Finding, Hiring, and Training Good People

Finding, Hiring, and Training Good People

YOU MIGHT THINK that finding the right location, stocking your store, and pleasing customers are going to be your most daunting challenges when opening a retail store, but think again. The biggest challenge in retailing today is hiring and training qualified people.

No organization is stagnant, and today’s employee turnover is higher than ever. Being the best and selling the most means recruiting and retaining the best. Practices such as carefully screening new hires, thoroughly testing applicants, personally meeting each one, and, of course, ensuring that their services are fairly remunerating, lie at the core of recruiting the best employees. Retaining the best includes treating employees with respect, listening to their suggestions, occasionally weeding out the bad apples, and rewarding good performance.

The commitment to excellence starts with you, but since you can’t be everywhere at once, quality must filter down through your valued deputies. Hiring less than the best reflects poorly not only on your organization, but also on you.

Here are some things to keep in mind that you can tell and demonstrate to your current staff:

• Always be hiring. You always have an opening for someone who is very good. Great people always justify their pay, whether it applies to increasing the average sale, or to running the backroom with greater efficiency and expertise to save money. Also, great people help raise the bar for the entire staff, present and future.

• Never consider your store fully staffed. Even if you feel you are fully staffed, you should always be in the recruiting mode—looking for great people. Remember, in retailing, you always have to expect someone to leave. Even if your staff loves you and loves the work, a number are bound to leave for any number of personal reasons over which you have no control. When that happens, having a spare, fully qualified replacement already on hand is a Godsend.

• Strive for excellence. Your existing staff needs to know you will always hire a great person. If they know you are on a quest for excellence, employees will feel good about themselves for being on your team and yet know that they need to keep producing to stay on the team.

• Use a reward system. Recognize and reward your current staff monthly or as events call for it. Do not wait until the end of the year to tell them they did well. Recognize hard work and solid performance as it happens. Don’t make rewards just an event; make it a mood that permeates the entire premises.

• Remain focused. Don’t go overboard in trying to keep employees. A little turnover can sometimes be the best for both parties. Your retail

store should be an energizing environment; you do not want people on your staff who make it stale or take it for granted.

• Recognize your strengths. Every business has assets that attract employees, enticing them to work there. Make your staff constantly aware of those benefits by creating a colorful brochure that lists all your employee benefits, such as discounts, flexible hours, fun working conditions, ample performance rewards, etc. Have your staff hand out these brochures to all potential hires. Those prospective employees will believe your employees more readily than they will believe you—and your current employees will be reminded how good they have it.

You were born to be an achiever. Keep Charging don’t let up x3