Omnichannel shopping continues to drive retail success. As consumers tap into brands using multiple touchpoints, retail technology has never been so important.
Retail sales are expected to hit 26.7 trillion by 2025, with much of that revenue coming from digitally-infused purchases.
Whether customers take advantage of smart carts and self-checkout kiosks or leverage online touchpoints such as click-and-collect, it’s no secret that technology is driving the retail sector forward.
The question is, how can you ensure that your employees adapt effectively to a digitalised storefront? It’s essential that retail workers have time to adjust to new tech in order to provide customers with the best experience possible.
With this in mind, we’ve put together a guide on how to reskill your in-store workforce for a tech-powered future.
Does Retail Training Impact The Shopping Experience?
It’s no secret that digital shopping trends have taken off on a post-Covid high street. As more stores welcome omnichannel solutions such as buy-now-pay-later and click-and-collect, poorly trained retail staff could negatively impact the shopping experience.
In fact, according to a 2023 Retail Customer Experience Survey, 64% of shoppers report that levels of poorly trained employees have risen since 2020, with more than ever before lacking knowledge of product availability and in-store assistance.
(Image Source: Adobe)
In-store training has never been so important. In order to improve the shopping experience, regularly refreshing employee skillsets can not only boost in-store productivity butalso ensure that customers enjoy a frictionless experience with your brand.
4 Ways To Upskill Your Employees For Digital Retail
There are plenty of ways to upskill your workforce to tackle new retail innovations.
With regular training sessions, employees can learn how to adapt to new technology and assist customers positively during an omnichannel purchase.
With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of four ways to reskill retail staff members for instant shop floor success.
Introduce Role-Specific Training
According to RetailDive, 32% of in-store employees fail to receive any role-specific training when entering employment.
Role-specific training is essential in a digital retail sector, especially if employees are expected to handle customer-facing tech.
For example, if a cashier is not confident with all aspects of a retail POS, they will struggle to complete tricker tasks such as product returns and adding loyalty reward points. This lack of role-specific training slows down the checkout line, upsets queueing customers, and requires an extra pair of hands to complete the task.
Role-specific training programs avoid this. Taking time to segment your workforce by role and conducting training sessions on role-specific tech motivates employees to do a better job and removes pressure from senior staff members, allowing them to focus on their own tasks.
Leverage eLearning For Training On The Go
eLearning is a highly effective method for reskilling retail employees on the go.
Not only does eLearning save companies in-person training costs, but sessions can be conducted online in-store or from home, making the training program more flexible for the employer and employees.
eLearning programs help retailers streamline and personalise every aspect of digital training. For example, depending on the multiple roles held in store, eLearning can be tailored to specific tech that each staff member is likely to come in contact with.
Better still, online training programs also facilitate peer-to-peer learning. This allows employees to collaborate and share insights with each other during a training session for quicker adoption of new skills.
Take a Hands-On Approach
Why not also take a hands-on approach to your in-store retail training?
This a great method to utilise when you get a new piece of technology on the shop floor, such as a POS system. Often, it’s easier to teach staff members on the go, allowing them to physically interact with the software during a training session.
This could include shadowing a senior staff member already trained in the technology and following their lead in a customer-facing position, such as the checkout.
According to Kris McCrea Scrutchfield from McCrea Coaching, “Learning by doing provides the learner with instant feedback and the ability to reflect on what to keep doing, what to tweak and repeat, or what to change altogether. It’s a great way to test competency to know if additional support would be helpful to create success for the learner. It moves us beyond theory.”
Better still, most in-store technologies come with training-mode settings that allow team members to play around with the software until they feel comfortable engaging with it on the shop floor.
Create a Culture of Collaboration
Creating a culture of collaboration among your workforce can significantly speed up the time it takes to adapt to a new piece of technology on the shop floor.
Whenever possible, ensure that you conduct training sessions that involve multiple employees. This encourages staff members to improve their skill sets together and help each other out as they adapt to a digital environment.
While this aids the training process, collaboration culture also builds a team-first mentality, bringing employees closer together and fostering a productive work environment.
Preparing For A Digital-First Future
The retail sector is evolving every day. In order to meet rising customer demands, retailers must integrate digital-first shopping experiences into their store strategy.
As you embrace new technologies, staff reskilling is crucial, especially if you want to maintain a seamless buyer journey at all touchpoints.
Those who continue to upskill their employees will reap the benefits long-term and continue to take pride in a shop floor that runs seamlessly.
