Transforming Retail Onboarding with Digital Learning
Seattle Suntan Desert Sun came to Prime 8 for help bringing their hiring and onboarding process into the 21st century. With over 600 employees and 60 locations their existing process involved significant managerial man hours, in-person wait time, and paper documents -- all of which were proving to be a significant drain on resources. The company wanted to digitize the whole process, from forms to training, so that new employees could onboard from anywhere and at any time rather than trekking to company headquarters to wait around for hours while onsite staff processed their documents.
The Objective: Transform a Cumbersome Onboarding Process and Ongoing Training Into a Sleek Online System
The issue our client had was a common one: their business had grown but their processes hadn’t scaled to keep up with the changes over time. The hiring and onboarding process was “gruesome”, said CEO, Scott Swerland, describing the existing system. After a brief phone interview, prospective employees would interview in-person at their local salon, one of over 60 locations across the Pacific Northwest.
Then they would have to travel – sometimes from hours away – to the corporate office just outside Seattle. There, the new employees would share two pieces of ID with onsite staff, fill out hiring paperwork, and then wait until their turn for an in-person introduction to managerial staff.
This in-person element restricted their onboarding to one day per week, on Mondays, which meant any new hiring that happened the rest of the week would have to wait up to six days to process new employee paperwork and begin training.
It also meant that Mondays were very hectic. Up to 20 new employees might start at the same time, needing attention to complete paperwork and HR documentation. Once finished with paperwork, employees were asked to wait until everyone was done so the training process could begin. Training involved photocopied PDFs on a clipboard and also took employees different durations to complete. Between all the logistics, the paper documents, and the paid wait time, it got expensive quickly.
The delays in starting and logistical roadblocks also caused some of the new hires to give up and seek work elsewhere – the nature of retail employment can often be transient, but the difficulty of this particular process only increased this early turnover.
Additional training in-store, took anywhere from three days to much longer, depending on the employee availability and the potential for customer interruption. Every step of the process involved managers, trainers, and other staff taking time out of their day to train and onboard the new hires.
Between the length of time, the amount of paperwork, and the retention challenges, the business was losing a lot of money during this complex, analog process.
Prime 8’s Plan to Overhaul the Process
Prime 8 worked with the company to bring the outdated process into the 21st century. They designed and implemented a fully digital onboarding and training system using a modern Learning Management System (LMS), an online portal that all staff and managers can access for easy use and tracking.
First, they removed the need for paper hiring forms by linking the system to digital signature solution, allowing new hires to complete their HR paperwork and share ID documentation remotely. Then Prime 8 built a brand-new digital training solution that completely eliminated the photocopied pdf booklets, proposed new employee learning paths and content, and drastically reduced the time managers and trainers had to spend walking new employees through the basics of the position.
“When Prime 8 told us they could do it in 6-8 weeks and for the budget they gave us, we were blown away – and to be honest we were a little skeptical! We’ve done projects like this before and never had them go so quickly or be so relatively inexpensive. We’ve tried to work with Prime 8’s competitors before and the budgets have been absurd, and then they just go up once you get started. But Prime 8 absolutely knocked it out of the park, on schedule and on budget. ”
The fully customized, new learning solution comprised nine unique modules, from health and safety requirements to store policy, and included interactive media like videos, goal markers, and gamification to keep trainees engaged and motivated. Prime 8 also helped SST to reorganize up-level their content, using elements of adult learning theory to build learning roadmaps and streamline the learner experience with relevant assessments, and welcome and teaching videos. Not only did this Learning Management System (LMS) make the onboarding process easier and significantly less expensive for the company, it also ensured consistency in the training new employees received. Instead of the unavoidable variation introduced by having a range of managers train employees across regions and on days when they might be more or less available to answer questions, now the training presented the exact same information and tested the same knowledge for every new hire.
And all of these improvements benefitted the new employees, too. Just-in-time onboarding increased retention, modern training increased engagement, and new hires entered the retail salons on their first days more confident– they were ready to hit the ground running.
The Result: A Fully Remote, Online, LMS Solution That Saves Time and Money
With Prime 8’s help, in under six weeks, the company was able to transform an onboarding and training process that required an immense amount of manpower and time in person into a sleek, remote-accessible system using a scalable LMS and digital training content. Now, new employees can train anywhere there’s an internet connection, any time of day.
Rather than being limited to one day a week for onsite onboarding, the company can now onboard new employees right away, 24/7, whenever it’s convenient for the employee. And going paperless has saved even more time and money, with the added benefit of making it easier for staff to find employee information in the new searchable database.
The new online training platform has enabled the company to track the up-to-the-minute status of each employees’ training and onboarding progress, including training pace, assessment outcomes, and module completion rates.
A process that was previously taking an average of 28 hours and involved a number of head office staff is now taking 7 hours on average, a 75% savings. In addition to being much more convenient for new hires, the system saves significant time for current staff.
All of this has already saved the business a tremendous amount of money on training and onboarding – an estimated $300,000-400,000 a year.
“So many of my friends who own businesses have been amazed when I’ve told them about this project; our industry is really behind the curve when it comes to digital transformation. Plenty of us are still using timecards! So there’s a lot of opportunity to bring us out of the analog age and to digitize, automate, and simplify processes. We’ve been so impressed with Prime 8 that we’re looking internally at where else they can help us bring our business into the digital age.”
Project Snapshot
Industry: Retail
Location: Pacific Northwest Region
Company Size: 600+ employees
Critical Business Issues: Time and resources were being wasted on the company onboarding process which was in-person and the necessary training for new employees was cumbersome, slow, and paper-based.
Solution: An out-of-the-box Learning Management System customized to deliver on-demand digital training for small and medium sized businesses saves time and allows new employees to onboard and train from anywhere in the region.
The Method: Prime 8 built the company a comprehensive, self-paced online learning system with nine distinct modules and customized and launched the Learning Management System.
The Timeline: less than 6 weeks
The Outcome: The custom, 24/7 on-demand solution that Prime 8 implemented eliminated the need for paper forms and in-person onboarding, reduced onboarding time by 75%, and resulted in an estimated annual savings of over $300,000.
