With fewer people looking to retail as a career and a rapidly shifting customer base, retailers are seeking better training methods to save the day.
Federated Department Stores Inc. has taken a page from a U.S. Air Force manual for part of its manager training program by offering a retail training simulator, akin to a flight simulator, where senior managers work in teams to run mock business units in a virtual environment.
But using this type of advanced technology makes Federated an anomaly in a retail training world that relies on older technology, and outdated techniques. Still, training is evolving as retailers respond to changes at the store level while also striving to better equip employees on how to serve a shifting customer base.
Most retail training takes 12 to 18 hours a year, the bulk of it done in a one- or two-day orientation program, according to Daniel Butler, vice president of retail operations at the Washington-based trade group National Retail Federation. CD-ROM and DVD/video are the most prevalent ways associates prepare for their jobs.
Expert opinions vary whether this is enough, but most agree that before any training begins, retailers must find the right employee with the right attitude.
Candace Corlett, a principal partner at WSL Strategic Retail, a New York-based consultancy, said retailers have “misguided priorities” when it comes to training. It’s not that they don’t have the time or money, she said, it’s that training is not high up on their list.
“One of the problems — and opportunities — is a focus on [using] technology for doing the training, as opposed to the training itself,” said Corlett.
She also said training sends an important message to the employees, “that you are an asset that we invest in. We invest in you because you are our first and last connection with our customer,” Corlett said.
For retailers, the challenge is finding the right fit for the position. It’s also getting harder to find employees who consider retail a career.
“Generally, people look less to retail as a career, though I hope that that is beginning to change. Retailers have not done a great job of allowing the image of what a career in retail means…from floor associates to a store manager or a buyer,” explained Kathy Mance, vice president of the National Retail Federation Foundation. “Frankly, I think too many people don’t think of retail as corporations, they only think of them as the stores.”
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Corlett said apparel retailers “tend to hire more people who don’t care.” They may want to take a page out of Kip Tindell’s book. Tindell, president and chief executive officer of The Container Store, said during a WWD/DNR CEO Summit two years ago that the first step is to hire creative employees, people with high levels of enthusiasm. “We are absolute wild-eyed fanatics when it comes to only hiring great people,” Tindell had said, adding that the company invests 235 hours of formal training in every first-year employee.
“The key is preparing people to use their intuition and not just training them to act,” Tindell said.
Apparel retail training begins with an orientation of the company’s culture along with related point-of-sale training and an introduction to sexual harassment and security policies, said NRF’s Butler, who previously worked in department stores for 26 years.
From there, new hires can expect additional training within their specific department or specialty.
“I really think that the initial training that most retailers do is very much efficient to meet the demands of someone on the floor,” Butler said. “You’re not just trying to get that person on the floor to learn the register and do markdowns, you’re looking to educate this person about the culture and what they need to better serve the customer.”
Federated, for example, provides training mostly via CD-ROM, with follow-up seminars, for its sales associates, which Sherry Hollock, divisional vice president of organization development at the Cincinnati-based company, admits is not exactly revolutionary these days, but is cost-effective.
“It’s not cutting edge, but it’s been there for a while. Taking advantage of technology is where we’re able to get a lot more return on investment of training dollars,” Hollock said. “We’re able to get new information out to big masses of people much more quickly so we’re more timely, and it actually helps us to cover more content in less time.”
The company implemented computer-based training in 1993.
New hires at Gottschalks Inc., a Fresno, Calif.-based regional department store chain, get a two-day training session that includes workshops where they learn to use the register and related customer-service programs, said director of training Joice Bethke. From there, the employee is assigned a “buddy” on the sales floor who helps the trainee go over everything learned during the orientation.
Many retailers are providing programs similar to Gottschalks’ “buddy” system. Federated said its employees act as mentors for new associates, which relieves new hires’ stresses over constantly asking questions of managers.
As Jim Famalette, president of Gottschalks, put it, “It takes away a little bit of the ‘Big Brother is watching’ kind of thing.”
Lately, Gottschalks has taken training a step further. The company found that its Hispanic customers make up an important demographic — as much as 33 percent of customers in some markets — and realized these customers want more customized service. They often shop as a family and, for them, the most important interaction with employees is how they are treated at the point of sale, Famalette said.
“We needed to make sure our employees were more aware of this specific need if we were going to improve our presence with our customers,” he said.
So Bethke instructed store management teams to identify their needs in specific stores. “Sometimes it was language barriers. If it was, we actually gave Spanish phrases that worked,” she said. The phrases helped direct customers to the restroom or explained the refund process.
For management level and higher, retailers spend more time and energy on training.
In the case of Federated, the company is in the process of expanding its distance-learning training. “I can be here in Cincinnati and have 20 students all over the place,” said Hollock. Trainees can view a Powerpoint presentation, interact with other students and ask questions.
Federated’s computerized business simulation, à la flight simulation, seats three or four people around a computer as they play the role of a management team, Hollock explained. The simulator may not replicate changing weather patterns, but in the “cockpit,” managers make management and merchandising decisions and receive periodic real-time reports on their progress.
“A lot of the learning that comes out of this is that people start to see the impact of the decisions they make, not just on the people but on the group. It’s a very fun way to learn complex concepts,” said Hollock.
Another aspect of manager and executive-level training are corporate universities. The Cincinnati-based Federated Leadership Institute has been formally training Federated’s top 1,000 senior executives since 1999, according to Hollock.
But for most store associates, customer-service techniques are learned by trial and error, underscoring the need for making more strategic hires. This allows the training to start at the interviewing stage where it is easier to find an inspired potential employee.
“The people out there in the trenches, face-to-face with the customer, they’re the ones who are really making us. You have to have that housekeeper who is just as excited at being here as that manager,” said Jeff Hargett, director of training at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park in New York, where employees receive about 250 hours of training in their first year.
Employees truly thrive and contribute, Hargett has found, when they feel they’re a part of something bigger while also being given decision-making responsibilities, a skill that can be improved through training.
“I don’t care if you use videos or send a trainer around the world, the training interaction isn’t nearly as important as inspiring [employees’] spirit,” Corlett said.
Hire Your Customers!
And Other Tips for Creating A Better Workforce
- While PowerPoint presentations, CD-ROMs and virtual, online training sessions have been effective for many retailers, technology-based methods should not entirely replace one-on-one or in-person training procedures, said Kip Tindell, ceo of The Container Store.
- At the very least, train sales associates on simple questions that customers are most likely to ask, said Candace Corlett of WSL Strategic Retail. They include: Does this item run large or small? Is this on sale? How much is this? Can I get this from another store?
- Make it comfortable for trainees to ask questions, Tindell advised. Job shadowing and peer buddy programs make trainees feel less like they’re being scrupulously watched by management. In return, they are able to work with less stress, several retailers said.
- Meet with employees periodically to see how work is going, said the Ritz-Carlton’s director of training, Jeff Hargett. This is also a chance for both parties to share concerns as well as triumphs.
- Make sure your trainers are as excited to be trainers as your employees should be about getting trained. “No matter what you do, if you recognize that and you say, ‘How am I going to have fun doing this every day?’ you take a whole different approach [to your job],” said Jim Famalette, president of Gottschalks Inc.
- Promote company-wide unity. The Ritz-Carlton, for example, does a daily 10-minute lineup when all 28,000 worldwide employees go over a theme of the week as well as one of the hotel’s basic customer service mantras chosen by the corporate headquarters in Chevy Chase, Md.
- Hire your customers, who are likely passionate already about the business. “It just takes a leadership mind-set that really believes that it’s possible to get great people to work in a retail store. I think most retailers give up on that,” Tindell explained. That said, it’s important to train managers on how to interview potential candidates.
- The benefits of training likely outweigh the costs. “Every time we look into that, we come back with a redetermined conclusion that that last incremental bit that we’ve done was some of the best money we’ve ever spent,” Tindell said. Famalette agreed: “You have to believe. If you don’t believe, don’t do it.”
- Complete cost-benefit analysis on your training methods. “It’s all incumbent upon us as human resources professionals to measure what we do vis-à-vis impact studies and evaluations. What kind of return did I get on this investment? Are people more productive?” said Sherry Hollock, divisional vice president of organization development at Federated Department Stores Inc.
- Consider having full-time in-store trainers who spend 80 to 85 percent of their time training, a method The Container Store uses. The result is a more highly trained and motivated workforce.