Recruiting excellent employees is an evergreen challenge for HR professionals across the country. In the convenience channel, the costs associated with high turnover rates at the store level exacerbate that challenge even further.
According to the NACS State of the Industry Talent Insights Dashboard® of 2023 Data, the cost to hire a store manager averaged $3,015 and the cost to hire a full-time associate was $1,294. This amount includes everything from interviews to training to multiple forms of pre-employment screenings.
The most common hiring screening is a criminal background check: 94% of companies conducted them for prospective store managers, 87% for assistant managers and 75% for full-and-part-time sales associates. Beyond requiring time and money, these checks can sometimes inject unfair bias into the hiring process.
The NACS State of the Industry Talent Insights Dashboard® provides the most recent convenience human resource benchmarking data available and highlights the key categories of compensation, benefits, recruitment and turnover. The Dashboard evolved from the long-standing NACS State of the Industry Compensation Report® and continues to feature data collected by convenience retailers.
Some companies have started to consider a more skills-based hiring approach. Aptitude and situational judgment tests were conducted by just over 20% of companies hiring for store manager and assistant manager positions, and around 15% of companies used these tests when hiring full- and part-time associates.
The most recent addition to the screening metrics tracked by the Dashboard is a social media screening. While the portion of companies using social media screenings is currently small, with 16% of companies reporting that they survey store managers’ digital footprints before hiring, it’s likely that usage of this screening tactic will grow.