The right people skills

Finding committed and enthusiastic shop floor staff is a constant challenge for retailers. Those staff who have these qualities make all the difference to the customer experience and, indeed, the takings. Those who don’t can create countless dissatisfied customers.

High turnover in the retail sector and the fact that such roles will never be particularly lucrative doesn’t help, but part of the problem is that those who are doing the recruiting are fishing from the wrong ponds. All too often, a tick-box mentality comes into play when seeking out the next store employee. Far too much emphasis is placed on having previous retail experience. Yet, as many store managers have learnt, merely having worked in the sector before does not necessarily guarantee that they will be an asset to the team.

Patrick Egan, director at business development organisation Endaba, says that the problem is endemic. “It’s very common and it’s a very short-term approach that doesn’t do the company any favours. A person walking into a store is buying into that brand and if it’s out of alignment with the person working there, it will drive customers away. That’s what retailers are struggling to understand,” he says.

Retail Performance Specialists managing director Dennis Reid believes employers prioritise retail experience because of a lack of sufficient in-house training. “Part of the problem is that employers like to take on people with retail experience because they don’t have training induction programmes that are any good,” he says. Thus, managers assume that the candidate who has at least a basic grounding in the sector will make their lives easier. They are usually wrong. “Another reason why employers often take on people purely because they have retail experience is because of the systems knowledge, but even then that model may not work in another retailer,” adds Reid.

In reality, teaching new staff technical retail skills should be the least of managers’ worries. Gap UK HR director Sandra Hailstone explains: “We look for people who are comfortable with other people and you can’t teach those skills. You can teach the technical skills, such as the till and the overall product information. That’s not the difficult bit. Our attitude is that we’re looking for applicants’
overall approach and that’s why Gap is renowned for its customer service.”

Gap’s approach is to ask people to work on the shopfloor before they think about offering them a job. “We get them to spend a couple of hours in the store, in an area that they would want to work in, so that way it’s not all based on what somebody says – it’s how they deliver it,” says Hailstone. “You can tell if people are nervous and that’s fine, but if retail really isn’t for them, it stands out.”

FINDING THE RIGHT PEOPLE
Kaisen Consulting teaches managers how to run motivational interviews, which assess whether someone is right for the job and the company. “Motivation is very important, because retail is the kind of environment where there’s always more work to be done,” says client director Frankie Fox. “Managers need to look for some of the features that they know will be important to their colleagues and customers.” She insists that spotting potential is not difficult. It’s simply a case of focusing less on the practicalities of what that person has done before, to understanding that person, what they want from a role and what they enjoy.

Sainsbury’s has employed an occupational psychologist to incorporate situational judgement tests into its online recruitment systems. Retail resourcing and development manager Lee Rhoden explains that online applicants will be asked questions that test their ability to make the right decision during a customer-facing dilemma.“It’s about far more than having simply worked in a store before. For us, it’s about their understanding of the pressures on the shopfloor,” he says. Store managers are also given in-depth training on what to look for when shortlisted candidates come into the store for interview.

One retailer renowned for high levels of customer service is the John Lewis Partnership. Mark Murauskas, personnel manager at the John Lewis store in Oxford Street, says that this positive reputation has everything to do with the effort that they put in to finding the right kind of person in the first place. They sift through CVs of applicants, looking for something that suggests that the person has good communication skills – be it voluntary work, a Duke of Edinburgh award, or a job that involves high levels of communication. They then invite a shortlist to an assessment centre for a morning of retail and non-retail related exercises, as well as group work.

“We get an awful lot of information from these sessions,” says Murauskas. “If people have had a lot of interview experience they can know how to play it, but over the course of four or five hours you see more of their personality.”

Not all retailers will have access to an assessment centre, but Fox recommends that store managers ask candidates to do some kind of relevant activity before offering them a job. “It’s all very well saying that you’re good at handling difficult people in an interview, but that person might be slightly deluded about what they can do,” she says. One option is to role play a conversation with a customer so that the candidate’s communication skills and ability to handle challenging situations can be assessed. Some retailers decide to run practical exercises, she adds. In one case, potential recruits were asked to help pack customers’ bags at a checkout to see how they engaged with them.

Reid says retailers often fail to analyse what they want the customer experience to be. The best way to do this is to ask their customers what they want from a store and then recruit accordingly. He also advises retailers to look at the “best-in-class” and analyse what exactly it is that their best shopfloor staff do. From this research, document the findings and turn it into a profile that suits your brand. Some retailers may require operationally focused staff, while others may need sales-driven ones. “Employers need to hire people for two things: their customer ethic and their ability to play your game and meet your standards. Ultimately, if you take on the wrong people who can’t deliver, your business is in jeopardy. It always comes back to the culture of the business,” adds Reid.

Egan agrees. He stresses that the responsibility does not lie solely with store managers. This culture needs to pervade from the board through to shopfloor level. “You need to define what your brand stands for, how your values are transmitted and how every single manager throughout the business recruits to fit in with that,” he says. “You’ve got to find people who are able to articulate your brand. That’s the crucial difference between a retailer who ultimately has a reputation for good customer service on the shopfloor and one who hasn’t.”

It’s not only customer service that benefits, either. Murauskas says that John Lewis’ Oxford Street store has a staff turnover of only 16 per cent – largely because the retailer puts more groundwork into finding people who genuinely want to work there and enjoy dealing with customers.

Retailers may assume that recruiting someone who has manned a till before is a safe option. It isn’t. A communicative and dynamic employee who can lift sales to keep those tills ringing is more important than knowing how those tills work on their first day.