Retail Industry
Talent acquisition and talent management remain key priorities for retail organizations today, particularly as a weapon to combat weak same store sales growth. Retailers need to navigate successfully the hiring challenges in the field: reliance on a very diverse and often mobile workforce, huge volumes of job applications, a significant number of applicants that don’t use e-mail or have convenient web access and identifying and retaining associates with leadership potential.
Retailers are choosing JobApp over other solutions to improve the customer experience by enabling their organizations to consistently hire great employees with a talent for customer service --who also stay in the job longer. As average hourly employee turnover in the retail industry is well over 100%, according to the Center for Retail Excellence, the key is to recruit and hire the right employees who are also more likely to stay with your company longer.
Hiring automation is most prevalent today in the retail industry as it consistently generates a tremendous ROI. By improving the business processes of sourcing, pre-employment evaluation and hiring of non-exempt hourly workers and their managers, retailers are able to rapidly demonstrate an improvement in staff quality, turnover and retention, customer satisfaction, manager productivity and shrink. Effective hiring automation can then be linked back in a closed-loop fashion with performance reporting to continuously measure and optimize.
Over half of all shrinkage in the U.S. retail industry is directly related to theft and fraud perpetrated by bad hires. To combat shrinkage, JobApp has both validated and retail-oriented psychometric assessments, in addition to highly customized and validated assessment content developed by partners, such as Assess Systems, a Bigby Havis Company. Beyond measuring honesty and integrity, JobApp customers are able to gain unique insight into applicants’ abilities to provide great customer service. JobApp Network is also a significant provider of background checks to its retail customers. With its seamlessly integrated background check module, you and your managers can have a one-click, one-vendor solution.
Some retailers have opted to install in-store hiring kiosks or devices to allow job applicants to use a web-based talent acquisition system. However, most retail customers have eliminated their in-store hiring “kiosks” in favor of an overall more cost-effective alternative: interactive voice response (IVR). By using JobApp Network’s multi-lingual web and IVR hiring management system ,there is no need to install dedicated hiring kiosks in your stores, which are costly (installation, network pulls, furniture, chair, floor space, computer hardware, repairs, and support) and reduce your sales per square foot.
With intense competitive pressures, more and more small, mid-size and large retailers are turning to JobApp to efficiently and effectively manage hiring, assessments, background checks, employee tax credits (WOTC) and onboarding (electronic I-9 compliance, electronic W-4 management, forms, etc.).
| “JobApp Network was chosen over other vendors because it truly was the strongest solution we encountered in the market to improve the customer experience and address the hiring challenges in our stores. By improving our ability to make quality hires at the store-level, we expect to create a better customer experience, improve the work environment for our associates and ultimately reduce turnover and the related hiring and training costs. We are confident in JobApp’s ability to deliver on these objectives given their results with other companies we are familiar with,” said Jeff Kruse, Vice President of Belle Tire. |
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Assessments: JobApp provides both in-house and third-party assessment content from partners to help you hire honest employees with a talent for customer service.
Reduce High Employee Turnover: JobApp has a strong track-record for reducing retail employee turnover through a standardized and consistent pre-screening and hiring process across all locations.
Matching: Match applicants to jobs based on pre-qualifications and geography and then automatically score them against your unique position criteria on a simple, patented 5-star scale. As approximately 80% of all hourly employees in the U.S. work within 5 miles of their home, geography is an often overlooked component of effective matching.
Increase Manager Productivity: Store managers have embraced JobApp because it simplifies life for them and reduces the amount of time they spend on hiring-related tasks by 80%--which leaves more time for managing.
Automated Background and MVR Checks: JobApp has an integrated menu of 25 competitively-priced background check products, including social security traces, county criminals, national criminal database checks, theft databases, motor vehicle record checks, and past employment and education verifications. With a single click, you and your managers can run a full background check report on new hires, without having to rekey any data or fax any forms.
Electronic I-9 Management: Never fill out another paper I-9 again. With the JobApp Electronic I-9 Compliance Solution, which is fully integrated into the core hiring management system, JobApp automatically eliminates costly errors on the form, ensures that all new hires have completed I-9s and that all employees have up-to-date work authorization documents. At your company’s option, JobApp can also activate one-click E-Verify.
English and Spanish Support: Applicants can apply in English and Spanish by web and by phone. Nearly 75% of all Spanish-language applicants apply in Spanish by phone rather than by web; hence, the importance of a Spanish-language phone applicant portal for your company.
Boost Federal and State Employee Tax Credits: Approximately 10-15% of all hourly employees in the retail industry are eligible for these valuable tax credits. By pre-screening for Work Opportunity Tax Credits (WOTC) and zone credits (RC/EZ/EC) and then using JobApp to process your tax credits, you can boost your tax credit capture ratio of 40-60% relative to your current program.