93% of frontline workers stayed a full year
CVS Health set a six-month retention target of 53% for a group of high-turnover cashier roles, then ran a pilot with Escalate across 50 frontline workers.
Customer story
93%
stayed a full year, against a 53% target
Industry
Retail pharmacy
Pilot size
50 frontline workers
Roles
High-turnover cashier
53%
Was the six-month target CVS set
~20
Separations that did not happen
~$280,000
In avoided turnover cost
What was going wrong
Frontline retail turnover is expensive in a way that compounds. A worker leaves, the role sits unfilled, someone covers it, a replacement is hired and trained, and the same roles turn over again inside the year. Across general retail the fully loaded cost of replacing one frontline worker is around $14,000.
Cashier roles turn over fastest, which is why CVS set a retention target for them rather than for the store as a whole.
What Escalate did
Escalate worked with CVS to find what was actually pushing people out, then built support against those causes rather than against turnover in the abstract. Three things ran together: daily support that removes the barriers to getting to work, support that helps people do the job once they are there, and a white-labeled upskilling program that opened real internal career paths at CVS.
What changed
Of the 50 workers in the pilot, 93% were still there a full year later, against a target of 53% at six months. On Escalate’s estimate that is roughly 20 separations that did not happen and about $280,000 in turnover cost avoided.
The advancement side moved too. 62% of supported workers progressed into a better role or a higher wage.