‘Wellbeing is absolutely critical...’


Retail Trust CEO, Chris Brook-Carter, told delegates at the Retra Conference how the charity can help members deal with issues, including staff mental health problems, and also offer training to managers.


Around a quarter of a million people turned to the Retail Trust last year for help. The primary focus of the charity is to provide the retail industry with the tools it needs to look after the people in its workforces. Speaking at the Retra Conference, CEO Chris Brook-Carter,


said: “We have around 190 retailers up and down the country. Our services cover about one million [people] – about a third of everyone working within the retail industry.


training – one of the biggest impacts we can have on the industry is by training line managers to look after their people better.”


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Mental health is still quite a taboo topic – a lot of people find it very difficult to express how they’re feeling to their line manager


Mr Brook-Carter said that to due to its work, the Retail Trust has access to an enormous amount of data and surveys the retail industry to find out how people who are working in the trade are feeling and what the state of their mental health is and if they’re suffering from anxiety. “Mental health is still quite a taboo topic – a lot of people find


it very difficult to express how they’re feeling to their line manager or organisation, for fear it will create some sort of stigma and that people will think poorly of them – that it could place them at risk of redundancy,” he said. “Wellbeing is absolutely critical – there is no doubt anymore about the link between a happy and a healthy workforce and a more productive one. “Around 90 percent of line managers who reached out to us


“Last year, about a quarter of a million turned to us for help in one form or another. That help could be accessing content on our website, which has an enormous amount of self-help information and tools, or our helpline.” He added: “Last year, we gave out about £1.2 million in financial aid to people in need and we also do an awful amount of


last year said there had been an increase in mental health issues within their team. Around two-thirds of those line managers felt they hadn’t got support from their businesses to deal with those problems properly.” For more information on the Retail Trust, see page 20 or visit


www.retailtrust.org.uk. ‘Things are going to get better


– they have to...’ Nick Simon, GfK client director for market intelligence, used his Retra Conference presentation to report on sales trends and consumer behaviour – here are some of the highlights.


Sales in the consumer electronics (CE) sector slowed down last year, with most product areas declining – apart from headphones and turntables (see What’s Hot – pages 42-43), according to analyst GfK.


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Consumer confidence is pretty poor – people are concerned about the economy going backwards and also their own personal financial situations


MDA sales were slower than other products to pick up at the


start of the pandemic, so growth lasted longer. Other kitchen appliances performed well, but sales of cooling


products fell back slightly, because fridge-freezers, which did well during the panic-buying in lockdown, ran out of steam.


26 Retra Conference Review Like CE, small domestic appliances (SDA) declined in the


second half of 2021 after the previous year’s bonanza. Most SDA markets still grew significantly when compared with 2019 though – there was a lot of emphasis on both online on online and premium purchases. Consumer confidence has taken a nosedive as people are worried about the economy, said Gfk’s client director for market intelligence, Nick Simon: “Consumer confidence is pretty poor – people are concerned about the economy going backwards and also their own personal financial situations.” However, there is some light at the tunnel: “Things are going


to get better – they have to. There’s certainly a feeling that a lot of the markets are going to pick up again”, he said. Mr Simon also highlighted how sustainability is becoming


more important – the demand for sustainable goods has increased, especially in high-income countries, like the UK, the USA, Canada, Germany and Australia, but it’s also a growing trend in emerging countries.


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