In all the hustle and bustle of the season it’s easy to neglect the continued development of your staff. Too many retailers cite the chaos of the holiday season as an opportunity to close the training valve for a while, a sure indication that they either don’t place a high enough value on the long-term investment of good development, or they just don’t know how to be flexible in their training initiatives.
Of course, smart retailers know there’s never an excuse to totally cut off training. Here are five easy things you can do to continue your staff’s development through the holiday season and into early next year.
1. Place a moratorium on major new training initiatives. Notice that we said “new training initiatives”. This is not the time to launch your New Year’s Training Blitz Extravaganza. If you have vendors who provide training programs, you should have kindly asked them to hold off until after the first of the year.
2. Continue training on a few (no more than three) popular or promotional products or services via a one- page info sheet. Use this training as a quick refresher for employees to review before their shift starts or during a break. The sheet should contain an FACQ (Frequently Asked Customer Questions) section, a list of features and benefits, as well as promotional pricing info and/or how many need to be sold to reach a particular sales goal.
3. Keep your subject-matter experts focused. Too often during this season retailers will institute a “code red” condition where everybody steps out of their typical roles in order to meet high customer demand. It’s important that individuals with expertise in specific areas (product or function) be able to perform in those areas in order to facilitate the customer experience and offer support for peers.
4. Post a trivia question or riddle in the back room for employees to solve during the day. Have them submit their answers in writing to you and award a prize to each day’s randomly chosen correct answer. This exercise creates a positive mental distraction for the staff, and helps them to focus on something other than the chaos on the floor.
5. Feedback, feedback, feedback. Don’t let any employee leave for the day without giving them some positive and specific feedback on their work. Feedback is a crucial part of any type of development. This time of year is no exception. However, given the stress of the season, daily feedback during the holidays should be informal and focus on reinforcing positive behavior, rather than formally calling out improvement opportunities. Just a simple comment telling an employee they did a great job with a particular customer can make a hectic day seem well worth the effort.
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