Key Challenges & Custom E-Learning Solutions For The Retail Industry

In today’s competitive environment, retail industry needs more people with higher skills set in a workplace. Relying on traditional training approach is not sufficient for this sector to remain at the forefront of technological advancement. Organizations have to respond to the dynamics of their markets, which continuously challenge their business models. As work environments have shifted to knowledge-based environments, it is significant to impart efficient e-learning training program. Training sales staff highlights various industry challenges including restricted training budgets, workforce spread over different locations, huge turnover and much more. Embracing custom e-learning solutions for product knowledge, regulatory compliance and sales skills help retailers overcome these challenges.

Key Challenges of Retail Sector

Every sector faces its own challenges and the retail sector is no different from others. These challenges provide opportunities for Learning and Development teams to offer effective e-learning solutions, making everyone aware of the hurdles faced by the retailers today. Let us discuss few issues faced by the retail industry:

• High staff turnover is the most common issue for retailers. The retail workforce tends to be more mobile, which means employees are coming and going all the time. Therefore, it is essential to conduct online on boarding training program to increase employee retention rates.
• Another issue is lack of awareness of progression opportunities in the retail industry. It is not easy for employees to monitor their progress, resulting in leaving before exploring their work profiles.
• It is essential for employees to have a good internet connection or access to different mobile devices. This helps figure outthe real potential of retail employees and provide the right content at the right time.

Retail industry use learning technologies for the following training types:

• Product training to ensure that employees have relevant information and knowledge about products, so that they can communicate confidently with their customers.
• Compliance training to ensure employees are able to work efficiently after completing initial health and safety training, food safety training and others.
• Induction training to motivate workers to speed up and decrease staff turnover.

Out-of-the-box E-Learning Solutions

As the retail industry is becoming more familiar toadvanced technologies, it is time to think about integrating those technologies innovatively. Let us discuss few tips on thinking innovative and creating out-of-the-box courses:

1-Impart training on priority

It is important to consider training as a priority, resulting in reduced infrastructure costs and increasing workplace productivity. Training in retail sector can be reinforced by paying employees for excess hours, giving incentives and road maps to aspirational positions.

2-Mobility

Enabling employees to access training material on their personalized devices as per their convenience.

3-New age LMS

A more effective and open LMS is needed to facilitate learning by solving problems on the shop floor and providing bite-sized content. It fits every training need and enables successful delivery of content to the learners.

4-Reward learners

A reward system is implemented where participants earn points on successful completion of course. Learners can share their resultson social mediaplatforms and redeem awards for the same from their companies.

5-On-the-job training

It is delivering training content whenever and wherever required. On-the-job training helps providing quick access to relevant information on a mobile device, thus ensuring an exceptional learning experience.

6-Scenario-based learning

Today, most of the organizations have shifted from traditional instructor-led training to advanced digital learning environment. Various authoring tools can be used to develop scenario-based learning, where learners can learn with the help of scenarios. This helps employees to put their skills into work before hitting the retail floor.

E-Learning offers incredible benefits to the retail industry. Workforce access e-courseware via smartphones and tablets, leading to higher completion rates. Simulation, learning games as well as virtual reality also holds great prominence in this domain. It is important for organizations to ensure that LMS supports these features, thereby delivering seamless training experience. With the help of technology, organizations can leverage the benefits of customized e-learning solutions to effectively train their retail staff.