By 2022, more than 62,000 Ikea employees were departing a year for various reasons, equating to about a third of its workforce, and the pandemic-era labor shortage made it difficult to replenish its ranks.

Ikea’s workers were quitting in droves in the U.S. In the UK and Ireland, half of all new hires were leaving before their first anniversary. Globally, each departure cost Ikea $5,000 or more to replace.

To stem the bleeding, the Swedish furniture behemoth needed to figure out what was making its store workers so unhappy — and fix it fast. By 2022, more than 62,000 employees were departing a year for various reasons, equating to about a third of its workforce, and the pandemic-era labor shortage made it difficult to replenish its ranks.

Workers “suddenly became very scarce,” said Jon Abrahamsson Ring, chief executive officer of Inter Ikea Group — the umbrella entity that oversees Ikea’s store franchising, product design and supply chain — in a recent interview in New York. Ikea focused on things that many businesses talk about doing but struggle to actually implement: Boosting pay, increasing flexibility for frontline employees and using emerging technologies to make things easier on workers and their customers.

The results were stark: Voluntary turnover in the U.S. dropped to about a quarter of employees by the end of 2023, from a third a year earlier. Globally, across the retailer’s more than 600 stores and warehouses, the quit rate fell to 17.5% in April from 22.4% in August 2022. While voluntary attrition has fallen in many white-collar occupations as hiring has slowed, employment in the retail sector has continued to trend up in recent months, making Ikea’s progress notable.

Retail jobs are often marked by low pay, erratic schedules and irate customers, which helps explain why the quit rate for retail workers is more than 70% higher than in other U.S. industries, according to a 2022 report by McKinsey & Co. Half of them are considering leaving their job, McKinsey found, and of those, half want to ditch retail entirely. The situation isn’t better in other parts of the world: UK retailers typically need to replace one out of every two workers each year.

“Attracting, developing, and retaining frontline talent must become a top agenda item for retail CEOs,” the McKinsey report said, noting the challenge has only grown amid inflation and an environment where labor unions are increasingly flexing their muscles.

Privately held Ikea, whose 473 stores in 63 markets employ nearly 200,000 people, historically lost fewer workers than its industry peers, thanks in part to a Nordic corporate culture that’s known for being warmer and fuzzier than, say, U.S. discount giants Dollar General Corp. or Walmart Inc. But managing a sprawling, global workforce in an era where work-life balance has become mandatory for many people isn’t easy, and signs emerged that it wasn’t all Swedish meatballs and bliss amid Ikea’s endless aisles of Billy bookcases and Stockholm rugs.

In 2018, a coalition of unions accused local Ikea managers of quashing organizing efforts at stores in the U.S., Ireland and Portugal. They filed a joint complaint with a branch of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development alleging that senior leadership “ignored red flags” about claims that workers’ rights were being trampled. “I never thought that Ikea would allow supervisors to intimidate and interrogate us,” Nancy Goetz, a worker in Ikea’s Stoughton, Mass., store, said at the time. “I expected more from Ikea.”

A wave of worker protests ensued. In Poland, employees were peeved that a wage hike was pegged below the rate of inflation. In South Korea, unionized workers said they received subpar treatment compared with their peers in other countries. In the U.S., the company had to apologize for serving fried chicken, collard greens and watermelon at a Juneteenth event for Atlanta employees. (One former Ikea worker went viral by posting videos as “Angry Retail Guy” that mocked clueless managers and shoppers alike.)

After several years of talks between the union coalition and Ikea, the company last year agreed in principle to let workers organize and allow store access to union representatives. Notably, though, the parties couldn’t come to terms on allowing labor reps to enter U.S. stores.

“IKEA respects the rights of co-workers to join, form or not to join a union of their choice without fear of reprisal, interference, intimidation or harassment,” a spokesperson said. “The company is committed to maintaining an environment of mutual respect and ensuring all co-workers’ rights are protected irrespective of their preference and choice concerning unionization.”

While the talks dragged out, unhappy Ikea workers started looking elsewhere. Then, the pandemic hit, and labor shortages made finding and holding onto people even more challenging. “There was a shortage of staff for entry-level jobs,” said Ring.

Ingka Group, the Netherlands-based franchisee that operates and staffs Ikea stores in 31 countries that employ more than 165,000 people, embarked on a campaign to lower turnover, targeting the biggest pain points in each market. The approach improved pay and benefits, scheduling, new-hire orientation and in some places included an AI-powered tool that alerts managers when a worker might be in danger of quitting. Even employees’ uniforms were refashioned.

“Many times people come into world of retail thinking that this is a role I will take on until I find something better,” said Neena Potenza, who oversees HR in the U.S. for Ingka. “But at Ikea, we want people to grow and develop.”

In the U.S., where Ingka employs more than 17,000 people, one of the most impactful fixes was moving its shift scheduling tool online.

Previously, inflexible schedules didn’t allow for life’s daily hiccups— a sick kid, a flat tire. Unpredictable shifts can then have a ripple effect on workers’ well-being, leading to higher workforce turnover and economic hardship due to income fluctuations, according to studies by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and the Brookings Institution.

“There is this notion that workers’ time is not valued,” said Kristen Harknett, a professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, who has researched unstable work schedules.

In collaboration with a group called the Shift Project, Ikea U.S. began testing the ability for workers in a few stores to swap shifts online, without a manager’s approval, replacing paper forms that had to be signed by both workers and their respective managers, which made swapping “particularly tedious,” Shift Project researchers found. Workers in the pilot program can also adjust their hours of availability more easily, and request to not be scheduled in certain blocks of time.