Management & Leadership News South Africa

Five tips on HR management for retailers

In a highly distributed business environment, consisting of headquarters, distribution centres and stores, retailers face a unique blend of challenges when it comes to personnel turnover and seasonal fluctuations.
Five tips on HR management for retailers
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HR onboarding and interviewing process for store staff normally happens in the stores. This creates additional challenges when it comes to administration and paperwork. There are five simple steps a retailer can implement to address these challenges:

  1. Use intelligent document capture tools to eliminate redundant, inconsistent and insecure storage of personal data in stores and headquarter.

  2. Streamline processes by converting to electronic forms. This can be for HR and personal documents, and for incident reporting process or loyalty cards applications.

  3. Integrate content management into the company's HR software to be able to instantly check status and flag any missing information in store, where the process happens.

  4. Improve staff productivity by strategically placing multi-function devices on the shop floor to provide easy access to scanning and printing. This keeps employees close to customers, instead of hidden in the back office.

  5. Improve store customer satisfaction through easier processing of paperwork (for orders, credit applications or returns) by introducing advanced capabilities like mobile printing, while talking to the customer.

"By embracing the latest techniques and implementing simple intelligent solutions, storeowners can speed up administrative and HR processes, improve compliance and increase staff productivity, says Tim Emens, EMEA industry director at Lexmark. "Basic processes can be significantly accelerated to reduce costs and free up store employees to spend more time on the sales floor. At the end of the day this all adds up to enhancing customer satisfaction and building loyalty."

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