Learning and development strategy examples in retail
Learning and development is a huge beast to tackle in retail. Unlike other responsibilities, it’s not a case of creating a list of tasks, ticking them off and then moving on to the next job. It’s a continuous activity that requires constant tweaking, measuring and refining.
What makes your job even harder as an L&D manager in retail, is that your employees are always on the move. This makes finding the time to learn exceptionally hard. In this article, we’re going to take you through a few learning and development strategy examples which should demonstrate how you can successfully transform behaviour and reach those all-important business goals. So let’s get started.
Why do you need a solid learning and development strategy in retail?
With any successful plan, you need a solid strategy. This strategy needs to outline how you’re going to move from where you are now, to where you want to be. This is incredibly important in a retail environment where it can be so easy to divert from the tasks at hand. Not only are your staff managing their own jobs but they’re managing the needs of your customers too. This can be unpredictable and time-consuming so it’s vital that you’re able to keep everyone on track with what they need to do to be successful in their learning journey.
Your job as the L&D Manager is to fully understand your company's business goals so you can drive behaviour change in your team to reach those targets. If you haven't got a good strategy in place, it’s going to be near impossible to achieve your overarching business objectives.
Learning and development can’t just be a thing that happens when you feel like it because this won't achieve any real results. Yes, your staff may seem more competent for a week after the training they received, but after that, the information will be forgotten and you’ll soon be back to square one.
What does a successful learning and development strategy in retail include?
Before we dive into a few retail strategy examples, it’s crucial that you understand the key elements of a successful strategy.
It focuses on staff engagement
A successful learning strategy should be highly focused on how the learners put their knowledge into action. This is because people retain a larger amount of information when they practice what they learn. Here are a few statistics from Psychotactics which prove just how crucial learning engagement is. They found that learners retain approximately:
90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately.
5% of what they learn when they've learned from a lecture.
This is why classroom learning alone is so ineffective and why you need a strategy which incorporates other methods of learning as a way to embed knowledge in employees’ minds.
The strategy drives employee behaviour - not the other way round
What exactly do we mean by this? Well, a lot of retail companies wait to see a problem in employee behaviour or performance before they carry out any type of training.
For example, they notice they are getting a lot of complaints about their customer service so they decide to hold a customer service training workshop. This is a case of employees driving the strategy because you’re only holding training when your staff present an issue. The problem with this approach is that you are constantly solving problems rather than preventing them from happening in the first place.
Instead, you should’ve already had a strategy in place which focused on great customer service. This means you are driving the behaviours you want to see rather than constantly reacting to the behaviours you don’t want to see.
It should focus on continuous learning
Continuous learning is a phrase which refers to the constant development of employees within an organisation. It’s so important because change is the only thing we can be certain about. The economy, environment, industry and people change so your employees need to be able to keep up if you want to stay competitive.
As we’ve discussed in the first point, classroom learning as a singular event is essentially pointless. Your strategy needs to be focused on lots of little learning tasks which happen continuously. There’s no point in having one huge learning activity if you’re not going to have any follow-up. Think of it like brushing your teeth. If you did that once a month it would have no effect, but when you do it twice a day the results are 100% better.
Let’s look at some learning strategy examples from successful retail companies
#1 itsu
The famous chain of East Asian-inspired fast food restaurants is renowned for its fresh sushi dishes, but the staff needed to create those dishes weren’t sticking around. These people were called the Fish Cutters. It was their job to cut 40kg of fish into 3,000 pieces every single day and the repetitive nature of this role had led to a turnover rate of 100% every single year.
The learning goal
To reduce the turnover rate for the Fish Cutter role.
Learning strategy
itsu revamped the training for their fish cutters. They did this by turning their workshop into an accredited course. This meant that trainees would graduate with a recognised certificate which they could use elsewhere to further support their career. After they completed the training they would receive a new title – ‘Fish Pro’, a pay rise and they could compete for the title of ‘Fish Pro of The Year’. If they won they would receive the prize of a weekend for two in New York.
The result
itsu saved almost $1 million in decreased labour costs and almost $2 million on food that would have usually been wasted.
The takeaway
This learning strategy was focused on employee engagement. They could see that their Fish Cutters were leaving because they weren’t developing and they weren’t being valued in their role. When an employee feels like part of the furniture, the chances of them being engaged in their learning are very low.
itsu changed the Fish Cutter’s titles to make them feel like they had achieved a greater level of expertise and awarded them with a pay rise and the chance to win an annual prize to show them that learning within the organisation was worth it.
Pros
They incentivised their learning strategy to encourage uptake.
They really centred it around the employee's needs and desires.
The annual fish pro competition encouraged a continuous learning environment.
Cons
They were reactive rather than proactive. They waited until they had a 100% turnover rate before they took action. They should have had a learning strategy in place to prevent this from occurring.
#2 Vodafone
Vodafone, the leading technology communications company has more than 400 stores in the UK and although the majority of their work is done over the phone a lot of people still visit their brick-and-mortar stores.
The learning goal
Working in the telecommunications industry requires a lot of knowledge, this is especially true when you’re working in a customer-facing role because you need to know information on the spot. Vodafone was looking for a way to reduce the amount of time employees spent in the classroom so they could spend more time with their customers. Alongside this, they also wanted to create learning which could be accessed on mobile anytime, anywhere.
Learning strategy
They developed an app for learning support, communication, continuous improvement and ongoing assessment. Having a learning app also meant that when their employees got a spare 5-10 minutes in the store they could complete their learning modules on their phones.
In the app, they included key bits of learning, short sharp videos created by other colleagues and PDFs.
Managers could also use the app to observe staff and create their bespoke learning plans.
The result
97% of staff actively use the app to learn every month and 30% of this usage is happening outside of work hours.
It has also led to a 56% reduction in training delivery costs and 70,000 more hours are now spent with customers as a result of a reduction in classroom training.
Pros
This learning strategy is heavily centred on the employees, looking at how they can fit learning around their busy retail schedule.
It combats multiple issues in retail including customer interaction time, communication within the organisation and continuous learning.
Cons
Some may argue that a mobile learning approach could pose a distraction for unengaged workers.
#3 Zara
Zara is one of the biggest and most popular high street fashion retailers in the UK, so it comes as no surprise that they have an extensive training strategy to motivate staff and improve performance.
The learning goal
Shop floor sales staff can feel distanced from more senior members of the team and therefore lack the motivation to progress and perform better. Zara wanted to motivate these employees to build a career within the organisation and take pride in their day-to-day work.
Learning strategy
Zara ran a competition across all of their stores in Ireland where employees would be awarded a star for completing different tasks on the shop floor. The tasks would consist of activities such as making sure their department was perfect at closing time. Each star would be placed next to the employee’s photo on a large board which was housed in the staff room.
The competition would run for a month, after this time, the employee from each department with the most stars by their photo would be interviewed on why they would like to win the competition. An overall winner was then selected from each store and they would spend the day with a regional manager of their choice to see what their day-to-day job entailed. Each winner was then entered into a draw and the overall winner from Ireland would win a trip to London where they could put their learnt skills into action.
The result
Employees were motivated to perform at their best every day and the competition gave them something to work towards making them feel valued and appreciated. The second element of the competition which allowed them to work alongside a regional manager gave them an insight into a managerial role. This offered the inspiration they needed to continue building their career in an industry which usually has a high turnover rate.
Pros
Competitions are a great way to drive behaviour and make learning fun.
Centring the reward around progression is a clever idea to inspire employees.
Making the winners visible within the organisation makes everyone more likely to want to perform better because of the social implications that this brings.
Cons
The competition is very heavily work and company focused which could disengage a lot of employees.
It could be more centred around the employee’s needs.
The key takeaway from these retail learning strategies
It’s clear to see that none of these ideas are new or groundbreaking but what they all encompass is a strong focus on incentivisation. Giving your employees a compelling reason to engage with your learning initiatives has the power to bring you the results you’re looking for. If you don’t, all of your efforts to develop a learning strategy could go to waste. Always think about what’s in it for your employees and give them a reason to want to learn.
If you want to streamline your training efforts and develop a strategy which generates enviable results, take a look at our L&D store visits app. Used by the likes of Victoria’s Secret, Next and Virgin Media 02 this training platform has everything a retailer needs to motivate employees, ramp up consistent behaviours and drive real results. For details about the app and pricing see below.
