Providing Effective Point-Of-Need Performance Support To Retail Workforce

Introduction Summary

As the marketplaces in general, and the retail industry in specific are evolving in terms of distribution and sales of goods, so are the several practices associated with them. In today’s dynamic world, we require the retail workforce to have a newer set of skills as well as training for them to face the challenges head on.

We will discuss a few of the challenges and solutions in this blog.

Introduction

In the new world, which is still emerging from the pandemic, the skills required to work have changed. Employees need to be smart and need to be aware of how to operate in the new reality. They need to understand the processes required to perform better.

There are a few challenges that retailers are facing.

Retailer’s Challenge

How to handle competition and better manage infrastructure, supply chain, and compliance?

Retailer’s Needs

How to better manage warehouse, distribution and logistics, tools and technologies, processes, compliance, ecommerce, automation, and equipping people optimally through training?

Focal Areas of the Retail Industry

Below are the 4 focal areas where education can make a big impact in the retail space.

Thus, what should Retail training focus on?

• Perform tasks efficiently and effectively – focus on getting the first time right, every time.
• Use the latest technology – be it billing, stocking, and store management!
• Understand the product – good understanding of the service or product learners provide/sell.
• Manage your image – appropriate grooming and personal hygiene are important.
• Improve soft skills – communication, body language, interpersonal skills, and other skills.

Retail employees now have to manage new events and situations, which have never seen before. Employees need to be clued up on the latest updates on compliance, product knowledge, handling customers, and processes, or it could be the best practices too.

Training once a month or quarter just won’t work. Ideally, employees need to be trained on a product, service, concept, strategy, plan, etc., on a daily basis. However, getting employees to learn daily is easier said than done.
What do we keep missing in the training programs? It’s simply the fact that “Learners are unable to remember and apply the learning on the job!”
Employees mostly desist training as it “interrupts” their daily work or tasks. They often complain of a lack of time to attend overly long sessions.

Another factor is the forgetting curve. Learners are unable to remember even 10 to 15 percent of what they learned during a training session. That makes it doubly hard for the trainers to come up with an effective solution.
These days they are not keen to take time out of their regular tasks and attend sessions that may not be of value for the time spent.

Solution

The solution is to provide an effective point-of-need performance support to the retail workforce.

Performance of staff needs to be consistent, and they cannot afford to forget crucial information.

Effective point-of-need performance support is required for all the staff members to perform better.

The focus must be on modular training to enable staff prior to store opening, or stay after store closing, rather than lose time in between.

The idea is to provide point-of-need performance support, which can be:

• Easily implemented across geographies.
• Effortlessly accessible to every employee.
• The point-of-need performance support:
• Drives better adoption.
• Uses role-plays and scenarios.
• Provides continuous learning experience aligned to their workflow.

Continuous learning journeys are going to be even more critical than ever before. This is not just from an industry standpoint but also in the areas of digital skills, company culture-ethics-ethos, soft skills, clarity of job role, and compliance.

For seamless alignment of learning to the flow of work, you should understand how learners consume information and drive the required/curated content in the easiest form.

Conclusion

To conclude, we need to look at newer ways of training as well as enable the learners with point-of-need support. LMSs and LXPs should be used to drive continuous learning and to provide learning in the flow of work for better learning outcomes that lead to better performance at work.

At Tesseract Learning, our learning and visual architects constantly innovate and reinvent their approaches to design, develop, and deliver effective L&D programs. We are leveraging our powerful learning platform, KREDO, to create efficiencies across the training life cycle and deliver exceptional learning experiences.

To learn more about our products and services and how we can help you, contact us or write to me at <suresh@tesseractlearning.com>.

This article was originally published on elearningindustry.com