How to onboard and train a new retail employee for your store

Preboarding 

Be careful on how you treat your new coworkers, to assume that they don’t know anything is a mistake. That can make them feel disrespected. A suggestion would be to start with a Q&A session to estimate their knowledge of the industry. After the session you can start the process with implanting the right attitude and train their selling skills. Usually there’s a certain amount of time between the signing and when the employee starts working at your company. During this period of time you should maintain contact to create a relation with the new recruit. For a start you could simply just send a congratulations message, which has proven to be very effective. You could also tell your new recruit that his/hers new coworkers are looking forward to involving him/her in the team.  

Another tip is to prepare the new employee for their new job. You can facilitate the learning curve by piecing together a learning-series with onboarding topics that the new recruit can prepare with before the first day and/or the first week at your store. Here is a checklist on a few key topics about what the new employee could prepare with. Another example is E-learning and typical classroom training that has proven to still be very effective. With that said, you shouldn't restrict yourself to this method only. When working in a store mobile learning could be the perfect option if they wish to learn while at the job.

Another option is game-based training, that’s getting more popular in retail. This method turns the learning process into a game. As with many educational games you must obtain the knowledge to be successful in the game. For example the game asks them a question and in order for them to answer the question they need to open a door with the right answer. Game-based training tends to be more appealing for the new employees to continue to learn all the information that’s needed for the new job.

The thing is that no training method is more supreme than the other. A tip for the retail boss is that you should incorporate different types of training methods when training a new recruit. This way it’ll be more effective for the new employee to learn. 

When the first day finally comes, make sure that the new employee feels welcome. Give them a personal welcome to make them feel like they are in the exact right place. For most of the time companies stop right after this step. But you can go a little bit further to be extra sure that the employee feels “at home”. Be sure that the employee feels like their opinion matters and that when working with humans mistakes are unavoidable. Remember to also make sure that the employee knows that help is never far away. This will make them feel safe and therefore make them enjoy the workplace much more. As a matter of fact about 30% of new coworkers leave the company within the year. That’s why it’s so important that you as a manager can offer a great, safe and interesting workplace that your coworkers want to stay at.

During their first weeks you can focus on teaching them about your assortment of products and services and where they fit in. When a few months have passed you can keep up with regular check ups on the employees knowledge for example. This can be done via mobile learning as well. One of the most common mistakes retailers make is to leave out the follow ups with the new recruits.

By doing follow ups you make sure that the employees are evolving and learning. This way you’ll also know if the training was successful or not. As you may have noticed it’s important to keep at it. Don’t just stop the teaching and supporting after two weeks in, keep it up. Your employees play an important role for your store’s success. Therefore it’s important that you pay attention and make sure that they feel good at work and have the knowledge that’s needed to give the customers a great experience. 

Tips and tricks

A great tip is to use microlearning. This method is great to be able to give a lot of information in a few minutes and then retain the information by making them watch short clips with interesting material. You save a lot of time when using this method instead of using another employee to train the new recruit. This way you can keep up the training for several weeks and develop their knowledge in whichever category you want. 

When teaching your new employee, another tip is to use role-playing and potential scenarios that can come up when working in a store. This approach is an effective way to engage your new coworker and make the whole experience more fun. This way they’ll also learn more about the selling process, how to handle customers and how to give them a great customer experience.

Our third tip is to present the Managing Director and the company in a personal video. This video can be shown in order to learn and then follow up with a few questions afterwards to make the information stick. It’s both effective and personal.

Our last tip is to infuse some fun facts about the company and the coworkers. For example “Did you know that Trisha is obsessed with donuts” or “Did you know that the company started in a garage and has grown to become the store it is today” etc. 

Read more about: How to be a boss at recruiting to your store