly texting responses with the other.
I would wake up feeling stressed that I missed a message. I found myself physically holding my phone so frequently that if I left it on the coffee table, my four-year-old would bring it to me immediately, "Mama, you forgot your phone!"
It was becoming a stressor in my marriage.
Every push for numbers, every action plan required me to step away and make calls to my assistants and demand answers. To then text back to the group those answers.
It was overwhelming.
The excitement of my career turned to dread
Should I have set boundaries and not answered? Put the group on silent? Maybe. But this was my career! I was a high-potential candidate for an upcoming role. How could I be the only store manager who was unresponsive?
Five months went by.
I didn't recognize the leader I once was.
I was dreading waking up to make my commute. I found myself communicating less and less with my team. The morale in my building was down. I was becoming negative. And I was burnt out.
Not from being in my store - from constantly being communicated with about my store from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
I never expected much of a work-life balance in retail. But every time I heard my text ping, my stomach lurched. I prayed it wasn't the group chat.
And then other thoughts started to form.
Invisible boundaries suddenly became apparent
I couldn't stop thinking about how my district manager had two phones. Her personal phone and her work phone. And my peers and I just had one.
One phone to send photos to grandparents.
One phone to check updates on my son's preschool.
One phone to book doctor's appointments for my newborn.
And that same phone, my personal phone, was now something else. It was an endless thread of complaints and grievances, urging results while I sat empty, never being able to switch off from my work day.
I never thought I would quit my job.
There were other factors that led me here: lack of coverage and a 2-hour commute. But in the end, it was ultimately the continuous lack of respect for my off-work hours by my DM.
It's crazy to think I was always the person to stay late, come in early, or do an overnight. My store team knows if they have an emergency they can always reach out. But this group chat was unfamiliar territory and was stepping over a boundary that I didn't know I had.
When I began interviewing with other companies, a recruiter asked me, "How does your current job support you in a work-life balance?" My lack of response made me immediately aware I was making the right decision to leave.
Let my story be your lesson
Let your employees have a home life. They need to decompress from their day.
We deal with high-stress scenarios all day long, and some of us do an amazing job. We keep the pace and the morale up all day. However, reaching out directly and so frequently to personal devices about not-urgent matters creates a culture of exhaustion.
A culture of burned-out managers that (even on vacation) are the unfortunate recipients of the constant reminder to drive, drive, drive results.
I am curious, are there others out there like me?
Kit Campoy is an accomplished retail expert and author. She leverages her two decades of leadership experience to inform and inspire.
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What a nightmare! And completely unnecessary. It's as if companies aren't able to trust workers to do their job unless they are constantly in their faces.
Companies have no idea the loyalty they would get if they made respecting workers' time a priority.
Omg - this hit home so much. I left retail 9 years ago. While my peers and dm didn’t have a group chat (thank Goodness), I was consistently bombarded each morning on my days off with the 8am “How’s the store?” text from my DM.
I now have a job where we have desk computers - not laptops. We are not expected to read email or respond to emails during non work hours. Such a breath of fresh air!!
There are no texts from my supervisor unless it is an emergency that needs urgent attention - which is very rare.
Turnover in supervisory positions is very low at my current company - could it be because the line between work and home is very respected?