A guide to onboarding retail employees

The importance of employee onboarding in retail

New starter onboarding is important in every industry, but especially so in the retail sector, where your staff are the public face of your brand. Effective retail employee onboarding can help you to:

• Support long-term staff retention, saving recruitment costs as a result
• Improve employee engagement levels
• Ensure customers receive a consistent standard of service
• Build strong team relationships, boosting overall staff morale, which will be noticed and felt by your customers, enhancing their shopping experience 
• Show employees that you value their career development

Challenges surrounding employee onboarding in retail

Historically, there have been some common challenges surrounding retail employee onboarding, impacting staff retention levels as a consequence. These challenges include:

• Time constraints: new retail employees need to quickly integrate into the team and support customer service delivery. However, it can be challenging to find the right amount of time to train them in a fast-paced retail setting, where managers need to balance onboarding alongside the day-to-day running of the store.
• Limited resources: smaller stores and independent boutiques might not have a dedicated HR team to look after retail employee onboarding, and may lack tools and software that could help
• High turnover: the high level of staff turnover in retail means HR and management can regularly need to invest time and resource in onboarding new staff, potentially impacting their productivity elsewhere
• Seasonality: with seasonal hiring peaks in retail, employee onboarding can often coincide with the busiest times for a store, impacting the amount of time available for comprehensive new starter onboarding
• Inconsistency: if a business doesn’t have a defined onboarding strategy, this can lead to inconsistency and potentially insufficient training when different people are in charge of welcoming new starters. With vast diversity of roles and responsibilities in the retail industry, tailored onboarding is required

What should a retail employee onboarding strategy include?

Every store will have its own process for onboarding retail employees, but if you’re reviewing your strategy or want to make sure there’s nothing important you’re currently missing, take a look through the new starter checklists below.

Preboarding

The time from when the candidate is offered the role, until their first day of work at your company is sometimes referred to as ‘preboarding’. There are several tasks that HR need to complete during this period, and the new hire will be required to sign their contract, and acknowledge that they’ve read company policies.

Here’s what HR needs to do before a retail employee’s first day on the job:

• Ensure Right to Work checks and other reference checks have been completed
• Send a welcome email including the start date and time, any uniform requirements, location, and details of who will greet them
• Share the employee handbook and key company policies, including information on health and safety, social media guidelines, and GDPR compliance
• Set up access to the store tills, clocking in systems, training portals, and anything else that will save time and create a smoother first day experience
• Assign a point of contact to act as a buddy or mentor to the new starter, who’ll be responsible for making sure they’re okay, answering any questions, and taking them under their wing at breaktimes

First day

On the employee’s first day working in-store, make sure you cover the following:

• Assign a member of staff to greet the new starter as they arrive at work, so they don’t need to worry about where to go when they arrive at the store
• Introduce them to the rest of the team, and show them around the store
• Conduct the health and safety and fire safety talks, and go through emergency procedures
• Explain when the new starter can take their break, and make sure they take it, in case they feel awkward about asking when the time comes around
• Take the time to answer any questions the new employee has, and check they’re aware of their shift patterns and when they’ll get paid

Try not to overwhelm new employees on their first day; onboarding is an ongoing process, so focus on welcoming them to the team and covering the most important points. Skills-based training and even serving customers can follow later. 

First week

In a retail employee’s first week with your company, you should focus on:

• Initial training, ensuring the new starter knows how to use the till, navigate the stockroom, and merchandise stock
• Deliver any essential health and safety training, such as manual handling training
• Identify the skills-based training that the employee will benefit from most
• Discuss goals for the next month, and the next three months. Make sure these are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) to hold all parties accountable

First month

Over the course of a new hire’s first month, there’s a lot to cover, but it’s important to dedicate the time to comprehensive onboarding to ensure all new employees feel supported, and to benefit long-term staff retention. During an employee’s first 4 to 6 weeks with your business, you should:

• Continue with role-specific training, and support the employee during their first interactions with customers
• Provide them with opportunities to shadow more experienced colleagues
• Encourage new hires to build their knowledge of your products, specific promotions, and your company’s brand values
• Conduct their first 121 to gather initial feedback from the employee’s point of view – listen to their views and use them to refine your hiring process in the future 
• Provide feedback on how they’ve been performing so far, and discuss any areas of improvement for the coming months
• Discuss goals and KPIs for the next six months, so the new starter has a clear training plan and knows what’s expected of them as onboarding becomes more light touch
• Involve new staff in team meetings or social events to encourage employee engagement from the beginning
• Begin to introduce the new employee to internal recognition schemes, and make them aware of opportunities for career progression

Retail employee onboarding checklist

Keep our retail employee onboarding checklist to hand during new recruits’ first few days and weeks with your business. Tick off items on the list when they’ve been completed, and add your own notes or reminders.

1. Send preboarding documents and first day instructions to the new hire via email
2. Confirm Right to Work documents
3. Store the candidate’s signed contract and policy acknowledgements on file
4. Set up access for the new starter across payroll, training portals, and clocking in/out systems
5. Prepare any uniform items, as well as name badge or access fob, ahead of the new hire’s first day
6. Arrange for the new employee to be welcomed on their first day, and be shown around the store, stockroom, and other staff-only areas
7. Deliver the health and safety talk, and fire safety induction
8. Introduce the new hire to the rest of the team, and assign a buddy or mentor for their first few weeks
9. Provide initial job training on expected standards, internal systems, and KPIs
10. Schedule a HR check-in with the new starter after their first week to see how everything’s going, and to address any queries or issues early
11. Discuss goals for the next few weeks, and create an initial training plan together
12. Book in time to review the employee’s performance and provide them with feedback after their first month, and again after 3 months

Download our more detailed employee onboarding checklist for free!

How to improve employee onboarding in retail

Improving the way you approach retail employee onboarding in the future can help to boost employee engagement, impact staff retention, and subsequently save you time and money. Below are some practical ways businesses can improve their approach to onboarding retail employees:

• Create a standardised new starter onboarding checklist to ensure consistency across all locations and departments
• Make use of digital tools, such as an ATS, onboarding software and e-learning platforms to significantly reduce admin and streamline training processes
• Use automation wherever you can during the onboarding process to save time and free up resource, so you can focus more on delivering the highest possible standard of customer service
• Pair every new starter with a more experienced member of staff to act as their and help speed up their integration
• Gather feedback from new hires after their first week, month, and three months with your business to help with continuing to refine your onboarding process
• Track the success of your onboarding efforts by measuring new employees’ performance, productivity, feedback from the rest of the team, and the store’s overall staff turnover rate

Using Talos ATS for onboarding retail employees

Talos ATS can be used as a retail applicant tracking system to streamline hiring and transform new employee onboarding. In retail businesses, recruitment responsibilities can fall to already-busy store managers, but our ATS makes it easy to manage applications in one platform from the moment the job ad is posted, right through to after the new hire has been successfully onboarded. 

Key features of our award-winning applicant tracking system include:

• Access to multiple retail jobs boards
• Career site builder tool to help you showcase your unique employer brand and culture
• In-built CV screening tools to help you find the best talent faster
• Automated reference checking to reduce paperwork and save time
• AI-powered hiring tools, including a job ad writing assistant, interview insights, and intelligent talent analytics
• Seamless integration with existing HR and payroll systems 
• Comprehensive employee onboarding suite to support new starters in their first few weeks and months