Retail advice for 2015

With a 4.2% increase in retail sales in April, 2015 has been a banner year for the U.K. retail industry. There’s no doubt that technology, not just that used on the shop floor, but behind the scenes also, is playing a big part in driving this number. Increasingly, a strong social media presence and effective initial training is key to ensuring you hire the best employees. Within this blog, we’ll take a look at five main trends within the HR industry and workforce management for 2015. Understanding these five points will be critical for both the customer journey, and the workforce hiring and management process.

The Flood of Tech

‘Point of Sale’ (POS) technology is changing the face of retail, in fact that change has already started. Yes it’s true, some stores are happy using the old approach- less technology, more smiles. But increasingly technology is competing with, or replacing, employees. Applications like Vend gives retailers the option of working both online and offline and “connects all the latest hardware” like barcode scanners, receipt printers and cash drawers. Microsoft have also recently lauched Embedded. “The retail industry is dealing with major shifts in consumer shopping behaviours, largely driven by new technologies” said Brendan O’Meara, the Management Director for WW Retail at Microsoft. “Our goal is to help retailers streamline operations and increase efficiency.” In terms of front of house, Beacons have been making a splash of late within retail. These applications alert customers to potential key buys within your store, turning the shopping experience into something that closely resembles Supermarket Sweep. According to an article in 9to5mac as a result of beacons being utilised within stores, there has been a 20% increase in the number of users interacting with products. That’s something to be aware of.

Employer Branding

It’s simple, having a strong brand voice is seriously important if you are to attract strong employees. Start with social media and use the online space to create a group of potential candidates around a set of interests that you might look for in your employees. Sodexo are the masters of employer branding with huge social media followings from which they are able to source candidates quickly when necessary. The great advantage of investing in this employer branding is that you have a pool of talent that is already engaged with your company and its mission even before they start to work for you. Carefully vetting candidates in this way can save many problems with employee retention down the line. Just reading some of their tweets, or updates, will give you an overview of the candidate and move you closer to a person-to-person meet. Once you’ve hired your staff, then you can initiate company training to ensure employees are aware of your brand and what it stands for.

Resource Allocation

Let’s be real, there are a lot of choices for hiring and HR people, and sometimes you can find the whole process somewhat dizzying. This is why having a proper plan in place will help to speed up the process. Like any manager, you have a limited amount of resources, so the real question is how many frontline troops do you want versus automation? Do you want to go online or do you want someone sitting there ensuring the transaction goes through? Be strategic with your money and chances are you will be able to increase the return on investment. There is a recent move towards bricks and mortar outlets for some of the major online retailers. They have clearly seen the value of having a downtown presence for their brands of having well-trained employees interacting with the public and representing the brand to the public. Apple stores are, of course, the perfect example of stores as brand ambassadors with their sleek finish reinforcing the luxury element of the product. Other retailers however, may wish to allocate resources the other way and take some staff out of the frontline and use tech to be the point of sale instead.

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Mobile Hiring

35 million people have a mobile phone in the U.K. One in six U.K. adults look at their phone more than 50 times a day, I’m one of them! On average a person sends roughly 55 instant messages a day and 30% of U.K. adults look at their phone five minutes after waking, according to research by Deloitte. With more people connected, increasingly companies are looking at mobile as a recruiting tool. In a world where SnapChat is using its own app to pinch employees from other companies , it would be worthwhile to see how mobile works for your own recruiting process. 83% of job seekers currently use smartphones to search for job openings and 45% of active candidates have applied for a job on a mobile device. With this in mind perhaps you can optimise your job postings for mobile and also consider posting where candidates are likely to ‘live’ on their mobiles, eg, on social sites.

On Demand Hiring

Finally, and controversially, employers are increasingly moving to hire ‘on demand’ and on zero hour contracts, in order to improve efficiency and be more flexible. Using this approach, responsibly, can set you apart from your competitors and show you care for your workforce, without hurting your bottom line. However, the storm of controversy surrounding employers using zero-hours contracts in recent times suggests that a different model of employment contract that values the employee more will become the norm. With sufficient investment in hiring processes and training modules for new employees companies should be able to improve productivity sufficiently to avoid the need for this type of employee.

Need help managing your workforce through registration and training? Why not contact us and let us walk you through a solution for your business.

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