CHICAGO — Technology is one tool retailers can use to make hiring and retention easier. Lonnie McQuirter, owner of the 36 Lyn c-store in Minneapolis, uses a program from SmoothHiring, Toronto, which helps identify good candidates and identifies strengths and weaknesses. “It helps us with the onboarding process and helps us to see areas of focus and strong points of character with the candidate,” he says.
SmoothHiring administers a test that looks for the soft skills needed to engage with customers, McQuirter says, and it also looks for weaknesses and tests to see if a candidate can recover from setbacks.
“It gets tailored for each industry and for each employer,” he says, “and that can be switched around for whether they’re in managerial positions or not, depending on what you’re looking for.”
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McQuirter says he can get a better perspective of a person before he looks at his or her resume through an assessment.
“There might be biases that take place before someone looks at a resume, or sometimes you just see a person and maybe read that they’re bilingual and think a little too much,” he says. “Sometimes people may seem standoffish, but they may be quiet because they could have gotten over a cold.” A candidate also might have a personal issue going on, he says, or simply might not have had a good interview. This is why an administered assessment can help the hiring process, he says.
Technology also helps ease the hiring process at Parkland. Laura Varn, vice president of people, culture and communications for Parkland USA, Calgary, Albert, says the company has a program in place for drivers that allows them to apply for a job by simply scanning a QR code and answering three or four questions. The application then goes straight to the hiring manager who has a day to follow up. Parkland is expanding the program to people applying for in-store jobs this summer.
Despite technology’s ability to make some tasks easier, McQuirter says, c-stores need to realize they serve half of America and must take charge of their future. “Instead of looking toward these futurists and technologists to kind of define for us what the future is going to be like in 10, 15 years, it really needs to be internal for us. ... There’s a place for convenience.
And there’s a story that isn’t being told right now. We are heavily discounting our data and our customers. … There are ways we can quantify our shoppers and the interactions that take place in our stores that we’re doing for our communities that we serve that we’re not quantifying.”
“Overworked employees are much more likely to quit.”
For retailers looking to fix short-term problems, the gig economy has officially entered the c-store space.
Dave Dempsey, CEO of gig-hiring company Hyer, Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., doesn’t buy into the idea that people don’t want to work. “People do want to work,” he says, but they want flexibility. He points to the number of people using the Hyer app as evidence. Since its launch in 2020, that number has grown to 225,000 people using the app, Dempsey says.
The Hyer app works as an ultra-temporary hiring service. For instance, a c-store manager who knows he or she will be short-staffed tomorrow can submit a request for help through Hyer, and a person looking for work through the app—called a Tasker—answers the call and shows up to the job.
According to Dempsey, the average duration of a “task,” or temporary work—often project-driven projects such as a c-store that needs to be reset—is about six hours, and Taskers make $15 an hour on average. The program has an 83% fill rate, meaning 8.3 out of every 10 jobs posted are being filled, with larger companies reaching closer to 90%, says Dempsey.
He says 60% of Taskers already have a job. “And given what’s going on with inflation, the cost of fuel, food costs, rent and all that, they’re looking to pick up as many extra hours as they can.”
12
The number of states where job opening rates decreased in April. Rates increased in six states and changed little in 32 states and the District of Columbia, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Other technology companies make hiring and retention easier by streamlining training and making employees feel valued.
Ready Training Online (RTO), Elizabethtown, Pa., is an e-learning education company focused on service industries, including convenience stores.
Noting that many hourly workers leave a job within 30 days, RTO CEO Jeff Kahler encourages employers to extend their training period to 45 days. “Then once they get that, let’s go ahead and give them a promotion, whether it’s a new shirt, new hat, new apron, whatever,” he says. Kahler is of the opinion that if employees have a pulse and a uniform, they should have a promotion, too.
This strategy reflects the way Harrill has adjusted his hiring and promotion strategy at Drop-In Food Stores. “We give them a carrot when we hire them,” he says. “In the past, we would say, ‘After six months, we’ll do a review of your work and make a pay adjustment.’ But you’ve almost got to put the carrot out there when you hire them and say, ‘Look, when you get trained fully and can do this job without somebody telling you what to do, we’ll bump you up.’
“We set it so it’s not so far down the road that they can’t see it,” he adds. “They can think, ‘OK, within a month, or six weeks, I’ll be really doing this on my own, and it’s worth it.’ If they’re a good employee and trainable, you know that by that time, so I don’t mind giving them a little bump at that time.”
RTO also helps companies guide employees on their career path through its Gears for Your Career program. Dan Erkel, marketing director for RTO, says one way to start employees on the right step is to let new employees know that the company has a plan for them and that they add value to the organization.
Another strategy RTO uses is taking training away from managers. “The manager’s doing stock reports and working with tobacco, labor scheduling and all those things,” says Kahler, who advocates for taking the responsibility of training off managers and moving that responsibility to other employees who might have the bandwidth.