Stocking store shelves and
running cash registers may not require lots of
hard-to-find skills, but these tasks do require
reliable people willing to take on flexible
hours or less-desirable time shifts, often with
little supervision. Three companies in the busy
retail food sales industry filled these types of
jobs efficiently with the appropriate use of
technology, help from consultants and a
well-thought-out staffing plan.Identifying NeedsKellogg Co. is one organization that uses an
army of part-time employees to stock its
products on shelves at retailers and grocery
stores around the country.
“We need reliability because these aren’t
full-time jobs. It’s up to 20 hours a week, and
there can be odd schedules. It requires people
who can work autonomously,” says Cyd Kilduff,
who was director of staffing for Kellogg when
the company decided to hire its own employees to
stock shelves, instead of relying on workers
from a third-party vendor. The change came after
Kellogg acquired Keebler in 2001.
“Our customers are large retailers and
grocery stores. They need to keep fresh product
on the shelf. We need people in the stores all
hours of the day and on weekends,” she says,
adding, “We tend to run very lean. We don’t have
a lot of backup, so it’s important that we fill
positions quickly and keep fully staffed.”
In addition to flexibility, Kellogg seeks
part-time workers with strong customer service
skills. “They have to be able to talk with
people in grocery stores and represent Kellogg
in a positive manner. They have to have
interpersonal skills.”
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Walking the Walk
The RightThing practices what it preaches.
The company’s staff is made up of 45 part-time
employees and 57 full-time employees. Most are
part of the company’s Candidate Care Center,
which handles phone interviews with prospective
job candidates.
Part-time employees submit their availability
to the master schedule on a two-week cycle. Job
candidates are able to schedule themselves
online, and the system links that candidate to
an employee who has that time slot available,
says Sarah Thigpen, a company spokeswoman.
“Part-timers choose their own days and hours,
including evenings and weekends, which has
proven useful for a variety of people, including
stay-at-home moms. It’s a way for us to tap into
quality workers who may not have 40 hours a week
to give.” Because workers are able to choose
their own schedules, “our turnover rate has been
less than 2 percent since we opened our doors in
2003,” Thigpen says. |
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Staffing Up
Kellogg hired about 1,700 part-time workers
during an eight-week period, all done over the
web, Kilduff says.
The company’s time-tracking system created
special challenges when trying to entice some
part-timers. “We’re talking about a population
that may not be computer-savvy or have computer
access. [But] once the people came on board,
they would be reporting all their time online.
To have one of these jobs, the person would have
to have computer access. We worked hard at
communicating all the ways people could get
access,” such as using libraries and Internet
cafes.
To find the right workers, Kellogg turned to
The RightThing Inc. Kilduff praised the company
for having good suggestions about where to find
a flexible workforce.
“We typically don’t do part-time hiring. They
brought a certain expertise. We need jobs
anywhere there are grocery stores, and,
[especially] in rural areas, it’s not easy to
come up with candidates. The challenging thing
was, we couldn’t say exactly where we needed
people … there were hundreds of locations.”
The RightThing came up with a profile of the
ideal employee that Kellogg was looking for,
says Jaime Minier, vice president and project
manager for the Kellogg account.
The company interviewed “retirees, moms and
college students. They wanted people who are
dependable, neat and orderly. They had to be
independent and motivated,” he says. “They had
to have flexibility in their schedules.
Sometimes they have to work at 5 in the
morning.”
Kellogg has hired an additional 700 part-time
workers since it switched from using the
third-party vendor’s employees, and the company
has been “extremely pleased with the quality of
the pool of candidates,” Minier says. “We can go
to the pool quickly,” he notes, which is vital,
because stocking the shelves is “a very critical
aspect of the business.”
Kilduff notes that about 60 percent of the
new Kellogg employees had previously been
employed by the third-party contractor.
“However, it was important to us that everyone
be treated in an equitable manner. Everyone had
to apply to be considered against the same
criteria,” she notes.
Guiding Busy Managers
“There’s always a concern when you need to
hire a lot of people in the field. There are a
lot of hands in the process. [But the process]
needs to be the same in Timbuktu as in
Kalamazoo.” Managers around the country all need
to be trained, Kilduff says, adding, “The key is
to have the same process to follow.”
Kellogg district managers within the snacks
organization are responsible for hiring new
part-time workers, and “this project was
layering a lot more work on top of their busy
jobs,” she says. “We really had to work with The
RightThing to get to a process that wasn’t
overly burdensome.” Or time-consuming: “We need
[district managers] out there selling product.”
So The RightThing developed a toolkit to walk
the approximately 260 managers step-by-step
through the hiring process. Managers received
instructions via the Internet and a timeline for
the project.
“One of the largest successes we had was
making sure we had everybody on board,” Minier
says. The hiring process was standardized, and
“everything was real time. The Internet drove
the process; it was the main tool for
communicating with managers throughout the
project. They could gain information when it was
convenient for them.”
Managers reported back that the process
worked well, Kilduff says. But was it
cost-effective? “We didn’t have anything to
compare it to. We hadn’t done this type of
hiring before. But, on a per-head basis, it was
very reasonable. We look at the overall value,
not just one element of cost. The ability to get
these people in and working quickly was really
the core of the value,” she says.
Building Databases
For Robert Neveu, executive vice president of
First Advantage Process Hiring Management
Systems, the key to part-time hiring “is finding
candidates who have availability for the shift
you’re hiring for. It’s not necessarily
skills-driven; it’s schedule-driven. You need to
ask what days, what hours [the applicant] can
work so you can score and rank the person
appropriately.”
First Advantage, formerly Projectix, helps
supermarket chains Food Lion and Hannaford Bros.
Co. track applicants and hire part-time workers.
Both chains are members of Delhaize America, the
U.S. division of Brussels-based Delhaize Group.
Hannaford recently began working with First
Advantage “to have the best processes in place
for hiring. That’s no longer having an applicant
walking in the door to fill out a paper
application,” says Kevin Carleton, director of
retail automation. “Our applicants fill out
forms once, and the information automatically
populates our database.”
First Advantage allows customers to track and
review applicants in a variety of ways,
according to Neveu. “With hourly workers,
[companies] often want behavioral assessments.
With salaried, it’s more interviews and
personal-based assessment. The emphasis is on
resumes and credentials.”
Finding applicants willing to work weekends
or nights can be difficult, so “when a really
good candidate comes in, the system can be set
up to e-mail or page the manager. That way the
manager can get to the candidate quick before he
walks across the street and is hired by a
competitor,” Neveu says.
At Food Lion, which has been working with
First Advantage for three years, candidates can
apply on the web or at an in-store kiosk.
“They key data in a user-friendly
environment. It creates an application for them
and captures and stores the document,” Neveu
says. The company can ask screening questions
about a specific job. “If it’s a cashier
position, you can ask Have you been a cashier
before?’ You can have dynamically driven
questions based on the job they pick.”
Sharing Vital Knowledge
There’s also a valuable “knowledge-sharing
component” for Food Lion. In the days of paper
and pencil, while an applicant might have been
willing to work for several stores in the chain
located near one another, only the store where
the application was filled out would have had
access to the candidate’s information.
“Now [the store] can search the database
instead of advertising,” Neveu says, which saves
time and money.
Stephenie Overman
is a freelance writer and editor based in
Arlington, Va. She frequently writes about human
resource issues.
Reprinted with the permission of HR Magazine published by the Society for Human Resource Management (www.shrm.org), Alexandria, VA. |
