The COLIN'S brand, established by Eroğlu Holding almost 40 years ago, is one of the leading players in Turkey's retail sector today. COLIN'S, operatig in the field of jeans and fashion products, has more than 600 stores in 37 countries of the world today. In addition to the Çorlu factory, which is the largest Jean production facility in Europe, production is carried out in its factories in Istanbul, Aksaray and Egypt. It is no secret that retail sector is among the most difficult and complex sectors in terms of Human Resources management, due to the high staff turnover rates and rapid growth strategy. But COLIN'S HR team manages to keep productivity at its highest level by implementing innovative solutions.
COLIN'S In-Store Employee Promotion Procedure
Highly competitive retail sector usually employs candidates aged between 18 to 30 in stores. For the store to achieve target and customer satisfaction it is critical to keep young talent motivation high. In order to offer career opportunities to store employees and to complete the norm in cases where external resources are insufficient, the COLIN'S HR team implemented the promotion procedure for store employees. While the internal promotion process offered HR the opportunity to quickly close job openings with experienced staff, it became a source of motivation for the new generation employees who attach importance to their development.
The fact that COLIN'S provides standard and transparent processes to 1600 employees in stores in different locations enables them to plan their own career journeys and affects loyalty and performance in the long run. Every employee knows what goals they need to reach in order to move to a higher position, from the moment they start working, and acts in line with their career goals.
Currently, the career journey of COLIN'S store personnel consists of 5 steps:
- Sales consultant
- Expert sales consultant
- Cashier
- Store Manager 2
- Store Manager 1
There are certain criteria for promotion to the next position for each title: seniority, in-class and e-training completion rates, not having disciplinary penalty within a certain period of time, target and performance indicators. COLIN'S experience and seniority is one of the criteria required to move up to a higher position in the system. Everyone who meets the criteria is included in the process.
Before digitization
When the internal promotion procedure was first implemented, it consisted of inventory and face-to-face assessment center application. First, the competency inventories of the candidates were expected to be created and they were invited to the assessment center based on their results. Since organizing visit to Head Quarters for employees from different locations and their coordination created a huge workload, Human Resources team was able to promote employees once every 3 months.
In order to create a faster and less costly process, COLIN'S Human resources team decided to digitize the procedure.
After Digitization
For process automation, COLIN'S HR team used Peoplise talent acquisition platform Analyse, reducing the promotion procedure to 2 weeks. Thanks to automatic flows, the application link is sent via Peoplise platform to candidates whose eligibility checks are made in the second week of each month. Candidates complete the EICOM PLUS (Assessment Systems) Competency Inventory through the platform, and employees with profile compatibility over 60% pass to the knowledge exam stage. Positive candidates participate in online case study using Analyse video interview system. Questions asked are aimed at observing customer orientation, commercial perspective, communication skills and problem-solving competencies.
With Peoplise, the evaluation of candidates can be done much faster. The process was easy for both parties, video interviews with candidates removed the neccessity of for face-to-face meetings.
Human Resources Business Partner Supervisor
After the application, the employees eligible for promoton are determined in a short period of just 2 weeks, after which the results are announced. Due to the fact that multi-stage transactions can be easily managed throughout the entire process from a single Peoplise panel, the promotion procedure can now be implemented once a month, with minimal effort from HR. Employees are also happy with the fact that the process steps can be easily followed online. Between 5-50 employees participate in the process every month. In 2022, 142 Internally promoted employees continued their careers by moving to a higher title within the scope of the project.
Conclusion
Digitization of the process not only reduces speed, cost and operational burden, but also brings user satisfaction. After switching to Peoplise, the costs of face-to-face assessment center, transportation and accommodation disappeared. Assessment Center organizational fuss and unnecessary workload of coordination are now history. Removing face-to-face meetings from the process accelerated it. The promotion process became faster, easier and more transparent. The fact that data is collected on a single platform and easily accessible makes it possible to conduct data analysis in the future.