13 Dos and Don'ts of Recruiting and Retaining Employees

Your staff can make or break your Holiday sales.

By Doug Fleener
September 2011

_{With additional reporting by Justina Huddleston.}

The upcoming Holiday season can be a stressful one for retailers. So what’s the key to navigating this busy time smoothly and coming out on top?

TDmonthly asked Roberta Bonoff, CEO of the award-winning Creative Kidstuff chain of specialty toy stores, what the key to success is and she boiled it down to one word: Staff.

“Our staff is the biggest asset of our business; without them we wouldn’t exist," Roberta says. Since opening its doors in 1982, the Creative Kidstuff specialty chain has been winning the hearts of parents, teachers, and most of all, kids, wit their hands-on, DO-touch mentality. With seven stores in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and one in West Des Moines, Ia., Creative Kidstuff is always looking for fun, energetic, and creative employees.

For most retailers, the quality of the staff is a key sustainable competitive advantage and point of differentiation from their competitors. While each store may have a different product mix, it’s the employees and their level of customer service that makes the difference between success and failure — especially during particularly busy times of year. Unfortunately, many owners, operators, and managers often fail to invest the appropriate amount of time and resources in staffing.

Recruiting and Retaining Quality Employees

Recruiting — Successful retailers know that recruiting is a daily activity. Don’t wait until just before the Holidays or when a position opens up. Recruiting isn’t about hiring a person; it’s about hiring the right person. You want an employee who complements your current team and is passionate about your products and customers. Consider these Dos and Don’ts of recruiting.

Do:

Recruit your regular customers. Roberta Bonoff has found that her customer base is her best source of staff. Who better to hire than someone who already knows your products and enjoys your store?
Create a bag stuffer about joining your team. Offer a generous employee discount and other fun benefits.
Reward both employees and customers for referrals. Use the money you’re not spending on “help wanted” ads.
Have a sign in your store letting potential employees know that you’re always accepting applications from people who love toys and children.

Don’t:

Put help wanted signs in your windows. First, it communicates to customers that you might be understaffed. Secondly, do you really want applicants who come in only because of a sign in the window?
Hire someone solely for the sake of having another body on the floor. It’s important to hire the right person.
Hire someone just because they have retail experience. Hire for personality and train for success. You can teach someone about your products but you can’t teach someone to smile and respect your customers.

Retaining — Retail has one of the highest turnover rates of all jobs. Retail workers cite low pay and high stress levels as the two most common reasons they switch jobs. Turnover directly impacts a retailer’s profits due to lost sales and the cost of recruiting and training new employees. Keep in mind these Dos and Don’ts for retaining your employees.

Do:

Make sure your compensation is competitive, at or above market rates. Create plans and incentives that reward the store team for success. At Creative Kidstuff, all stores work as a team to achieve their goal, then receive a bonus based on making the plan.
Create a fun work environment. Put together entertaining and innovative employee contests that keep work fresh.
Spend the time and money to create a structured training program. Employees want to do a good job, but they need product knowledge and the skills to be able to.
Develop your employees by giving them additional responsibilities. Cross-train your staff so individuals can fill in when other staff members are on vacation or leave for another position.

Don’t:

Forget that retail can be tiring and stressful. Try to be flexible with staff schedules and employees’ lives. Creative Kidstuff is respectful of the staff’s need to be there for their own families.
Let employees leave at the end of the day without thanking them. Employees need to hear that you appreciate their efforts. “Thank-you” goes a very long way toward retaining employees.

So remember — to be a great place to shop during the Holidays, you need to be a great place to work. Give your employees plenty to smile about, and they’ll give your customers plenty of smiles.