Here’s How Dollar General Is Advancing Its Training Programs
As we move further through the COVID-19 crisis, businesses all over the world are having to rethink how they carry out almost every element of their business.
Outside of how to serve customers in the safest and most effective way possible, perhaps the most significant of these transformations can be found in how staff are recruited, deployed, and managed. HR officers have been working hard to make sure new and returning staff have everything they need to continue serving customers and managing inventory, while remaining safe and healthy.
Dollar General is one such retailer and the Goodlettsville, Tennessee headquartered retailer has been revamping its training programs in order to better facilitate staff development.
Employee Training
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with an increased need for staff training. Even veteran retail staff are having to learn a whole new set of rules and guidelines to carry out their work – from how to deal with customers who refuse to wear a mask, to sanitization and testing protocols. Likewise, new employees have all this to learn alongside regular brand training programs.
Because all employees are at various stages of their training, there is no one size fits all solution available. Ideally, training should be bespoke and personalized to the employee it’s designed for and should aim to tackle their own skill and knowledge gaps. However, in the fast-paced world of retail HR, this kind of personalized training program can be difficult to organize and deliver, with many brands choosing to partner with a third-party platform to do so.
This is exactly what Dollar General has recently done, choosing to partner with training platform and content marketplace provider, Axonify to help it deliver personalized and continuous business learning and development to its roughly 160,000 strong workforce of dedicated and hardworking employees.
"In an effort to continue to innovate our training initiatives, we required a modern learning partner that offered personalized, scalable training that fits within the flow of work, engages employees and supports the business while reducing time to train," said Dollar General's Vice President of Talent Management, Lori Bremer. "Axonify’s front-line-forward vision was a natural fit for DG as we strive to empower our associates to deliver the very best customer experience."
Axonify is a platform widely used by food retailers and understands the challenges of that industry when it comes to facilitating the ongoing training of its people. The digital Axonify platform allows employers to measure employee training progress more accurately and consistently to better craft personalized programs which tackle the areas they most need improvement in.
The platform is also fully mobile enabled, which means Dollar General doesn’t need to invest significant money into procuring devices for the new training programs and can leverage pre-existing technology to deliver its content.
"Dollar General’s mission of Serving Others, and thereby serving its employees, is absolutely commendable, and we are proud to further support that mission as a critical partner," said Cofounder and CEO of Waterloo, Ontario-based Axonify, Carol Leaman. "Whether onboarding a new sales associate, rolling out a new technology or product, or communicating company policies, a modern approach to training that evolves from a one-size-fits-all method is critical for today’s front-line employees."
Axonify
The Axonify platform aims to make on the job training fun and engaging, by doing away with stuffy classrooms and long boring seminars and providing bite-sized and convenient mobile-first modules which employees can quickly and easily slot into their day.
Axonify claims it gets 83% of workers logging in between two and three times per week, which shows an engagement rate most people can only dream of. Dollar General’s staff will gain instant access to the content they need most and be provided with all the statistics they need to demonstrate what is working and which areas need more attention by seeing how training is directly affecting KPIs
"As a rapidly growing company, we are proud to provide individuals with opportunities to start or advance their careers while serving as a positive economic presence in each community we call home," said Dollar General’s EVP and Chief People Officer, Kathy Reardon. "The power of coupling our mission of serving others with one of our key operating priorities, investing in our diverse teams through development, empowerment and inclusion, makes DG an employer of choice, and we look forward to welcoming new employees to come grow with our DG family this spring."
Final Thoughts
Training is complex and it can be difficult for brands to deliver essential content in a manner which is convenient and engaging for their staff. However, innovative retailers such as Dollar General understand that it’s often better to turn to an expert in their field than to try and be a jack-of-all-trades oneself.
You can hear Dollar General’s Director of Talent Acquisition, Brooke Menchaca, speak at HR Retail 2022, taking place in April at the Hyatt Regency Austin, TX.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.