How C-Stores Are Managing In Today's Employment Market

78% - The percentage of retailers concerned about labor costs, second only to food costs/commodity pricing (80%) as somewhat and extremely challenging business factors in the next year.

Source: CSP's 2024 State of C-Store Foodservice survey

This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of CSP Magazine, the monthly magazine produced by informa Connect, and is reprinted with the permission of CSP.

While the quantity of convenience-store employee applicants has grown in the past couple of years, the consistency of candidates is not always up to par with expectations, retailers tell CSP. Inflation has remained a challenge, making it even more difficult for retailers to balance increasing prices and wages.

But there are some bright spots.

While hiring has remained challenging for c-store chains since the pandemic, Loop Neighborhood Market, a Fremont, California-based chain of 132 c-stores, is seeing more candidates come through its recruiting portal than in the past years, says Pervez Pir, president of retail.

"The hardest part is really identifying the right candidate that will help us grow sales and our brand," Pir says, "We need to do a better job of having consistent questions and assessing the candidate the same way store to store. Today, we have each team leader interviewing potential candidates, but the interview style, questions and assessment are different store to store, which leads to inconsistent hiring practices.”

Loop is not alone in finding minimalquality candidates as of late.

“The main challenges in hiring today include a scarcity of skills, which 17% of talent leaders citing a lack of qualifying skills and 15% citing a lack of qualifying experience as significant barriers,” says Amanda Hahn, chief marketing officer of HireVue, a human resources management company based in South Jordan, Utah.

Inflation has been another obstacle.

“Wages have increased the last several years and are sometimes outpacing sales increases,” Pir says. “To hire talent, we have to increase pay to be competitive.”

It’s important to be flexible with the candidate, says Christina Smith, human resources and payroll manager for S&S Petroleum, a 110-store chain based in Mukilteo, Washington. While some applicants will take more time to fill out an application and have several interviews, others, especially the younger generation, teens to age 30, want to get hired right away. Retailers shouldn’t be so stringent on following the same exact process every time, she says.

Flexibility varies in those ages 30 to 50 depending on the person and their level of sophistication with technology, she says. People 50 and older are often set in their ways and prefer traditional interview protocols.

“Sometimes people prefer to text you instead of making phone calls or emailing,” she says.

In recruitment, S&S goes to area churches, which might have job boards or career nights. It also recruits from veteran associations and employment agencies and works with retirees seeking a part-time job, Smith says.

For corporate roles, Loop offers a paid internship for third-year college students. The human resources team visits colleges to discuss the program with students, who can then apply for each department.

At New Haven, Michigan-based Bazco Oil, which runs 37 Chillbox c-stores, hiring and staffing is going “absolutely fabulous,” says Marquita Tharpe Williams, human resources director. The chain has hired 100 employees this year for new and existing roles.

“We try to make our onboarding experience as simple as possible and really play into the fact that a lot of our applicants are of a younger demographic,” she says.

This means using technology, including a scannable QR code that directs the applicant to the application and several mobile apps.

“It’s a quick and easy turnaround, which always helps in getting someone in the door and actually getting them into the position,” she says.

While Chillbox has some turnover, “I am proud to say our retention rate is up 21% from the same time last year,” she says. “I know it’s going to sound very much like a cliché, but I really do believe that we try to treat all of our employees, from the customer service reps to cashiers to the store management, like family.”

Employees care about what the store means to the customer and the community.

“People want to work at a place that has a purpose,” says Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives for NACS, Alexandria, Virginia. “If you work a typical eight-hour day, you’re spending more time with co-workers than you are with your family. So, it becomes really important for employers to offer meaningful work.”

Appropriate training is important to increase retention, Smith from S&S says.

“The biggest issues I see are when people are frustrated because they don’t feel they were trained properly,” she says.

A manager might correct an employee for a mistake, but that employee might feel they weren’t trained in the first place—or were told to do it one way by one manager, and now another manager is telling them to do it a different way, she says.

S&S currently is improving its training program to be more consistent. It’s

important to adhere to the program and ensure a manager doesn’t skip some pages depending on how quickly they need to get somebody into a role, she says.

For example, in June, the manager of an S&S in Blaine, Washington, was feeling the pinch of being down an employee and was going to rescind the approved vacation of a different employee. Even with the shortage, Smith told the manager to allow the employee to take the vacation, warning that canceling the vacation would most likely spur the employee to quit.

“Managing people is more important than the actual job part because that’s how you keep your employees,” Smith says.

Another way to retain employees is through company culture. Loop recognizes birthdays, anniversaries, good work, and accomplishments on its internal website.

“We also use this portal to give out Team Loop points where the employees can spend these points [on] Amazon or other vendors on the site,” Pir says. “We also visit sites and hand out Team Loop points when we see good behavior that supports our values. Furthermore, we recognize tenure by giving out plaques, monetary rewards and highlighting them in our newsletter.”

S&S also strives to make positions more attractive, Smith says.

The chain rewards employees on their birthdays and other holidays with gift cards, while managers receive Christmas bonuses and branded items. In addition, employees with school-age children get to take home backpacks.

“They really like that, and so we try to do things to show we appreciate them,” Smith says, adding that they aim to keep the perks affordable and balance them against unrealistic wages.

“The key is to define what you do best and integrate that into your employment strategies,” says Lenard. “Authenticity might be an overused buzzword today, but authenticity will never go out of style.”

There are also yearly retirement bonuses at S&S, starting at $25 for cashiers, $300 for store managers and up to $500 for district managers. Employees receive an anniversary certificate, too.

Chillbox offers its employees perks such as free drinks and food and performance bonuses and also rewards them for referring quality hires.

“We try to give them as much as possible,”

Williams says, adding that Chillbox’s starting hourly wage is at least $14, while Michigan’s minimum wage is $10.33.

Another strategy Chillbox has found successful is promoting heavily from within.

“Employees can see their colleagues moving up the ladder, and I think that that’s an incentive for them,” Williams says, adding that word of mouth is a valuable hiring tool.

Williams has found that employees 25 and older, up to mid-50s, come more from the $50 referral program, while those 18-24 come more from QR codes and other tech-related areas. “I think that’s because of the ease of application,” she says.

The best hiring tip she can give, however, is a retailer should ensure they have something to offer beyond pay. Lenard says the way a retailer sells a position is important.

“Think about the difference between saying you are hiring for a cashier vs. saying that you are looking to hire someone to help run a $10 million enterprise and that you will learn customer relations, inventory management, public relations and some other skills, he says.

ACTION PLAN

Over half of the U.S. population is outside the consideration set for convenience because they are in jobs that the North American NACS/Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council believe people would not quit to work in a convenience store; because they have advanced degrees; or because they are homemakers not interested in pursuing work outside the home.

While 43$ of the population is in the consideration set, only 23% is seen as persuadable, and only 17% would be interested in front-line convenience roles without significant changes.

What follows are results from the council’s survey. The first part indicates that interested and persuadable people are predominantly younger, male, and more diverse than those who are not interested. They also have lower levels of education.

LOVE'S SWEETENS THE DEAL

Love’s Travel Stops, a 640-store chain based in Oklahoma City, has partnered with career opportunity platform Guild, Denver, to develop team members in their current roles while preparing them for the careers they want down the road. Love’s offers eligible U.S.-based full- and part-time employees access to tuition-free education and skill development through Guild with a new learning program called Fuel Your Growth.

“When we make the decision to hire someone, we intend to support them from the day they are hired until they retire,” says Les Thompson, chief human resources officer of Love’s. “By investing in the growth of Love’s talented team, we meet them where they are in their learning and development journey while eliminating prohibiting cost barriers.”

“When we make the decision to hire someone, we intend to support them from the day they are hired until they retire,” says Les Thompson, chief human resources officer of Love’s. “By investing in the growth of Love’s talented team, we meet them where they are in their learning and development journey while eliminating prohibiting cost barriers.”

Through the Guild platform, employees can complete high school degrees and undergraduate degree programs, participate in boot camps, obtain certifications and expand how they connect with others through language learning classes. Additional resources are available, including career services, one-on-one coaching support, and more.