Companies of all sizes typically think of hiring and training as two separate things – but it’s especially common in smaller companies where employee training often takes the form of learning on the job and from colleagues. We will share why we believe a business that directly connects hiring and an employee training program in concert can leapfrog the competition and maximize results.
Why Now?
We all feel the challenges facing the home furnishing industry. 2022 saw a drop of up to 25% in residential furniture sales revenues, and major players reported a 21% decrease in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in the first quarter. 70% of manufacturers and distributors noted negative growth. And this is also true in online sales outlets. Things did not improve in 2023, which saw big companies like Pottery Barn’s comparable revenue dropping 10.6% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, West Elm’s comparable revenue dropping 20.8%, and Wayfair’s revenue dropping 3.4%.
“We’re in a period where consumers buy fewer large-ticket furniture pieces than they did a year ago as they shift their spending.”
– Williams-Sonoma CEO Laura Alber
“Instead of big-ticket items, customers are sprucing up their homes with less-expensive furnishings such as decorative layers, focusing on the tabletop, glassware, decorative objects, and textiles.”
– Tricia Smith, Global CEO of Urban Outfitters’ Anthropologie Group.
However, looking at data on statista.com, we can conclude that money is still being spent on home and décor – but what it’s being spent on, where, and by whom is changing. Feedback from one mattress client suggests that while money is tight for those who buy the lower-end products, mid to high-end product sales are more than making up for that, especially in areas with higher age and retired communities.
So, while we can blame economic and post-pandemic woes, the reality is we need to recognize it’s not a lack of spending (in both product categories and services) but a change in 3 things:
- Who has the money to spend
- What clients want for their homes
- Age and wealth demographics – Later in life, customers have more money and different priorities, which are heavily impacted by geographic location and store community.
This means we need to react to those changes – and a key part of that is that we review our product lines, sales processes, and organizations and reconsider what competencies and skills our workforce needs – especially in Sales. It means retraining and retooling our existing people and hiring new people who have those new skills and who you can ramp up as fast as possible through targeted needs training. Simply put – we need to consider hiring and employee training together.
The above three things create a need for employee training and impact who you hire. This article does not get into changing your product lines, but if the changes mean that to connect with customers who now have the funds to buy your goods and services, you need to be able to connect with them on their terms – from contact through to close.
Combining Hiring and Employee Training: Organizational Insights
When we consider Hiring and Employee Training together, we can look into how understanding the relationship between them can be used to support an existing organization or be leveraged to make the changes needed to move ahead into the market changes. Let’s consider how the respective effectiveness and investment in hiring and training impact a company:
A business’ willingness to invest time, money, and effort in Employee Training and Hiring not only dictates the type of hiring processes and training it should deploy – but also plays an important part in defining the ongoing culture of the company – and the people in it:
Quadrant A creates an elite and seasoned workforce by buying in the best players in the game, motivated by prestige, benefits, and strong, reliable earnings.
Quadrant B creates a likely earlier career, an ambitious workforce motivated by earnings and the potential for more.
Quadrant C is a high turnover, “sink or swim” workplace with stars emerging from pure volume and burning out quickly.
Quadrant D creates an environment with either very variable employees and/or ones who all appeal to the hiring manager’s “gut feel” and will have a lot of varied personal gaps/training needs, which is the hardest and most expensive approach.
Diving deeper into those quadrants, a business can quickly identify other essential people strategies such as compensation, benefits, communications, and leadership styles needed to thrive. This is important because it enables a company to redefine and/or build itself and provides predictions about the kind of internal resistance a company will find as it changes investment in hiring and/or training. For example, in a team of long-term expert veterans, a Quadrant C approach (for example, to support store growth plans) might not cause stress regarding training. Still, it likely will cause issues due to bringing in many new and inexperienced people, coming and going, needing help, and taking up time (and leads) for the existing veteran team members.
Using Hiring to Define Employee Training Investment and Targeted Training
Some companies try to identify and record the weaknesses or development needs of candidates offered a position. However, only some of them take a structured approach by taking that information and investing in the new hire’s training and development to ensure they succeed. Not only is supporting the new hire a smart move to get them ramped up, but we all know that pressure emphasizes people’s weaknesses – and starting a new job is a very high-stress period! Gaps and needs that were managed or covered up in a previous job get amplified in the new job. The result is a slow ramp-up, in the worst case, a failure and quick departure, a waste of time and money, and some measure of damage to the team and company reputation.
As a result, we recommend that the hiring process specifically identify the gaps in the candidates to find the best one and enable a tailored training plan starting day 1. On-boarding requires much more than work authorization forms and payroll setup – it needs to be the start of a concerted effort to ramp up your new hire as quickly as possible. That said – the more effective your hiring process is, the less need you’ll have to correct new hires’ weaknesses because you’ve found the best and/or the high-potential people! And that’s how you can get to Quadrant B, where you’re best placed for growth and long-term success through hiring top emerging talent, and their training can be focused on developing the very top-tier skills – the employee training they will expect and will stay – enhancing retention and engagement.
Planfully linking your recruitment and training enables you to improve your hiring, minimize the impact on and dovetail it into the existing team, get new hires up to speed quickly, and increase your chances of retention and employee engagement. It takes time and effort. HFA’s solution partner, Mosswood Recruiting , can support you to get it done.
