Top Tips For Retailers: Attract and Retain Your Talent

The retail industry employs 15 million people and hires millions more to manage high turnover and seasonal demands. Known for its dynamic pace and diverse workforce, the retail sector is currently facing a pivotal moment — and Human Resources plays a critical role in addressing effective onboarding, training, and employee engagement.

To help retailers navigate these challenges, we asked two thought leaders in the space from the National Retail Federation and The Warehouse Group to share their knowledge and expertise during Retail Day of Phenom Industry Week.

Read on for the highlights, or watch the full day right here.

Transforming Retail HR with the NRF

The National Retail Federation (NRF) is a powerful advocate for the retail industry, championing policies and ideas that help retail companies thrive. As the largest retail trade association, they play a crucial role in fostering innovation and shaping the workforce of tomorrow.

Adam Lukoskie SVP, National Retail Federation (NRF) and Executive Director, NRF Foundation, emphasized the importance of moving HR leaders beyond reactive measures and toward action. Through various initiatives, the NRF facilitates Talent Acquisition (TA) and Talent Management (TM) groups, as well as university recruiter groups that meet twice a year to discuss current challenges and trends. They share best practices to elevate the industry, evaluate what’s working and what isn’t, and develop strategic plans for the future.

Addressing Challenges and Opportunities in Retail

According to Lukoskie, there are many challenges and opportunities in the industry within talent acquisition:

Challenges:

• Investing in technology to stay competitive

• Optimizing the application experience

• Using AI and automation to free up recruiters

• Creating a strong employer brand to boost customer and candidate loyalty

• Upskilling your current teams

Opportunities:

• Shift from reaction to proactive talent acquisition

• Influence business decisions before they’re finalized

• Align talent strategy with business expansion plans

Investing in the right technology to optimize the application experience, making it short and efficient with assessments, is crucial. The balance between automation and AI can free up recruiters to act as relationship managers, enhancing the candidate experience. AI scheduling technology can streamline the process, reducing the need for applicants to interact with recruiters initially, while creating strong employer brand loyalty through upskilling current teams.

Key Takeaways

1. TA leaders should get ahead of problems by using data to diagnose what's happening. That way, they can find the right solutions

2. Making the applicant experience similar to a customer experience is crucial because candidates are consumers too! They want to interact with a potential employer in the same way they’re looking at something they want to buy.

3. Lead with your expert market knowledge

4. Plan solutions around the resources at your disposal

How The Warehouse Group Sells Their Brand To Top Talent

With 180 retail stores, online stores, and distribution centers across New Zealand, The Warehouse Group constantly strives to improve both their customer and employee experience. Over the past 12 months, the company has seen an increase in job applications from 99,000 to 177,000, necessitating a change in recruitment strategy from focusing on candidate attraction at the beginning of the year to helping managers tackle the high volume of applications.

However, this doesn’t mean the candidate experience should be abandoned. Kim Nicholas, General Manager - Talent Acquisition & Payroll at The Warehouse Group, shared that though managers can be more picky in who they hire, the candidate experience piece must always be top of mind. This means getting back to candidates in a timely manner, giving feedback in the right way, using technology to find the right talent in the massive pool of candidates, and using CV screening more productively and accurately.

There’s a naturally high turnover rate in the retail industry, so when it comes to retention, Nicholas stressed the effectiveness in bite-sized trainings for hiring managers. After implementing these trainings, the company reported a:

• 3% reduction in overall turnover

• 50% reduction in turnover within the first 12 months.

Addressing Retail Recruitment and Retention With Tech

So, what are the most effective strategies and tech to address retail recruitment and retention challenges? According to Nicholas:

1. A good career site: “Having a good career site is what matters,” said Nicholas. This means having up-to-date content, brand ambassadors to share their employee journeys, and education on who you are as a company.

2. Campaigning to previous employees: Sending out quick, personalized, automated messages to former employees proved successful within just a few days, said Nicholas. For example, they moved 15 out of approximately 50 people to job offers just from one campaign outreach.

The Future of Retail in HR

When Nicholas looks to the future of retail in HR, she sees AI and automation technology at the forefront, and says that if you’re not using it, you’re going to fall behind. They’ve had great success using social media campaigns to garner 1.3 million impressions, a 47% response rate within 48 hours, and 55% received offers within a few days. Their screening tool for high-volume hiring has greatly supported managers with high volumes of applications by automatically matching them by fit and skills for the right roles.

Her final thought? Productivity is a return on investment!

Using AI & Automation to Overcome Hiring & Retention Challenges in Retail

AI and automation can be game-changers when it comes to solving your company’s biggest hiring and retention challenges, especially in the retail space.

High-volume hiring technology, when used correctly, can be your biggest advantage to overcome hiring and retention challenges within the retail industry. With an intelligent chatbot, for example, you can create a seamless experience from the time a candidate expressed interest, to screening, to assessments. The right chatbot can automatically match candidates to jobs based on location, experience, title, and skills. It can also create questions that will screen and find candidates who are the best fit for the position – and expedites those candidates to get in front of managers.

With role-specific assessments through the chatbot, companies can ask questions that filter for character traits, personality, skills, behaviors, thought-processes, etc. to make sure a candidate fits the position. This also allows candidates to express their thoughts and decision-making skills more than they can through a resume.

Finally, the chatbot can automatically schedule interviews and sync those to the hiring manager’s schedule without any human interaction, only sending candidates who are the most qualified to the hiring manager’s calendar.

On the hiring manager’s side, they can set their availability ahead of time and candidates who are qualified for the job (from the previous screening and scheduling tools) start showing up in their portal automatically. They can review candidate profiles and see their resume, skills, current jobs, etc. They can also evaluate how the interview went, score it based on company criteria, submit the eval, and decide whether or not to move forward.

Finally, a mobile experience is crucial for hiring high volumes of applicants. A mobile app can welcome an employee on their first day and direct them to the right tools/portals they’ll need to be successful. They can access the company’s talent marketplace directly from their phone for team connection, learning and development opportunities, onboarding trainings that have already been assigned, safety trainings, and more.

Learn more about Phenom for Retail here or book a personalized demo of Phenom High-Volume Hiring.