Stores Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 76)

CONSIDER THIS/ POINT OF VIEW Branding Your Retail Operation to Prospective Employees BY JASON FERRARA As an individual, you make promises every day to your family, to your friends and even to yourself. You promise to wash the dishes. You promise to make time to go out for lunch. You promise to force yourself to finally get to the gym for a workout. retail, high employee morale is integral to proAs part of a retail operation, you also make viding quality customer service. daily promises to your customers — to provide The best way to determine your true employgreat service, deliver quality products and crement brand is to ask your employees to deate a positive shopping experience. scribe the company and what they value most A significant amount of time is spent atabout working there. Look for trends in their tempting to deliver on these promises. There words: You’ll eventually uncover your corpomay be one group to which you’re neglecting rate culture and values. to make and deliver promises, however, and Moreover, the process of receiving feedback that group is your current and potential emfrom your employees should be ongoing. Meaployees. sure employee satisfaction levels regularly, When we talk about brands, we generally Jason Ferrara is vice whether it be through informal discussions or think of the company brand we cultivate for our president of corporate organization-wide surveys. Also, if necessary, consumer base. However, every retail operamarketing for Careercreate action plans and implementation dates tion should also have an employment brand – Builder.com. with employee input and deliver on what’s an extension of your consumer brand that promised. makes promises to employees based on the mission and Once you have this information from your current emcore values of the company. ployees, use it on your job postings to break through the Why do retail operations need employment brands? In a clutter and reach potential job candidates. The best way to recent CareerBuilder.com survey of 295 retail hiring mando this is by using the very words your employees used to agers, nearly half (49 percent) said they currently have describe what they value in the company. Then, use your open positions for which they can’t find qualified candiactual employee programs to support those words. dates. For example, if your employees say that the thing they Additionally, nearly two out of every five retail hiring manvalue most about your retail operation is its investment in agers (39 percent) revealed that, because of the tight job the growth and advancement of its employees, then touting market, they’re retaining workers that they otherwise accomplishment-based benefits, such as growth and stawouldn’t. bility, career advancement and training and learning opporRecruiting and retaining qualified employees is getting tunities will drive home this idea. tougher, and with one-third of retail hiring managers saying You can also go one step further and include testimonials they would be hiring more employees in the fourth quarter, from current employees and showcase examples of assocompetition for them is on the rise. ciates who have worked their way to the top. Creating and marketing an employee brand? With such stiff competition for qualified candidates, you need something to set your retail operation apart. That’s where an employee brand comes into play. Your employee brand shouldn’t be something that you manufacture; it must be organic. The problem with trying to arbitrarily create an employment brand is the potential resentment and backlash from your current employees. If you’re suddenly making promises to prospective employees that you aren’t already delivering to your current employees, you run the risk of bruising their morale. And in 76 STORES / DECEMBER 2007 Keeping your promise It’s easy to make a company sound great, but it takes great employees and their hard work to actually make it great. Therefore, in order to retain and attract the best employees, make sure you’re keeping your brand promises by continually seeking out feedback from your current workers, and then evaluating and adapting your employee programs. In today’s competitive retail recruiting environment, these are the kinds of promises you don’t want to break. WWW.STORES.ORG http://CareerBuilder.com http://CareerBuilder.com http://CareerBuilder.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Stores Magazine - December 2007

STORES - December 2007 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Holiday Shopping Extravagance What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Niche Marketing Eight Predictions for 2008 Concept2Watch Merchandising Strategy Sourcing E-Commerce Supply Chain Warehouse Management Software Contactless Payments Marketing Marketing Online Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

Stores Magazine - December 2007

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