How we transformed our showrooms

Attrition in our Care Crew was relentless. Team members came and went so quickly that building any consistency, let alone warmth, felt impossible. Customers noticed. The showroom felt transactional. And no amount of process fixing seemed to move the needle.

Then we made one structural change: we deliberately and significantly increased the proportion of female staff in our Care Crew.

Female representation went from below 30% to 52%. Attrition among female staff? 12% against a male average of 23%. The showrooms felt different. Customers felt it. And the numbers confirmed it.

The problem we couldn't solve with process alone

Care Crew is the team responsible for the cleanliness, upkeep, and ambient experience of our showrooms. They are not in the background. They are the first impression. The person who greets you, offers you a seat, keeps the lounge immaculate, and makes the environment feel welcoming. They are, in every meaningful sense, brand ambassadors.

Yet this team was caught in a cycle of high attrition. Conventional thinking attributed this to the nature of the job: repetitive, physically demanding, low status. We disagreed with that framing. The job wasn't the problem. How we were approaching staffing might be.

The team was overwhelmingly male. This is a reflection of default hiring patterns, not deliberate design. We started asking a different question: not 'how do we retain the team we have' but 'are we even hiring the right mix of people?'

The decision for more representation

The hypothesis was simple. Increasing female representation would bring stability, empathy, and a different kind of ownership to the role. And the hospitality and caregiving sectors had long demonstrated that diverse, gender-balanced teams tend to outperform on customer experience metrics.

We set a clear target and pursued it actively, working through hiring channels and community networks to bring more women into Care Crew roles. The shift didn't happen overnight, but it was intentional at every stage.

What the data showed

The impact on attrition was the first and most immediate signal. Female staff attrition settled at 12%, almost half the male staff average of 23%. In an industry and role-type where turnover is a persistent challenge, this was a meaningful, measurable difference.

Performance ratings followed closely. Average male rating: 3.46. Average female rating: 3.42. Effectively at parity: a result that directly countered any assumption that the transition would compromise quality.

And then came the leaderboard. When we introduced our app-based task management system, where performance is tracked, quality is scored, and the best performers are recognised. Female staff started at just 20% representation in the Top 10. Today, they account for 50%.

What we got wrong and fixed

We want to be honest about the challenges, because they matter as much as the wins.

• Tech adoption took longer: Female staff, particularly those newer to smartphone-based workflows, needed more time to get comfortable with the AI-powered task management tools. We underestimated this curve initially and had to invest more in hand-holding and training support.
• The ratings gap has a real source: The small difference between male and female performance ratings isn't random; it traces directly to a cohort of older female team members who are less hands-on with tech. Rather than overlooking this, we identified it clearly and are running targeted upskilling programs specifically for this group.
• Cultural change is slower than policy change: Renaming the team, updating uniforms, building new workflows; all of that moved quickly. Changing how colleagues and managers perceive and treat Care Crew members required sustained effort, consistent messaging, and leadership modelling.

The leaderboard representation went from 20% to 50%. That didn't happen by accident and it happened because we kept investing in the people, not just the process.

Why Representation (not just recruitment) made the difference

Hiring more women was the visible action. But what made it sustainable was the ecosystem we built around it.

Care Crew was renamed. The identity of the role was elevated, from a support function to a brand-defining one. A structured training programme was introduced, including sessions with hospitality industry professionals who taught the team how to interact with customers, serve beverages with grace, and create a genuinely welcoming environment.

Incentives were linked to performance through a live app-based system. Leaderboards recognised excellence publicly. Appraisals became meaningful. The role had dignity, growth, and accountability, and that environment is what female staff, in particular, responded to with lower attrition and strong engagement.

The showrooms became more inclusive. Customers felt more comfortable. The team felt more valued. These things are connected.

So, what next?

This was a pilot. It worked. Now we scale.

• Replicating the representation model across Shine Squad and Safety Brigade
• Pushing for gender diversity at operations leadership levels; several of our operations managers are already women, and we are actively building on this
• Partnering with NGOs, staffing agencies, and community organisations to widen our female talent pipeline
• Creating meaningful opportunities for differently-abled individuals across all three ground teams

If you work with an NGO or agency focused on women's employment or differently-abled inclusion, and believe in what we're trying to build, and we want to hear from you. Reach out. Let's build something together.

A Simple Summary

We changed who we hired. Attrition halved. Performance held. The showroom felt human again. Representation is not a social initiative. It is an operational advantage.