It’s not unusual for businesses in the retail sector to struggle with managing human capital. With high turnover and a strong reliance on seasonal and part time staff, it’s essential to develop a set of retail onboarding best practices for a more effective hiring process. Here are four retail onboarding best practices that could have a very positive impact.
#1 Onboard Before the Rush
First of all, don’t wait until the last minute to hire new employees during high traffic times of the year. Having brand new employees on the floor can simply add to the chaos. This places an additional burden on full-time and experienced workers. Schedule the onboarding process and training to take place before the upsurge in shopping activity. This provides time for new hires to familiarize themselves with their job duties. This leads to less resentment among long term employees.
#2 Create a Team Through the Onboarding Process
It isn’t always easy to get a group of workers to accept part time and seasonal workers as true members of the team. Certainly, it’s easier to develop a friendly working relationship with coworkers who are likely to stick around a while. But a work environment where some workers are more valued and included than others is not productive. To overcome this obstacle, make the hiring of each new employee a time of celebration for the whole team. Even if it’s just bringing in snacks for the crew or treating everyone to a quick ice-breaking game with prizes. New hire retail onboarding should be a time for a little extra fun.
#3 Get Rid of the Tedious Paperwork
Another of the retail onboarding best practices is to centralize and streamline the documentation process. An online system enables new hires to complete most of the onboarding documents with little oversight or instruction. Retailers can have a kiosk or workstation set up on-site for completion of digital forms. Or, they may even have an online portal that new hires can access from home or a laptop. This enables employees to show up for training with most of their onboarding checklist complete.
A guided process greatly improves the efficiency of the onboarding process. This process can walk employees through each form, automatically populate repeat fields, and integrate with Payroll and other systems. With a centralized, online system, paperwork cannot get lost. New hires can’t skip forms, and data doesn’t have to be entered by hand into different systems. As a result, HR faces a lower burden in terms of follow up and corrections.
#4 Incorporate E-Verify
Finally, this is perhaps one of the most valuable retail onboarding best practices. A missing or improperly completed I-9 Form can cause problems years after a worker has moved on to other employment. So, with an onboarding system that integrates directly with USCIS E-Verify, compliance is higher, the risk of penalties is lower, and there is no delay in determining if an employee’s identity and work status requires closer inspection.
For more retail onboarding best practices, ask for a free demo of our Efficient Hire solution.