RETAIL insider January Why to consider Retailee development when speaking about RETAIL experience?

Transcription

1 RETAIL insider January 2016 Why to consider Retailee development when speaking about RETAIL experience?

2 New year starts, new challenges, new retail fun, new vision and new Retail Insider In this January 2016 Volume #4, we would like to place the spotlight on Retailees* Development (*our way to name employees in the retail market). During our last Svačina, about Retailees fluctuation, we highlighted the need not to fight against the fluctuation but rather to focus on building your healthy Ecosystem, and one of the key elements of this Ecosystem, is the employee development. edito We explore here with the different possibilities which are offered to implement and achieve a true Retailee development; helping your Retailees have a better day-to-day staff experience and as well shape the future direction of their careers Development planning doesn t have to be elaborate or costly. At its core it s mostly a matter of good management teams taking the person-to-person time to understand their employees recognizing their skills and needs and guiding them to fill in the gaps. If it s done well, the payoff can be substantial in terms of long-term loyalty, if not then Companies pay a high price: the loss of top young talent. Please have a nice reading and the entire PeopleTOretail team wishes you a Fantastic & Happy New Year RETAIL INSIDER - VOLUME 4 training team building by experience Simply about us...

3 training Here are few reasons why training beyond general company orientation has to become - and remain a top priority. So, what does Education (Trainings, Team Building, Coaching, Mentoring ) have to do with Retailees? A lot when it comes to build and retain a loyal customer base who have more choices than ever of where clients can go shopping. Training is not a magical one-time event. It is hard work, and it is a never ending job. For the managers, training can be one of the most important elements of individual and departmental success; yet, it is often the most neglected part of employee on-boarding and retention. Training applies to every day of every employee's life. Some Principles for Turning Ordinary into Develop a training plan with options for customization to match a person's skills, job experience and gaps. Train everyone in customer service standards for both internal and external audiences, the art of sales and service focused on matching the needs of the customer with something you have to offer, and performance expectations to achieve goals. Show your Retailees how to put their training to work in everything they do. Demonstrate customer relationship management techniques, develop capacities for common situations and provide messages to ensure consistent responses. Each person needs to understand his or her individual role in helping the organization achieve its desired outcome every day. Encourage managers to have a "training moment" with their team every day. Develop your own form of daily training practice, a five-minute discussion between managers and their team at the same time each day. (tips: role playing scenarios to be sure your organization's brand promise is delivered in every situation). Support training moments by highlighting shop and individual actions in your Retailee communication book. Be sure every employee understands your brand promise and what their role is in delivering it in every situation, every encounter, and every action. Training ensures the person you've hired knows how to deal with your targets. Coffee drinkers can be a finicky crowd, but baristas are trained to handle each special request as though it were the norm. Customize orientation and ongoing training to ensure that each employee understands the organization from the customer's perspective, regardless of whether that customer is a coffee lover, future colleague or visitor. Instead of providing a "smile" workshop, train your Retailees to see the world through the eyes of your brand target audience. Have key partners complete the same hands-on mystery shopping and training to see what customers experience, how staff interact and how the organization is presented to external audiences. Use their observations to tweak messaging and training to be sure the brand promise is delivered. Extraordinary Training provides professional growth and motivation for your employees. The key is to keep them motivated, trained and retained well after the event. Once orientation is complete, provide a formal classroom training program with customized to your store life. When using an outside trainer, be sure they understand Retail as well as your specific organization, culture and goals. Add skill development sessions to regular staff meetings so employees can practice and discuss real-life scenarios. Implement a mentoring program that pairs new employees with successful, more experienced staff. Celebrate and recognize key training milestones. Reward employees who demonstrate outstanding performance by sending them to external training in an area of particular interest. Be involved in the preparation of classroom training and the selection of an outside vendor, if required. Educate the trainer on key marketing messages, campaigns and materials that should be used and reinforced in training. If you have sales and marketing staff direct reports, engage them in building training and scripting scenarios to share with your team. You don't always have to be the trainer. Develop an internal communication campaign that recognizes employee successes and provides ongoing message reinforcement. Training sets your culture and your organization apart from the competitors. In most markets, you and your competitor across cities offer fairly similar services to your employees and consumers. To be successful, you must face the very real challenge of establishing and differentiating the value and benefits of your services and your organization. A well-trained staff can deliver that differentiation. Training results in happy customers The key: how to understand and exceed their expectations so you truly create the best experience for them. Training is not about books memorization; it's about listening to your customers, using complaints to train on issues resolution and delivering outstanding service in every encounter. Encourage Retailees to resolve issues on the spot when possible. Employees who are empowered and able to take action respond confidently and quickly to a voiced complaint or concern. The complaint diminishes in importance when someone listens, cares about the details and identifies an agreed upon plan of action. Take it a step further by following up with the customer to be sure everything is resolved. Develop vivid descriptions of the typical customer in each of the four key groups. Include what their typical day is like, how and why they enter into your shops, the length of their visit, the barriers they face and the reasons they would choose your competition. Use these lifelike descriptions in training to help your employees understand who they are dealing with and how they can deliver a positive experience. You also can use them to develop marketing messages that are specific to each audience.

4 Employee Training is Worth the Investment Staff training is essential for specific purposes related to your business. Incorporating training that develops employees toward long-term career goals can also promote greater job satisfaction. A more satisfied employee is likely to stay longer and be more productive while on your team. The cost of turnover Our recent survey indicates that 40 per cent of Retailees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year or so. They say the lack of skills training and development as the principal reason for moving on. Consider the cost of turnover. With one fewer worker, your company s productivity slips. Sales decline. Your current staff members are required to work more hours. Morale may suffer. To find a replacement, you spend time screening and interviewing applicants. Once you hire someone, you need to train that person. The cost of staff turnover adds up. Figures vary, but it can cost as much as Kč, depending on the position, to replace a frontline Retailee. That is a heavy price to pay for not training staff. Other benefits of training Despite the initial monetary costs, staff training pays back your investment. Here are just some of the reasons to take on development initiatives: Training helps your business run better. Trained employees will be better equipped to handle customer inquiries, make a sale or use computer systems. Training is a recruiting tool. Today's young workers want more than a paycheque. They are geared toward seeking employment that allows them to learn new skills. You are more likely to attract and keep good employees if you can offer development opportunities. Training promotes job satisfaction. Helping Retailees to develop more soft skill sets will help them contribute to the company. The more engaged and involved they are in working for your success, the better your rewards. Training is a retention tool, instilling loyalty and commitment from good workers. Staff looking for the next challenge will be more likely to stay if you offer ways for them to learn and grow while at your company. Don't give them a reason to move on by letting them stagnate once they've mastered initial tasks. Training adds flexibility and efficiency. You can cross-train employees to be capable in more than one aspect of the business. This will help keep them interested and will be enormously helpful to you when setting schedules or filling in for absences. Cross-training also fosters team spirit, as employees appreciate the challenges faced by coworkers. Training is essential for knowledge transfer. It's very important to share knowledge among your staff. If only one person has special skills, you'll have a tough time recouping their knowledge if they suddenly leave the company. Spread knowledge around it's like diversifying your investments. Training gives seasonal workers a reason to return. Let seasonal employees know there are more ways than one to contribute. Instead of hiring someone new, offer them a chance to learn new skills and benefit from their experience. Learning and upgrading employee skills makes business sense. It starts from day one, and becomes successive as your employees grow. Granted, it may take some time to see a return on your investment, but the longterm gains associated with employee training make a difference. The short -term expense of a training program ensures you keep qualified and productive workers who will help your company succeed. New Retailee Orientation Place priority on actively on-boarding & welcoming your Company New Team Members, to ensure & optimize that she/he rapidly discover, understands and embrace the Company Spirit: history, organization, activities, values This welcoming special moment does not really look/sound like a classic training module, but it s definitively the key first step of in-house education. Training & Educational Programmes an ongoing learning experience. The content may be product oriented, or client telling, or more focused on soft skills. As you can t promote all your Retailees, you can always provide training, both customs-tailored and catalogue programmes, with individual or group sessions. Both TIPS will for sure contribute to a constant improvement of your unique mix of Client, Shopping and Staff Experience Think about these final questions as you prepare your next training plan: Why Educate your people? Skills Development offer Retailees the means for self-development, to blossom in their role and give it direction Where are you investing? Leading business model calls for spending more on employee training than advertising. Retailers can achieve greater market share, consumer loyalty and levels of repeat business by focusing on who is delivering the service and training people to do it in the best way possible. Some Retailers are tracking the results of trained employees and engaged customers in terms of referral volumes, satisfaction scores and employee recruitment and retention. TIPS What matters? In Retail, everything matters from the appearance of the store to the length of time the Retailee has been in the spot to wel come and engage with the client. Train your employees to proactively meet those individual customer needs and provide an outstanding experience to everyone they come in contact with. By being proactive in supporting employee training and development on an ongoing basis, you can help your employees to work to their full potential. Assessing where training will be of greatest value in your organization and implementing it in the long-term will ultimately better the customer experience and improve your bottom line. Remember that employees are people, and behind their actions are core values. They will also be influenced by your core values. If you can communicate your core values and include them in your employee training, you will by developing the ability of your people to make decisions that best complement the company.

5 In order to achieve great & unique Client Experience, retailers will need to adopt a new paradigm. This paradigm views the retail stores as a living and evolving ecosystem. Which means that this ecosystem will operate on new HR instore strategy, build better/different relationships between Retailees Retailers and Clients, and look to use this systems in ways that will improve the performance of the organization. There is today an emerging convergence of HR innovation that supports the move to this new paradigm: we are HR ARCHITECTS we rethink Recruitment & Training

6 team building Is Team Building important for companies to think about? Leaders in many areas of life must tackle this question and find solutions that work best for them. How do managers and coaches take NHL stars from various teams, and mould them into a successful team in 2 weeks to compete for gold medals? How does a stage Director get a cast of stars to work together to put on a performance? How can business managers create high performing teams to compete in today s very competitive business environment! How your team(s) perform will directly influence your results! Take a close look at your business structure. Try and count how many unique teams you have in your business, such as: - Sales teams working to sell your products or services - Teams cooperating to deliver a wide variety of ongoing internal/external projects - Management teams working on systems to streamline your internal processes - Senior managers and boards working together to successfully guide the company into the future - Whole countries and regions working together to make the overall company and its brand successful From the very top to the very bottom, your company has a wide variety of teams, hopefully high functioning, to successfully help your company achieve success. Now take a close look at your HR practices, from hiring, through your internal training, to on the job support, and ongoing expectations and development. How often, and to what degree do you feel team building has been incorporated into your business practices? Some project managers get a dream team of highly skilled, top people in their field, and they have a very short time to deliver the project. To be successful, they will have to work closely together, trust, communicate, problem solve, and collectively work together to bring the project to a successful conclusion. Should the manager expect that a room of highly skilled people know instinctively how to operate as a team, and thus just start to work immediately? Alternatively, would it be better to find an experiential way to ensure everyone understands the goals, their roles, and guidelines of working together? Should you also give them a chance to get to know each other, build trust, and break down those barriers to communication before they get started? Which is more effective and time efficient? When things seem time sensitive, there is no budget, it s logistically difficult, etc we sometimes jump into action before we re ready to do so. History has shown that when a team takes the time to practice as a team first, before being thrown into action, they are much more efficient, effective, and achieve greater results. For example, this can be found in the military (training before deployment), sports (Olympic hockey, basketball, etc. stars come together for their countries), theatre (famous actors come together as a cast to perform live theatre), and even in business (project teams competing to get products to market faster/better than competitors). It s almost always worth making sure your team is working as a team, before moving forward! Some common Barriers to a team s success are: - Each team member not understanding how their individual efforts benefit the overall team goals - Not aligning goals and agendas of diverse, ego driven, self-focused individuals into a common fighting force - No understanding of individual roles and how they team members should support each other - Identifying the strengths and weaknesses within the team, and learning to use them to the team s advantage - Lack of trust and not sharing of information that could prove to be critical - Team members not respecting others on their team can create conflict - And much more Simply put, everyone working together and pulling in the same direction is essential for achieving success! - To facilitate and accelerate positive and constructive communication - To motivate, and improve a team s spirit, confidence and desire to achieve collective success - To promote creativity, develop problem finding and solving, and improve decision making skills - To break down personal barriers so team members get to know each other better, be more respectful and empathetic to each other, and promote a vested interest into their team - People like the feeling of winning! Most people work within a team! So the team s success is their success! - Shared experience and having fun with colleagues creates job enjoyment and commitment to the overall organization and its success. (added bonus of reducing staff turnover) Top 6 Reasons why we do Team building Invest into your people! And they in turn will invest back to your organizations success. Thank-you for reading Part 1. In Part 2 we will explore how you can incorporate successful team building strategies into your business Written by Richard Lee Managing Director of Prague Adventures s.r.o. Working with teams indoors and outdoors for more than 27 years

7 by experience Here are few classic points why employee development is a chronic problem, and why it should not be. Retail is a typical rapidly changing world, where we tend to focus most on the here and now, with many reorganizations trying to do more with less. And, in this environment, managers naturally tend to be most focused on essential day-to-day operations and less interested in longer-term activities perceived as having less certain payback. And the reverse logic is, taking an honest interest in someone builds loyalty Loyal employees are more engaged. Engaged employees are more productive. Companies generally satisfy Retailees needs for on-the-job development, and these opportunities are valued by them (including high-visibility positions and significant increases in responsibility). But they re not getting much in the way of formal development, such as soft skills training, mentoring and coaching things Retailees also value highly. Here is an illustration of Employee Development Content

8 Simply about us We believe that by Thinking and Acting Differently we can challenge the status quo... and reconcile the Employees, the Employers and even the Society with the jobs in the Retail Store Market We are a Human Resource consultancy, based in Prague & Warsaw, who provides specialized HR services to Employers and Employees in the retail store sector.