By Alexandra Greer, Manager, Member Services, FMI
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Pre-COVID-19, FMI partnered with grocery industry specialist Harold Lloyd to debut a new webinar education series for store directors and store managers designed to help stores and teams operate at their greatest. The first webinar took place on March 3rd and focused on time management—a timely topic as the U.S. was hurtling towards a pandemic and grocery stores and their associates were suddenly on the frontline juggling numerous demands.
As weeks went by and the COVID-19 pandemic proved to change nearly daily, we decided to evolve the webinar series to meet changing needs because, as Lloyd reasoned, “There’s nothing more important both in times of crisis and times outside of a crisis than in-store communication.”
Our second webinar in the series focused on Effective In-Store Communication. From daily huddles to effective bulletin boards to team meetings and hand-written notes, Lloyd’s advice is not only practical, but it is also immediately applicable. Coming from a deep understanding of how supermarkets operates, Lloyd offers advice on what actions will not drastically change operations, but instead offer minor changes that have a major effect.
The third webinar will premiere on July 14th and focus on an employee’s first 30 days. As Lloyd emphasizes, turnover not only takes a financial toll, but also impacts store management’s time. Attendees will receive advice on how to mitigate the challenge and expense of employee turnover during their first 30 days of employment (the time period with the highest rate of turnover) with 12 best practices for effectively onboarding a new employee. Listeners can hope to increase the likelihood that a new employee will stay with the organization longer.
The webinar series will continue throughout the year, taking place every few months. We hope you will join us as Lloyd shares his best tips and famous Favorite Fotos as we all aim to improve our management skills during this unprecedented time.
Check out our webinar recordings library where you can listen to the first and second webinars from this series.