Sonia Matejko: and welcome to the webinar, Four Ways to Accelerate Retail Hiring and Reduce Candidate Drop-Offs. My name is Sonia Matejko, and I'll be your moderator. If you're hiring in retail, you know the challenge. High turnover, longer time to fill, and candidates dropping off mid-process. And with competition rising, hiring isn't just tough, it's getting tougher. In fact, the quit rate in U.S. retail and hospitality is the highest among sectors and is outpacing the overall U.S. quit rate by more than 70%. With rising competition for talent and shifting candidate expectations, retaining candidates requires a more streamlined, effective approach. And that's exactly what we're here to explore today. Here's a look at what we'll be discussing during today's webinar. We're tackling the biggest hiring challenges in retail, and more importantly, how to fix them. You'll hear four practical strategies backed by data and real-world examples that you can use to help you hire faster and reduce drop-offs. By the end, you'll walk away with actionable steps to empower you to create a better hiring experience for candidates and hiring teams alike. But before I introduce you to our speakers, let's cover a few housekeeping items. At the bottom of your screen, you'll find some application widgets for your use. These widgets are all resizable and movable, so feel free to move them around to optimize your desktop space. These slides will advance automatically throughout the presentation, but to enlarge your slides, click the enlarge slides button in the top right hand corner of your presentation window. We encourage you to submit questions using the Q&A widget throughout the presentation. We will try to answer all of your questions during the webcast, but if a fuller answer is needed or if we run out of time, it may be answered later via an email. Please know that we will capture all of your questions. And now with logistics behind us, I'm delighted to introduce you to today's speakers. First, we have Kristin Ditch from Checkr. As solutions marketing lead at Checkr, Kristin researches the impact of Checkr products and ensures Checkr's team are set up to provide the greatest value to their customers. Kristen has spent her career building customer-centric marketing programs at enterprise technology companies and loves working with Checkr's customers, large and small, to see the opportunities for their business with technology-led background checks. Welcome, Kristen.
Kristin Ditch: Hey there. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to today's discussion.
Sonia Matejko: Love it. Next up, we have Sarah Rose Haddam from Rippling. Sarah Rose is a people ops expert turned senior HR solutions consultant at Rippling. Before joining the Rippling team, Sarah's professional journey started in retail at both Apple and Crate & Barrel. She later transitioned to HR roles, combining her customer service skills with operational responsibilities. Now she spends her days blending her practical HR expertise with her Rippling technical know-how to help companies find the value in Rippling and supercharge their business goals. Welcome, Sarah. We're looking forward to learning from you today. Hi.
Sarah Rose Haddam: Thanks for having me.
Sonia Matejko: Thank you both for being here. And with that, let's confront reality. So in November 2024, Retail Dive reported that retail hiring hit a low not seen since before the pandemic. What's at the root cause? Before we really dig into this question with our expert guests, we wanted to ask you, our audience, about your biggest challenges in retail hiring right now. You should see a poll question and answer option on your screen now. The question is, what is your biggest challenge in retail hiring right now? Between hiring process length loses top talent, managing hiring processes across locations, or trying to efficiently reduce retail theft risk. Go ahead and submit your response now. And to repeat that question just one more time, what's your biggest challenge in retail hiring right now between hiring process length, losing top talent, managing hiring process across locations, or trying to efficiently reduce retail theft risk? All right. So it looks like most people are saying that managing hiring process across locations, one, is our biggest challenge. So let's now turn over to our experts to start to learn what these challenges are and what they're seeing in retail today. So, Kristen, let's start with you. Could you give us an overview of retail hiring today and how you've come to face the challenges we're seeing right now?
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, I'll start by providing sort of a macroeconomic view of what we're seeing in the environment. It really just feels like this industry has not fully recovered from all the turmoil that was experienced at the onset of COVID. I mean, it's almost hard to think back five years and wild to even say that it was five years ago, but retailers were, at that time, going through these massive layoffs, particularly with storefront employees, a little bit within warehouses. Just to adjust to all of the unknowns that we were all experiencing. But the reality was that those workers were still seeking employment elsewhere. A lot of them found comfort or flexibility in other industries. Checker works with over 90% of gig employers in the U.S., And in 2020, we could then see this massive ramp in background checks at gig companies as workers migrated over to those roles because it offered control of their hours, potentially the ability to take on more hours and thus have higher incomes. And the benefits of that flexibility have lingered. There are some projections that are saying that up to 50% of the U.S. workforce will engage in gig work by 2027. But then we also know that as consumers started to revive their spending habits, there were these massive increases in e-com sales that led to retailers needing to staff up in new places, in warehouses, and change the composition of who they were hiring for. But with warehouse employees, that's such a complex environment for retailers. And about 29% of total retail losses stem from internal theft, and warehouses are a frequent location of that. And so we'll get back into this in a little bit, but we see the background checks can definitely be a way to mitigate some of that risk. So I suppose the TLDR is that it's just kind of been a crazy environment for retailers in the last four years. I have so much empathy for retailers the challenges our audience today is facing.
Sonia Matejko: Thanks so much for setting the stage, Kristen. From your view, Sarah, based on your experience, what are the biggest hiring challenges?
Sarah Rose Haddam: You know, turnover in retail space, especially, I think is famously high, especially in entry-level positions. Like Kristen talked a lot about warehouse. I think about it like in a storefront and the positions there. I think the talent looking for retail positions really ranges from people who, in that scenario, looking for their first-time job, all the way over to like retirees who are looking for like a second or a part-time job. Of course, there are a lot of seasonal surges. So that said, it's a super large candidate pool that recruiters have to sit through and people are just putting in applications left and right. And if it's too hard or not accessible, not available via mobile, you know, they're not going to go ahead and put in the effort to actually put in an application. And so the pool can be really big, but it also can taper off in some ways. And I think another issue with hiring from the employee perspective is that there's often just this huge lack of transparency at the company and with the recruiting process. I tend to be a big advocate for transparency. in the hiring process in terms of how many interviews there will be the timeline to hire but also like compensation for the role some people don't find that out until they're actually being offered the position and i think having some of this transparency actually would probably generate more self-selection people weeding themselves in or out of roles and slim down that pool and actually attract people who are interested in the role
Sonia Matejko: It's a really great point on transparency, and I want to make sure that we come back to it in a little bit. And it's overall a tough reality. So let's talk about the best ways to turn it around. Sarah, I want to stay with you for a little bit here. Why or what is the first step that retailers can take?
Sarah Rose Haddam: Yeah, I mean, like I was saying before, it has to be convenient, right? If it's not easy for someone to do on their phone or while they're maybe commuting to pick up their kids or do whatever they're doing, then it's not going to happen. It won't work. I think it's why you see stats like this one on the screen here. Many times, even myself, I've seen a job post, and if it got too complicated or I had to reenter the information that I just had from my resume, I'm going to drop out, right? If it's not optimized for mobile, if I can't do it efficiently, maybe it took too long, then I would bail, especially at a role at that level. And I'm sure other candidates probably also drop out midway. Kristen, what about you?
Kristin Ditch: Kristen, what is your take? Yeah, yeah, definitely agree with you. We really have to meet talent where they are. We're seeing the same thing in the retail sector. Job seekers tend to be a little bit more active on mobile devices than in other sectors. That's something we kind of monitor to see where candidates are interacting and submitting some of their information. About two-thirds almost of applications come through on mobile devices. So definitely agree with what you're saying there, Sarah. I also just kind of thinking about some of the industries that we work with, I'm also just not surprised by this, right? Like there are these generational shifts that are starting to happen in the workforce. And for Gen Z, we see that Having those mobile first elements in their hiring process really is something that they're looking for in an employer. They want to see that the employer is technologically advanced. They want to feel like they're joining a modern company. There are a lot of values like that that are informing their decisions in employment. And so having a mobile first approach to some of your hiring process can definitely be an advantage in securing your top talent. Um, and then like this stat said, like more than half of candidates are going to just take the first role it's offered. So it can be a competitive advantage just with the reality of the industry. Like Sarah was saying, so many of these folks are just going to put in multiple applications. And if everyone's essentially paying the same hourly rate, then whoever, whoever is going to respond first and allow me to get started and start making money is going to be where I'm going to go. And so yeah, it's all about just alleviating friction. And like I said, I think it can be a huge advantage in changing candidates perceptions of your company as being a modern employer and tip things in the favor of your brand.
Sonia Matejko: That's really interesting. And I wonder what does mobile first look like anecdotally?
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, I mean, it's been a huge part of how our business has been founded, so I'll speak from our perspective. Our company was only founded 10 years ago, and so it's building for mobile first has just been a part of our company philosophy, as well as really building for candidates as much as for the employer. And so... For us, it looks like having the ability to upload documents from a mobile device, and maybe that's like an employment verification or an education verification or other supporting documents. For background checks, sometimes candidates need to be able to provide additional context for something that's going to come up on their records. We actually have a feature called Candidate Stories where You as the employer can solicit stories from the candidate to get some more color about what was going on, that maybe it was something that was just stupid that you did when you were a teenager and it's following you now as an adult, but has no real bearing or maybe you've learned things from it. So that extra context, being able to do it on a mobile device increases the completion rate of things like that, right? And then the last thing that I'll say, like we see a lot of retailers really gravitating towards the text-based notifications that we offer. So just like reminders to complete your check, reminders to provide that supplemental information if it's required. It's all just stuff that keeps candidates moving through the funnel. These mobile optimizations just eliminate friction, reduces candidate attrition. And when your market is this tough, you really just want to find every opportunity to keep candidates moving through the process. Yeah.
Sonia Matejko: And what about at Rippling?
Sarah Rose Haddam: Yeah, you know, at Rippling, our mobile experience is not just during the hiring process where someone submits their application, but it's also the onboarding process and beyond. So when someone accepts an offer, they receive their link with their offer, inviting them into the Rippling platform, and they're moved through signing all their documents, uploading all of that through e-signature. They can do their I-9, set up their direct deposit. If there's benefits, they can handle all of that enrollment as well and it all happens in just like one flow or one sitting so it's really hard for someone to forget like it's impossible actually for someone to like document or forget to do something um and even when they get and receive the background check like that's all coming through checker also on that experience as well And then, you know, if we think about Rippling as this more broad tool, even post-hire, that's where your employees can check their schedule, clock in and out, see their pay stubs, request time off if they need it. It's all in our mobile app, and it's super, super easy to use on the employee side. So actually having this entire experience available on mobile really eliminates the manager, whether a hiring manager or HR manager, to spend all this time focusing on those day one administrative, like, HR documents and focus more on the job training. That person's all signed in, all signed up, ready to go. They just need to go ahead and get into their actual job training versus all that paperwork because it was already handled online through Ripley and Checker.
Sonia Matejko: I love that. It sounds to me like going mobile creates ease for both parties. And you also both interestingly mentioned automation, which brings us to our next way. So how does automation help retailers facing high turnovers? Sarah, bouncing this back to you.
Sarah Rose Haddam: Yeah. Um, in in rippling's ATS, you can create all sorts of templates for things like recruiting emails. Um, you can have different versions of different emails. Maybe you want the language to be more personal or more related to your culture. Maybe you want more of a different tone for a rejection versus a soft rejection. So being able to like customize and automate a lot of that makes it really easy. You can also configure all these rules for the automation and rippling. If someone answers some questions on their application and they're a knockout, we'll automatically send a rejection and you can tell us to do it after two days. So being able to really configure the system in that way, I think is super helpful. When I was leading HR at one of my last companies, I had a rule that we would have to communicate with every single good candidate, bad candidate, indifferent, just as a matter of brand standards. That was like really, really important to me. And so using templates became this way to make it really more consistent and ensure that every candidate was being touched. Sometimes when we're getting, you know, 100 applications a day on a single role, if we're rejecting a candidate, they're going to get this email. If we are hiring them, they're going to get this email. And it just made it super, super easy. When the manager goes in to interview the candidate or collect feedback, we can have consistent form. So the managers are all asking the same questions, making sure that no one's getting a different set of questions or having a harder interview than someone else for the same role. And so in all these ways, you can do all of that and make it really easy experience. I think streamlining the communication and creating that process makes it better, again, for the administrator to just focus on the people and nurturing the candidate and for the candidate to ensure that they're being communicated with again, going back to that transparency thread and ultimately like just feeling like they are getting responded to, I guess. I guess the last thing I'll say on this is like I keep saying automation and configure and all these like big tech buzzwords. I think people get nervous that sometimes those things equal dollars, equal really expensive. But really, I think it's just a recycling of funds. Basically, when you are doing all of this upfront investment, not just the cash, but also the time and setting up all these templates and configuring the system to do what you want it to do. there's actually huge return on investment on the other end for your time. You're spending less time on those like administrative and like often redundant steps and more time, like I said, nurturing those candidates, making sure we're finding the right people.
Sonia Matejko: Yeah, and you mentioned the candidate experience and how automation can help create a better experience for those candidates by offering quicker or more consistent communication. And you also alluded to various ways that automation can improve hiring teams experience, which I'd love to dig in a little bit more with Kristen. Can you speak to that point?
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, so BirdChecker is a background check provider. We leverage a lot of integrations with HRIS and ATS systems to automatically collect a lot of candidate information that's already been put into one of those systems, extract that, and then use that information to initiate the background check so that those forms auto-populate a lot of the candidate information. HR isn't having to retype the same information the candidate hasn't isn't having to type the same information. It just alleviates a lot of manual data entry and honestly human error. It starts for us as soon as the background check is initiated or getting initiated. Since we know the candidate's location because their address is in one of these systems, When the background check consent email, that first email is getting sent, we can also just automatically through automation attach any locally required forms. This alleviates a lot of manual reviews by HR teams or even sometimes like high cost legal teams to understand what local forms are required. So this reduces compliance risk beyond just the human time savings. And then it creates a better candidate experience too, just around having that single touch point where everything lands versus to continually get hounded with additional forms, which I hear from customers was happening a lot when things were still very manual. And then after a check comes back, we use a lot of automation within the product on the back end that the HR teams might not even feel, but it's almost kind of one of those, the lack of noticing it is the power of automation, right? So we used automation to automatically filter what the team needs to review based on, as Sarah mentioned, like the upfront investment of digitally translating with the customer, their adjudication matrix, or translating some of their company's, like, policy or risk tolerance into a digital adjudication matrix. Um, this assessed product that we have, um, reduces manual reviews by up to like 90%, depending on if you're leveraging the, uh, all of the features that are available within it. Um, I like to think of this as almost like a flashlight. If before you were used to like having the whole room lit up and then there's a flashlight that really like narrowed what you had to focus on. That's amazing. Right? Like. That allows you to be able to go back and to Sarah's point, create a more meaningful experience or better quality touch points with your candidates. And that might be what shifts things in favor of your brand versus another to her points around like brand reputation and making sure that everyone felt special and felt loved. Another example of how things work on the backend that I just think is so cool. And maybe this is like the tech nerd inside of me, but I love how we're using automation to just accelerate the speed of the process. I was really shocked when I learned about how many background check providers are still throwing humans at this process. Literally like court runners who are just going to courthouses in 2025, mind boggling to me. but standing in lines and waiting to get this background check data. So we built the first background check API and have APIs built to over 60% of the courthouses in the U.S. so that we can collect this data in seconds. That's an automation that, like, an HR manager isn't going to necessarily witness firsthand, but it's something you're going to feel because then we can extract the data and then have the report produced for you in, like, under 15 minutes in some circumstances. And then we use these crazy large language models that are super impressive, that thank goodness there are engineers in the world who know how to build them. But take all of those large language models and then translate this complex courthouse language into just plain spoken English. So it's really easy to just take a look and know what you're reading. So yeah, like I said, those last two are kind of behind the scenes, but I do think there's just so many cool points of automation that hopefully alleviate complexity so that HR teams don't even know that it ever existed.
Sonia Matejko: Right. And you mentioned the 90% stat and I think one other, but are there any other data points you have about how much automation can really save, how much time it can save?
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, totally. What I think is super interesting for retailers, I think of retailers as a little bit more advanced than some of the other industries that I work with. But even then, with all of that quick adoption of new technology, we're still seeing that customers are reducing their manual time spent on background checks by almost 10%. It's eight and a half percent within the retail industry. So there's tons of gains to be made. Like I said, I talked a little bit about the data pipelines. The benefit of that is that 85% of our criminal background checks can be have a report for you in under 15 minutes. So if you're thinking about opening a new location, knowing that our audience is concerned about multi-location and how to manage that, the fact that we can return a background check in 15 minutes means that you can do a hiring sprint on one day and even get through the background check process the same day. So that's a huge advantage. And one last thing, this is totally selfish because I worked on this project and I love it, but just completed a total economic impact study with Forrester Consulting. And all of these micro efficiencies, package building, communications, like automated data pipelines, they do add up. And so this study that we commissioned reported that our customers were seeing on average at least five days faster of their total background check process from all of these different pieces. And that makes the difference between being able to extend an offer before the weekend or having to wait into the next week. And like we've said, that can make the difference in whether or not you win the candidate.
Sonia Matejko: Yeah, and we're talking a lot about time here. And we know that one of the biggest drains on time is managing disconnected tools. So let's talk a little bit about how integration could change that. Sarah, I'm going to hand it back off to you. What do you think integration offers employers who are struggling with retaining retail clients or candidates?
Sarah Rose Haddam: Yeah, candidates. Integrated systems, I think, in particular, what I see at Rippling is people working across different business suites, right? What do people in finance need to know if we need to involve IT in some scenarios? What does HR need to do in all of that? And So by having integrated systems, you can reduce a lot of those efforts that are like maybe manual or like happening outside of a system between internal teams. I mean, if I just think about like when I was hiring in my past life, I would have to wait for the hiring manager to like finish the recruiting process, pick a candidate, send me the details of the offer, write the offer, send it back to them to review, get it back, send it over through talkie sign. send the background check, like all of this stuff, right? It was just like such an administrative nightmare and like totally a time suck. And rippling is just like, we just built like all of our apps natively, right? The ATS automatically is going to like, when you say you want to hire that candidate, bring you into the onboarding flow. When you hire that candidate, send them what they need for payroll and benefits. It ripples. That's where we get our name, but it's all native. And then, Beyond that, we have like 600 integrations with tools like Checkr and your accounting system and other things. So the process and rippling after someone is hired, once you defined them in the ATS, you decided you like them, they actually just go through the flow to enter all of their offer details. It generates an offer letter. And when the employee receives it and signs it, they're not only like dropped into the flow and rippling to do all that other paperwork I talked about, but checker, like we have that API connection. So they're automatically getting our information to know that we need to launch a background check for that person. And they're getting that in like the next email from us after they sign their offer. So it really does make it, super easy. It's like a matter of two minutes of work I did on my end instead of maybe two hours of work I might have done on either end of the system or either end of the process, I guess I should say. Um, it makes it just so, so easy and they've executed now the employee has executed all these things that would have taken maybe a half a day or things I would have hunt them down instead rippling just doing it. So yeah, integration and all this automation, everything that we've talked about is, is huge.
Kristin Ditch: And Kristen, what's your take on this? yeah okay so if you are a retailer that has like a vertically integrated strategy and you have manufacturing counterparts what i'm about to say you can either never tell them or you can use it as bragging rights but i feel like our retail friends are a little bit more advanced than other industries like manufacturing in terms of their adoption of integrations um and like i said before just other technologies in general as well so um kudos to this audience for embracing automations um Like Sarah mentioned, there are so many systems that HR teams have to touch throughout the candidate process. Um, and I mean, it's just crazy. Right. And so our point of view is that the last thing that we want an HR leader to have to deal with is yet another system when they're trying to initiate the background check process, especially since like, let's be real background checks are not like super sexy. They're just like a very, uh, required part of the hiring process. Right. Um, mitigates a lot of risk for, for your business and maybe a compliance requirement. Um, so yeah, Yeah, we definitely want to reduce moving between systems. We really want to try to eliminate any of that friction that might slow down the hiring process. Because the last thing we want is for the background check to be the thing that stands between you and being able to onboard this candidate, especially if you have high turnover. Maybe you've got locations that really are pressed for good candidates. So we've got over 120 plug and play integrations. Rippling, of course, is one of them, as Sarah mentioned. And I think the other thing too is like not all integrations are created equal, right? And so making sure that you're looking at and asking those questions about like, how does the, can the data go back and forth between the systems? Like if we collect something during the background check, we can pass it back to Rippling and update things within their system. And so that's another great question to really be sure to ask to make sure that you are not just doing like the box check. Yes, they have an integration, but an integration that's going to, make your life meaningfully easier, save a lot of time and reduce data entry.
Sonia Matejko: I love that. And I'm sure our audience can agree is we can all use one less thing to worry about. And on that note, I think that that helps us move on to our last strategy, which is helping retailers worry less about retention. Sarah, I know that you've got some ideas here on how customization can help improve the candidate experience by offering greater transparency, which then leads to better retention. Do you care to start us off?
Sarah Rose Haddam: Yeah. You know, I guess we already talked about customizing things like email templates and the configuration and in Rippling ATS and beyond a little earlier. I also talked a little bit more or a little bit about being more transparent in the hiring process. And maybe I'll. bring that up again now. I think ultimately you have to do what's right for your company and your culture and any rules that you need to follow and all of that. But when you customize your hiring experience that allows some of that like inside company feel good to shine, I think that that really is worth so much weight. To me, I think You know, a lot of the reason that I talked about that candidates drop off is that maybe they didn't like what they saw in the recruiting process, like things took too long or something came through quicker or whatever, or the recruiting process was great. They loved it. It was quick. It was efficient, all of that. But then once they got there, it was like not really what they signed up for or expected. And there was kind of a misalignment of like what they felt in the interview process and what they feel as an employee. So I think customizing beyond just templates and like the interview process and all of that is worth it in the long run. But also. It gives you just this time back to focus again on that human experience, making sure that the administrative parts of recruiting are not taking all that time. That said, I think, again, like the other part of transparency there is like pay. I know employers like maybe people in our audience don't love to put the pay range on a job posting. It's so public and like I've been there. That's OK. I get it. And, but that's okay. Like maybe you do it in the job description after someone is like engaged in the recruiting process or maybe in some sort of email, I think just put it out there. The worst thing that'll happen is that you go through this process to recruit someone, you give them the offer. And at that point they say, Whoa, that's not enough or not what I was expecting. And now we've wasted some time on either end. So I think by just like being really intentional and customizing and preparing for this process kind of at every angle, it saves a lot of time and effort and emotional energy on the back end for both parties.
Sonia Matejko: Yeah, and to your point, Sarah, HRDive also previously reported on a survey that showed 80% of respondents said they would likely not apply to a job if the salary range wasn't there. So you're definitely onto something there. And beyond enabling better transparency in candidate communications, customization can also help retail hiring teams in streamlining their workflows. And Kristen, I'd love for you to speak about how.
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, so I touched a little bit before on that initial consent email that is required for... before we can run the background check, the candidate has to consent to that. And so Sarah touched a little bit around customization. I couldn't agree more. I'll kind of plus one a few of the things that she said. When those consent emails are sent with all of those localized forms based on the candidate's location, we can actually brand all of those communications. And it's a huge thing, especially just with making sure that the candidate never needs to know that the hr professional is going between systems right like they're looking for your brand in their inbox and so um we see that as a huge advantage for employers to make sure that the candidates can know what they're looking for respond continue going through the process especially for such a critical critical step in the process that has to be completed often um I was really surprised going back and referencing that TEI study that I mentioned before. I was so surprised at how often this came up in the interviews that Forrester Consulting did with our customers. Because to me, it just feels like a basic thing, right? Like, of course, we would offer the ability to remove our logo and put yours. But branded communications were... mentioned in all of the interviews as something that really helped just, like I said, instill that consistency in the brand presence that they wanted. And then the fact that that email is also just like automatic eliminates so many emails for the teams. These interviews were talking about how many back and forth communications they were accustomed to having with candidates. And when you're You're opening a new location and you're trying to staff up for every shift that you're going to have. The last thing that you need is for all of these communication reminders to be having to be sent manually. So it just gives back time for sourcing. It gives back time for. developing the candidate relationships, answering those unique questions. We have about 15% of our customers who leverage our API to actually just connect with in-house technologies too. Sarah mentioned native apps, but like on their own as well. And then in terms of transparency, our candidate portal also allows candidates to see how their check is progressing. And so this portal automatically updates their ETA, even calls out holdups on the check. So all of these are just ways that we can kind of keep things moving, keep things transparent for the customer and keep the candidate moving through the process.
Sonia Matejko: Very cool. Love to hear that. And we have certainly covered a lot already. And before we get to our Q&A portion, of all the helpful insights that both of you guys have shared, what do you want our listeners to walk away with the most? Kristen, want to kick us off?
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, I mean, gosh, in retail, things just move so quickly, and the turnover is so high. It was mind-boggling to me to hear that almost 70% of frontline workers are not going to be in their same role a year from now. So really just thinking about what's going to differentiate you, make your company be the one that the candidate selects first, and whether that's the reputation, the feel of the The experiences we've kind of talked about or just the speed of it can be huge. So we talked about mobile friendly solutions that can really make your hiring process stand out. I talked a little bit about speed in particular. That's something we really focus on at Checkr. But making sure that you're working with like advanced systems, leveraging automations, asking vendors that you're working with about automations that are running in the back end. Just so you can complete the hiring process faster and secure your favorite talent before they get scooped up by someone else. The worst case would be like going through every stage of these processes we've been talking about only to lose someone purely because one part of it didn't come back fast. And all these efficiencies really add up. So can't wait for the Q&A to hear what questions folks have about it.
Sonia Matejko: Agreed. But before we get there, Sarah, what's your take?
Sarah Rose Haddam: Yeah, I mean, I agree with Kristen. I think retail, we've said it, it's a really quick, fast-moving industry. Candidates rely on these jobs so much, and I think employers carry a lot of power in the hiring process. So I think simple adjustments like make it more easy for an employee to apply and find the position using technology like an ATS and a background check provider or something even as broad as Rippling that integrates with all these things to help file candidates through automate communication. It really goes a long way for both the employer and the employee. I think ultimately we've talked a lot about ROI, but customers who we find using a tool like Rippling really do see that incredible time savings so they can focus on more strategic work and less redundant administrative processes. So hopefully everything that we've shared today was helpful for the audience.
Sonia Matejko: Amazing. Thank you both. And with the time that we have left, let's go ahead and move on to that Q&A. So submit yours now if you haven't already. But with what we already have, Kristen, let's start with a big challenge. So hiring for warehouses. What's your advice for retailers struggling to fill those roles?
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, we hear a lot from retailers that hiring for a warehouse is a huge pain point for these teams. Studies are showing that turnover for warehouse roles is averaging almost 50%, 43% to 49% annually. So not quite as bad as what you're seeing in the storefront. And I don't know, like I said, it's such an interesting area to think about hiring because of the opportunity and the challenges that that area and that environment kind of poses. The National Retail Federation had a really interesting report that came out last year that was saying that retail shrink or like the theft loss is increasing. what was it, $110 billion a year problem in terms of lost inventory. So it's a huge factor for retailers, right? And it's estimated that it's like somewhere between like 30 and 60% of retailers all total loss is internal theft. And a lot of that's happening at warehouses where product can just kind of slip out the back door, maybe within transportation as well. We're seeing that too, where in transit it's happening. So we see background checks as being part of the solution. I mentioned our product checker assess before, and I'll plug it here. We have things, like I said, you can kind of put in your your risk tolerance, you can put in your adjudication matrix that a lot of teams, I think, have just living in like Excel docs or printed somewhere. And so you can have it set for things like theft charges, where if that's something that you are really sensitive about, you can go on ahead and have every one of those charges flagged so that you can review situationally or at a certain level or a certain severity or recency. It can go on ahead and flag those. So I definitely think that that's something that is a huge win in terms of just kind of blending automation with risk mitigation. And we were seeing like... going back to that study one last time just because i love it so much um like teams were able to redirect about 75 of their adjudication time by leveraging automation through checker ss so there's definitely huge wins but you don't have to use automation to like mitigate theft loss in a warehouse environment at the expense of um at the expense of feeling like you're really able to kind of control that high risk environment
Sonia Matejko: That's great. Thank you. All right, Sarah, this next one's for you. So can you tell us what's the strongest argument that retailers can bring to leadership to make a business case?
Sarah Rose Haddam: Yeah. I mean, I think it always goes back to return on investment. I think anytime anyone's ever asked me a question in any context like this, I always say that. And that's because like You know, technology is an extra cost, but it doesn't have to be cost prohibitive. I don't think you can really like if you put a dollar amount next to the amount of time that I was spending to do all these things over the course of hiring 25 people in three months, let's say. and then you recycle that and you multiply that by 12, and then you recycle that into the annual cost, which will like rippling, then like, I would be curious to see what that side-by-side comparison is because when you, I think the administrative tax, Oh, it'll take me five minutes. Oh, it'll take 30 minutes. That adds up where you can really be, again, spending that time more effectively focusing on the people and not the process. So when you, kind of compare those upfront costs and those tools compared to the time you're spending now, I think that you would find that the dollar to dollar is probably more affordable than you think. And my guess is that like you actually probably can't afford to not invest in retail at that or in technology at that point. You have to be sure that like you're leveraging the resources appropriately.
Sonia Matejko: Great, thank you. And we've got time for one more question here. So I know compliance is a big concern for HR leaders and let's address this one. So can you talk about compliance and how Checkr addresses it? Kristen?
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, I mean, gosh, like watching the news, like it just feels like every business's bottom line is so tight right now and retailers really seem to be under scrutiny as they're trying to figure out how rising costs are going to, whether or not they pass them down to consumers directly. And so compliance feels like an easy win in the sense that no one needs to worry about those unnecessary compliance fines. It's a very easy problem to solve. So let's just solve it. Let's remove the risk of that. Let's try to find opportunities to alleviate budgets elsewhere. It's so fascinating to me how many companies are still documenting a lot of things that are oriented towards compliance with paper solutions, especially when we're thinking about multi-location companies. There's one customer that's immediately coming to mind for me. They were in logistics and transporting goods. So a little bit tangential to what we've been talking about today, but they had a team of almost a dozen employees who would literally just travel between all of the locations to make sure that all of the background check, drug testing, randomized drug testing reports were all centralized in the right filing cabinets. This was not something that was like a decade or more ago. We're talking about a year that started with 20, like 202, and then the final digit of the year. So crazy to me when you think about the travel costs, the time costs, the employee costs of having that kind of approach. Yeah. So yeah, having a single place like Checkr for all of your background check needs where legal and HR and operations can all be in one place, you can document decisions that are being made and have it there so that it is audit ready, reports are easy to download, I think is just huge. And then the fact that we do have these bi-directional integrations with so many of our other stages in the hiring process just allows them that information to be passed elsewhere. If you do have candidate information, for instance, that needs to be passed back to your HRIS. Yeah, I think it's a huge win. And in today's economy, like any win that can potentially alleviate fines later is great.
Sonia Matejko: Love it. All right, we're going to sneak one more question in, so really the last one this time. But what is your advice on hiring for retail that have very low traction and the quality of the candidates are not up to standards? So whoever wants to answer this one, maybe Kristen first, but you all decide.
Kristin Ditch: Yeah, I'll start, and then Sarah, please feel free to chime in. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind, Checkr is very invested in trying to help both employees and employers with finding good fits, but with fair chance hiring in mind. So we dedicate employee time to volunteering and then other things. So that's definitely part of our perspective as a company. But I do think it can be a great way in expanding the candidate pools. With fair chance hiring, you have the ability to leverage products like Checker Assess, where you can upload all of the things that your risk tolerance and all of the charges that might inhibit someone from being a good fit for a respective role or for your corporate structure. But a lot of times, especially when I think it's like almost one in three adults in America have a criminal record of some kind, that's historically just been such an easy target for eliminating candidates, but it can actually be a great way if you're willing to, to look past, um, charges that someone may have had in, um, that they are justice impacted, um, and leverage automation to be unbiased in how you're assessing candidates, um, who are justice impacted. I think it can just be a really powerful way to expand your workforce. Um, about 5% of our employees are justice impacted and, uh, They're just incredibly hardworking, loyal employees. They're so smart. And at a company event that we had last month, several of them told their story. And they are so eager and willing to jump in, learn, and then really dive into the work of an employer who is willing to help. give them an employment opportunity. So I would definitely say consider something like that where you can really expand the quality of candidates because these candidates are eager, they are capable, and they are really ready to dive in and could very well be a great fit for your team.
Sarah Rose Haddam: What comes to mind for me is really thinking about, like, how, like, what the recruiting practice is. So thinking about, like, take another pass at the job description. Maybe even, like, throw it in a chat GPT or something if you need some creative juices to flow. But, like, do something to kind of enhance that. And, again, transparent. I'm always going to go back to that transparency thing if you can. put the pay rate or at least a range. If you can put like timeline to hire or what to expect in the interview process, I think that goes a long way to improve the candidate experience. I like what Kristen was saying about considering non-traditional candidates or taking another look at your requirements on like who actually is qualified for a position and also the type of background check that you're doing relative to the role, right? If someone had a some sort of like driving infraction, but they're not going to be driving as part of their role, maybe that's not an issue. Look at dates, look at how far back things were, things like that. I also think like implementing a referral program never hurts. If you have great talent, they have friends who are talented, who need seasonal work or who want to get jobs as well. And so doing some sort of referral program, big or small, I think is a big a way that we can, you know, kind of improve some of that momentum for your hiring process potentially.
Kristin Ditch: Yeah. And the one last thing I'll chime in is you were saying all of that, Sarah, which I totally agree with. I mean, we talked a lot about speed and automation and all of this, and we gave a lot of tangible examples and particularly drawn to the fact that part of this question was like, quality of candidates. And if, if you're not leveraging all of those points of automation, and you are in an environment like retail, where hours and definitely days make a difference in getting your, like highest quality candidates, I would just take a look at those processes to make sure that you have leveraged all of those micro efficiencies so that they can kind of compound like we talked about and give you days back so that you are getting the best quality candidates.
Sonia Matejko: Love it. So great. And that about wraps up today's discussion. So Kristen, Sarah, thank you for the valuable insights. I know our audience is walking away with real strategies that they can put into action. And speaking of who, thank you to our audience for tuning in. I hope that you feel prepared to secure more qualified talent while bringing more ease into your hiring process. You're going to look out for an email with the recording. And for more information, check out the links in the resources module to view Checker's Guide on Redesigning Retail Background Checks for Improved ROI or to request a custom checker demo. Thank you again.
