As a retailer, of course, there are lots of challenges that you face every single day—one of those is finding the right person to help you out with your workloads. While finding and hiring the right retail talent is a tough challenge, still, it isn’t impossible to gain one. Thus, here are some tips on how to hire, train, and retain employees to lend you a hand to not get you costly recruiting and turnover costs.
We’re Hiring!
You can’t eradicate the fact that competing with big-box retailers when it comes to hiring talent for your retail store is really not an easy task. However, to help you deal with this matter, you might want to consider the advice of customer service expert named Anne. M. Obarski, who actually gave these starting points for you:
“Great employees are not born, they are developed in a business atmosphere where training is stressed, individuality is encouraged and personalities are respected. Word travels about the work environment in all sizes of stores. The key to recruiting quality employees is promoting and possessing a positive work environment no matter how large or small you are.”
In line with that, you might really have to develop criteria for the perfect retail employee as an initial step. This shall be in a form of a certain and solid job title and job description.
To do that, take Retail Associate job posting by Taylor Stitch as a reference. As you review its examples, you would surely notice a few things to address in your retail job description which includes the following:
- Daily duties and responsibilities
- Personality traits
- Physical requirements
- Qualifications or experience level
By the time that you have already identified what kind or type of employee you’re looking for, perhaps, it’s already time to work more radical things out.
Usually, to let other people know that you’re hiring, you are posting a signboard in front of your window saying “Hiring” or “We’re Hiring.” But, due to the modernization, that conventional scheme might leave you with applicants that can’t actually comply with your expectations.
Thus, you might want to level it up. Let’s consider that you don’t have enough resources to kick this off—but, costly hiring tactics are actually not necessary. Hence, here are some cost-efficient, effective ways to advertise your job opening:
- Maximizing social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram
- Consult your family, friends, and professional networks for referrals
- Do “poaching.” Meaning, you can go to other retail stores and mention the opportunity to the sales rep that you think is fit for the position.
We’re Retaining!
After all your efforts and perseverance in finding the right person that fits for the position—considering that you went through thorough interviews and deliver training to new employees—it is not just upsetting when they leave, but also costly. When that happened, of course, you have to go start the hiring cycle again from scratch.
Yes, it’s costly. The Small Business Chronicle released a statistic on this that says, “on average it costs $17,000 to replace an employee that is at the median income in the U.S., which was $56,516 according to 2015 data from the U.S. Census.” You might not want to lose good workers—and money.
In addition, here’s a statistic served by Hay Group:
- 26% of retailers said their employee turnover costs have increased
- 74% of retailers said their workers leave for better opportunities, rather than higher salaries
- Retailers averaged 67% turnover for part-time employees
So, the question now is how do you retain retail employees? Well, here are some tips to get you to drive on the right road at with a right tactic:
Generate an Advancement Roadmap – As what the above statistics say, the employees leave for better opportunities—usually not for better salary. So, you might want to consider outlining an advancement plan for your employees to see what future opportunities are waiting for them in your company.
Give your Employees Regular – Performance reviews don’t need to come many times annually or for the purposes of conversing about a raise. It is vital to provide your employees a regular check-in to give feedback and acquire your employee’s sentiments and concerns with consistency.
Build Trust and Transparency – Your employees would probably stick around if you try to make yourself available through an “open-door” policy. Also, you can always convey a sociable manner that would surely give a good impression to them.