Retail Employee Onboarding Checklist

A step-by-step process for retail employee onboarding

Introduction:

Before first day:

Gather basic information

Prepare paperwork

Approval:

Send welcome email

Add hire to email lists

Schedule welcome meeting

Assign a mentor

Notify relevant department

[CONDITIONAL] Link employee handbook

First day:

Introductory session

[CONDITIONAL] Read through employee handbook

Tour facility and work areas

During the first week:

Set objectives

Read though company objectives

Training for telephone system

Provide resources for any repairs

Make a list of used software and hardware

Within the first month:

Assign project

Assess performance

Schedule performance review meeting

Continue communication

Sources:

Related checklists:

Introduction:

New employees who are offered a well structured onboarding program are 69% more likely to remain in the company for up to 3 years. Unfortunately, most retail firms don't have a proper onboarding process in place. Many companies are informal or distant about the way they induct new employees, which results in statistics like:

Half of all senior outside hires fail within 18 months in a new position
Half of all hourly workers leave new jobs within the first 120 days

Failures like these can be avoided with a good onboarding system. According the SHRM onboarding research paper, Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success, good onboarding was found to lead to:

Higher job satisfaction
Organizational commitment
Lower turnover
Higher performance levels
Career effectiveness
Lowered stress

Let’s jump into this retail employee onboarding checklist to help ensure your new hire successfully integrates into your company with ease.

Before first day:

Learn more about employee onboarding with Process Street.

Gather basic information

Before the onboarding process can begin, you’re required to prepare any necessary paperwork and information before your new hire’s first day. You can start preparing this paperwork by recording the following information in the form field below:

Employee first name

Employee last name

Start date

Preferred contact method

If other, please specify

Do you have an employee handbook?

Prepare paperwork

When hiring a new employee you need to remember the basics - all forms must be intact and passed on to the HR department. Save copies of these vital forms using the form fields below.

W-4 Form

File will be uploaded here

I-9 Form

File will be uploaded here

Intellectual Property and Assignment Agreement

File will be uploaded here

Non-Disclosure Agreement

File will be uploaded here

W-4 form

I-9 form

Intellectual property and assignment agreement

Non-disclosure agreement

If you require some examples of the necessary forms, see below.

Intellectual property and assignment agreement (Customizable example)
Non-Disclosure agreement (Customizable example)

You can also edit what paperwork you want to upload during this onboarding process by adding the workflow to your library and clicking 'Edit.'

Approval:

Prepare paperwork

Will be submitted

Send welcome email

Once you've provided the new hire with their company email, you can send a welcome mail to this address. This can also be an opportunity to remind them of their start date and keep them interested in this new position.

Add hire to email lists

Next up, you need to add your employee to any email lists you have for the rest of the team.

If your internal mailing list is powered by MailChimp or another similar service, you are likely to be familiar with the process already.

If not, it's highly recommended to use Mailchimp for both internal notifications and marketing campaigns.

An alternative to email is Slack, which is what we use to keep our employees at Process Street in the loop.

If your company uses Slack, you can go ahead and invite your new employee with their company email address.

Schedule welcome meeting

One stage of the onboarding process should be getting the new employee well-acquainted with their co-workers.

Throwing a welcome event is a great way to do this, so add a date in the company calendar for this.

Welcome meeting date

Assign a mentor

When assigning a mentor, be clear about their roles. Identify the criteria and expectations to ensure the mentor is fully aware of their duties. Record the assigned mentor with the form field below.

Don't follow the job title hierarchy or pick a person with a higher job title or a person that has been in the company the longest.

Instead, it’s best to find a person who knows the most about the tasks regardless of their job title. Tasks for mentors might include:

1

Ensuring the new hire is familiar with the product
2

Keeping understand company processes
3

Understanding the competition
4

Explaining the company culture
5

Being the person a new hire can come to if any problems occur

Notify relevant department

⚡️ You could automate this step by setting up an integration with Slack

You should let the rest of your team know that a new teammate will be arriving shortly. Sending an email is a great way to ensure they know to welcome a new face to the team.

Add the recipients who should be informed about this new hire's arrival. These recipients should be added in the 'Cc' section of this email widget.

[CONDITIONAL] Link employee handbook

An employee handbook is an excellent way to help your new hire understand your company culture and the relevant information for their role.

If you have a handbook, you can include it into Pages and provide the link in this workflow to help provide the new employee with easy access.

First day:

These tasks should be completed by the end of the employee's first day.

Introductory session

Introductory session date

Five9 recommends you to follow this process for an introductory session that will make new hires feel at home:

1

Greet new employees and show them their workspace
2

Present a fun gift that reinforces your company culture
3

Describe your contact center’s vision, mission, and passion
4

Explain the importance of the new employee’s role
5

Pair your employee up with an experienced buddy/sponsor/mentor
6

Get an executive to welcome the new arrival
7

Make sure everyone has a buddy or fellow new-hire to chat with at lunch

The goal of the introduction session is to introduce everyone and create an awesome environment.

When this is done, they should feel ready to get on with their first assignments.

(Source: smallbusiness.chron.com & tmcnet.com)

[CONDITIONAL] Read through employee handbook

To get a better idea of the company you're working for, you can read through the employee handbook. Here are the sections you should be paying attention to. You can tick each one off once you've finished reading through the relevant section.

1

Introducing the company history, policies, and procedures
2

Explaining the time off policy and benefits
3

Explaining mission statement
4

Discussing employee behavior
5

Explaining dress code
6

Defining pay and promotions
7

Informing about benefits
8

Informing about reporting procedures
9

Talking about smoking restrictions
10

Discussing expense claims
11

Notifying about legislation
12

Going over safety procedures

Tour facility and work areas

A full tour lets new employees feel comfortable in the area while giving them a chance to meet their co-workers.

During the tour (perhaps using your phone) tick off the below sub-checklist items to make sure you don't miss anything.

1

Restrooms
2

Break/lunch rooms
3

Kitchen, including any department procedures/norms
4

Closest dining hall, coffee/tea location, and vending machines
5

Local lunch options and locations
6

Supply room, including any department procedures/norms
7

Emergency and first aid supplies
8

Photocopy, fax machine, and scanner (including instructions on use)
9

Mail Room
10

Transportation services and stops

(Source: welcome.mit.edu)

During the first week:

These tasks should be completed by the end of the employee's first week.

Set objectives

It's crucial to give your new hire a sense of direction. Setting objectives is a great way to help them understand what they're ultimately working towards.

Go deeper into the key ideas laid out by the mission statement and explain the goals and objectives of your company.

This includes the value you try to provide to customers and employees, as well as the job performance standards you try to maintain.

You can use Pages to construct your mission statement and performance standards. From here, you can share the link below for easy access.

Read though company objectives

This is the link you can use to access the company's objectives. This can help provide you with a better understanding about what your role is and the responsibilities you should be upholding.

Tick each subtask off once you're read the relevant topic:

1

Mission statement
2

Performance standards

Training for telephone system

If you use a landline telephone system, make sure your new employees are familiar with the system including:

1

Extensions
2

Transferring calls
3

Calling different departments
4

Using the answering machine

You can do this through a training session, which you can schedule below:

Telephone system training session

Provide resources for any repairs

In the event that something goes wrong, you need to also let your employee know who to contact and how to get through to them. Fill in the form fields below with the relevant details to then pass on.

When creating this document, it's crucial to remember to provide:

1

IT technician's name and phone number
2

Non-technical breakage instructions
3

Contact information of repair staff
4

General IT department information

Pages is a great place to keep this information. You can provide a link to this information for easy access.

Make a list of used software and hardware

List the different software and hardware they will need to use so your employee can check off what they already know.

This is the perfect time to create your own sub-checklist!

We've provided a few basic items in the one below, but go through and edit it to your specific requirements.

1

Cash Register
2

Card Machine
3

CRM

Address training for any new systems over a meeting

Tech training session

Within the first month:

Tasks should be completed within the employee’s first month of employment.

Assign project

After the employee has been trained you need to assign them to their first task.

Possible onboarding projects might include:

Managing the register for a fixed amount of hours
Handling orders and deliveries
Managing a department
Helping with customer returns

Plan this project in the form field below and ensure you cover the following when detailing this assignment to the new hire:

1

What will be the end result of the assignment? Will it be newly created or updated?
2

What will the desired outcome look like? (Provide examples, if possible.)
3

How will success be measured?

Project description

Purpose of this project

Desired outcome

Assess performance

The goal of a performance review is to provide feedback on what the employee is doing right and what needs improvement. In your performance cover these areas:

1

Quality and quantity of work: accuracy, thoroughness, productivity and goal attainment
2

Communication and interpersonal skills: teamwork, cooperation, listening, persuasion and empathy
3

Planning, administration and organization: goal setting, prioritizing and profit orientation
4

Leadership: accessibility, responsiveness, decisiveness, collaboration and delegating
5

Job knowledge and expertise: knowledge base, training, mentoring, modeling and researching
6

Attitude: dedication, loyalty, reliability, flexibility, initiative, energy and volunteering
7

Ethics: diversity, sustainability, honesty, integrity, fairness and professionalism
8

Creative thinking: innovation, receptiveness, problem solving and originality
9

Self-development and growth: learning, education, advancement, skill building and career planning

You can use this new employee performance evaluation form as an example.

(Source: businessnewsdaily.com)

You can then create a document detailing the topics labeled above in Pages and link it below:

Schedule performance review meeting

Once you've completed this performance review, you can schedule a meeting with your new hire to provide feedback on their first project.

Performance review meeting

Continue communication

Now that the onboarding process is complete, your new hire should be working with limited supervision. Nonetheless, you should continue communication with them to ensure you're providing direction. Here are some things you could cover with them moving forward: