The holiday season is a crucial period for retailers in Australia, often requiring the hiring of additional casual staff to manage increased customer demand. However, with this influx of temporary workers comes the need for comprehensive retail compliance training. This training is not just a legal requirement but a vital component in ensuring smooth operations, customer satisfaction, and brand protection during one of the busiest times of the year.
Retail compliance training requires ongoing attention. Given the frequent changes in legislation, it’s essential that retailers adopt a proactive approach to this legislative requirement to ensure their employees receive regular updates and refresher training.
Comprehensive compliance training for casual Christmas staff in Australian retail is therefore not just a regulatory obligation but a strategic investment. It ensures that temporary employees are equipped to handle the unique challenges of the holiday shopping season while upholding the retailer’s standards, legal obligations, and brand reputation.
It’s also vitally important that both contractors and permanent employees have access to the same training benefits. This ensures there are no gaps in knowledge, that any staff member is capable of responding well to an emergency situation, or that they are able to deal with difficult customers, internal conflict, and related issues with ease.
Strategically, thorough retail compliance training demonstrates a retailer’s commitment to their employees, customers, and the broader community. It reflects a responsible business approach that values integrity, safety, and excellence in service delivery.
Reasons Why Retail Compliance Training is Sometimes Deprioritised
One of the questions we’re regularly asked when consulting with our clients is “As temporary employees, do they really need the same level of training as permanent employees?“
Yes, they do!
There are several reasons why Australian retailers may not be aware their casual staff need compliance training. For instance, smaller retailers or those new to the industry may not fully understand their legal responsibilities regarding staff training, especially for temporary workers.
Roadblocks to effective retail compliance training include cost considerations, where this training is seen as an additional expense with no return on investment after the holiday season is over. Retailers may also assume that casual staff – especially those with previous retail experience – already possess the necessary compliance knowledge to just “fit in”.
Outdated onboarding practices and a reliance on informal, on-the-job training to get casual retail staff “up to speed” most times do not adequately include the necessary compliance issues that formal training highlights. A lack of awareness about the potential legal and financial risks of having untrained staff can further complicate things.
Overlooking the complexity of modern retail, misunderstanding of liability, and the hectic nature of holiday preparations often leads to compliance training not being as fully appreciated by all retailers as it should be. This, in turn, can lead to retail compliance training being deprioritised as a business imperative.
What is Retail Compliance Training?
The Retail Doctor Academy offers compliance training for retail staff in the following two disciplines, with additional modules added on a bespoke basis:
1. Workplace Health and Safety
2. Discrimination and Harassment
Additional modules that support and complement compliance training include:
3. Selling Skills
4. Emotional Selling
5. Difficult Customer Conversations
Another question we get asked a lot is “Retail compliance training is too hard and takes too long. How can we shorten the learning curve, while making it easy for our people to follow along?”
Rest assured, our ready-made modules are designed to get your staff started quickly and affordably, with easy-to-follow online learning that’s going to get them through mandatory retail compliance training in under an hour!
Critical Compliance Training Needs
Here’s what you need to know about this critical training.
1. Work Health and Safety (WHS)
There are a number of differing activities and workplaces within the retail industry, and each of these present their own safety challenges. However, it should be noted that there are similar groupings of injuries, such as:
- Long hours standing
- Repetitive physical movements, like reaching for stock
- Lifting and moving heavy objects or boxes
- Working with dangerous chemicals
- Slips, trips, and falls
- Cuts in packaging or burns in food preparation
- Electric shock
- Dealing with stress from harassment, bullying, or abuse
The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (updated 1 July 2024) mandates that employers provide a safe working environment and appropriate training for all full-time employees, as well as casual staff. This includes appropriate training on injury prevention, evacuation procedures, and emergency protocols – especially in crowded holiday shopping scenarios.
Best practice retailers will have their own WH&S policies and procedures that are aligned to state and federal legislation. The Retail Doctor Academy WH&S Compliance module addresses the following essential training components:
- Compliance with the appropriate WH&S legislations.
- Implementation of the retail business’s WH&S procedures.
- Identification and reporting of hazards.
- Correction of unsafe practices and methods.
- Continually monitoring and evaluating compliance with procedures and working conditions.
- Provide and maintain safety equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE).
- Ensuring that enough team members are assigned to complete tasks safely.
- All new team members are trained on safe work methods and practices.
- Emergency evacuation plans and fire safety.
- First aid awareness and location of medical supplies.
- Specific safety protocols related to the retail environment (e.g., ladder safety, electrical safety, proper lifting techniques, and more.
2. Discrimination and Harassment
Discrimination in the workplace occurs when an employee or casual member of staff is made to feel less equal than their peers and coworkers. This means they’re treated less favourably than others due to their personal characteristics, such as their gender or sexual orientation, their age, race, religion, and more.
Discrimination in retail may be direct (someone is treated unfairly compared to others in the same or similar circumstances) or indirect, where policies or business practices appear neutral at first yet disadvantage certain groups of people. The effects of discrimination are felt by both team members and customers.
Harassment in the workplace occurs when an employee or casual member of staff is the target of unwelcome attention or conduct, resulting in inappropriate behaviours that may manifest as verbal, physical, or sexual abuse. Bullying may also be physical or verbal, and in some instances, employees may feel intimidated or threatened by the behaviours of a cyber bully on social media, in messaging apps, or via offensive images.
Employers have a responsibility towards their employees – whether permanent or casual – to ensure that those employees are treated fairly. Anti-discrimination and harassment laws protect employees and contractors against discrimination and harassment, ensuring equal rights, opportunities, and access for all.
So far as is reasonably practicable, control measures should be put in place to minimise the risks of all types of workplace discrimination and harassment. These risks can be minimised by taking a pro-active approach to its prevalence through early identification of unreasonable behaviours or situations that are likely to increase the risk of discrimination or harassment occurring.
The risk of workplace discrimination and harassment can further be minimised by creating and promoting a positive work environment where everyone is treated fairly and with respect.
BOOK A COMPLIMENTARY D&H CHECKUP NOW
Essential Compliance Add-On Training Needs
To complement the retail compliance training modules above, your casual staff need to feel as if they’re competent enough to manage the stress the holiday period invariably brings. There are a number of ways to ensure they are motivated and inspired, despite needing to deal with difficult customers or navigating the complexities of a new workplace.
Here’s what you need to know about this essential add-on training.
3. Selling Skills
Fit retailers are committed to delivering best practice, are obsessed with constant improvement, and are open to change. This includes elements of what constitutes discrimination or harassment, and being able to recognise those differences in their customers so as not to offend.
The Retail Doctor Academy’s Selling Skills module helps your staff better understand the customer and their needs. From welcoming the customer to opening the sale and overcoming customer hesitation, Selling Skills is designed to probe the customer gently, extracting essential information about their pain points, while also teaching staff to listen with empathy and understanding to what the goal or problem is that needs to be solved.
Establishing the customer’s reason for purchase means you can present your product range in a way that increases the likelihood of a sale. Concepts our module covers include add-on sales, cross-selling, and upselling.
BOOK A COMPLIMENTARY SELLING SKILLS CHECKUP NOW
4. Emotional Selling
Up to 95% of customer decision-making is driven by emotions! Therefore, going beyond simple product knowledge, store layout, or product placement to connect with a customer’s emotions can help your staff create a retail experience that will stand out from that of your competitors.
Your customers all want different things, have different objectives, and different personalities which drive their emotional needs and motivations. Though all unique, the one thing that connects all your customers is the need to find a solution to their problem.
To connect with our customers, we must discover what the concept of value means to them on an emotional level. The better you are at connecting emotionally with your customer and finding the pain points your product or service addresses, the easier you’ll find it to close sales.
The Retail Doctor Academy’s Emotional Selling module builds on our award-winning and proprietary Limbic Insights™ principles, which recognises that customers can be divided into segments based on their emotional needs. This segmentation provides retail staff with the ability to align their product or service benefits to the customer’s needs, motivations, and personalities, further increasing the likelihood of a sale.
BOOK A COMPLIMENTARY LIMBIC INSIGHTS™ CHECKUP NOW
5. Difficult Customer Conversations
In the retail industry, we often encounter various challenging or difficult conversations that may need to be managed carefully to maintain positive customer relationships. There are several types of difficult conversations with customers – either as a part of or outside of the sales process – but with the right guidance and practice, these conversations can become easier to manage well.
The Retail Doctor Academy’s Difficult Customer Conversations module focuses on creating an excellent customer experience for all different types of customers and scenarios that can occur within the retail sales process, building on learning outcomes from our Selling Skills and Advanced Selling Skills modules to deepen the customer relationship.
Our Difficult Customer Conversations module covers aspects of the sale such as customer expectations, uncertainties, and barriers to the sale to help employees create positive conversations.
Where to Next?
Ultimately, investing time and resources in high-quality retail compliance training for both your casual Christmas staff and your permanent employees is an essential strategy for Australian retailers aiming to navigate the holiday season successfully, while building a foundation for long-term success and sustainability in the retail industry.
Let’s get you compliant. Contact The Retail Doctor Academy for your free, no-obligation training needs assessment today.