Product Education for Adult LearnersIn Retail Environments

What is Retail Training?Retail Training is focusing on the education of retail workers on a specific topic. It is unique in that the background of trainees tends to be incredibly diverse and that retail environments tend to have faster turnover than a standard classroom (Roth).

Retail Training with technology is a newer field, and many companies are just starting to catch on to the fact that it is indeed important to train their employees with a variety of methods to keep them engaged.

How has it changed?Retail training has existed for some time in various forms. Companies needed to train their employees on processes and procedures as well as on product knowledge. Ten years ago, this would have involved mostly paperwork, manuals and shadowing...possibly a video if a company valued modernization. In the past few years, with the rise of greater connectivity and the need to create or retain a customer base, employers have no option but to provide training if they want employees who will effectively engage customers (Roth).

Fewer people are looking for careers in retail as a long-term solution (Derby). To keep an employee, companies must invest in them to not only give them knowledge, but make them feel valued and appreciated. Retailers will have to continue training with the current available technology. An employee who watches a 1990s video about Loss Prevention is going to feel much less invested in the topic than an employee who is allowed to go through an interactive, feedback-driven discussion with multimedia.

What’s involved?Retail Training on products (my focus) is typically made up of product knowledge as well as “soft skills” or customer service.

The soft skills of how employees relate to the customer tend to be the foundational pieces of effective retail training. If employees know how to appropriately handle difficult situations or assist customers, they will be more eager to go on to the sales floor willing to learn.

After soft skills are built, layers of product knowledge are the next pieces in constructing a training strategy. With a foundation of how to interact, employees will more likely be able to place product knowledge components into real life situations.

Why is it important?Employers who continue to emphasize customer service and good relationships among employees are the most likely to creative environments conducive to learning (and the desire to learn).

If companies fail to value training past the basics of customer service, they give their employees a confusing message - that training is important in some aspects, but that they are not willing to fully equip employees for the challenges they will encounter on the job.

What are the challenges?Many companies have not only retail employees to train, but corporate employees as well. There can be some overlap between the training given to both groups such as HR required modules.

Retail training is often placed as a category under Human Resources. This tends to be where it resides unless a change is made to separate a retail division into its own HR subset.

Retail is changing as many young people no longer aspire to work in retail, but rather see it as a stop-gap as they make their ways toward other careers.

why this topic?

Retail is a tricky environment for training. In my current job, I work for a third party vendor

who sells products at a retail store environment. It’s often a challenge to access employees

to train them on our products. I have to come up with solutions to relate to these learners

and provide them with adequate information on my product. I also have to be mindful and

respectful of the companies where our products are sold so that I don’t encroach on their

main focus of sales. I have to maintain relationships with our retail partners and must work

with them at times to create experiences that are mutually beneficial and meet all their

policies for vendors.

I wanted to explore ways to better connect with the retail employees who are on the front

lines of selling our product. To do that, I have to understand retail.

my learning objectives

1. Identify how to engage employees in a retail environmentEmployees will be engaged if they can tie in the workshop subjects with personal goals or values

Appeal to the most employees by appealing to the common motivators in retail (sales numbers, positive feedback, promotions)

I will be able to evaluate employee engagement in a few ways

1.The obvious signs of paying attention and interaction in a group setting. Are they asking/answering questions and contributing

2.Are they following up with training campaigns or via email?3.Are the sales of product going up?

2. Determine when to use e-learning vs. in-person platformsStrategy on learning platforms can be gathered depending on which company I am working with to create training.

I will have employees participating in both types of training.

I will be able to validate decisions on platforms by:

1.Getting feedback from employees on which methodologies “stick” better2.Creating a control group of those who use only e-learning vs. those who use in-person and those who

do both3.Evaluate sales in these three groups to compare effectiveness

3. Create incentives for learning that are relevant and applicable

I need to know which incentives will be valuable/relevant to employees. If the incentives correlate with motivations, they’ll be more successful

I will be able to evaluate the success of incentives in the following ways:

1.Increased sales will show a push by learners to educate customers about product to achieve incentives

2.Learner response to incentives in email or verbal feedback.

4. Form a holistic mission for training that combines all learning platforms

Strategies will be to work with employers to find if they are willing to integrate information between multiple forums...eg: will Company A allow a questions Wiki to be shared with Company B

Companies will provide me with access to all learning platforms (e-learning and in-person). Employees will use both methodologies

I can evaluate how well our integration is working by doing evaluations of employees.

-I will create feedback forms-I will look at the difference of sales between the times we’ve done holistic training and un-combined training.