Online education handles ongoing employee training at The Brick stores

With 70 stores, The Brick is Canada’s largest volume retailer of home furnishings, bedding, appliances, consumer electronics and computers--and it continues to expand. To facilitate training of its increasingly large number of employees, and to bring more consistency to that process, it’s turned to online training company The Insight Group Inc. to augment classroom and sales floor training, and it’s seen significant ROI since its initial implementation last November, Mark Laskin, The Brick’s national training director, tells Internet Retailer.

New hire training at the Brick is a three-week program that combines an online component with mentoring, classroom training and job shadowing. Much of employees’ ongoing training after that now takes place online. Ten-minute online modules developed by The Insight Group from content supplied by The Brick as well the vendors of products sold in its stores are delivered to employees on a regular schedule through the several computer terminals, used in sales, located on the sales floor of each store. When employees have downtime between customers, they’re expected to complete the online training modules as they are rolled out. They must receive a passing grade on an online test that follows the material, or re-take the test.

Laskin says putting that training online has freed up time for store managers who previously spent more hours on training. ”It’s letting the store sales managers go back to what they are paid to do. We’re a sales organization first and foremost, and the idea is to alleviate some of that responsibility and reshape it so they can be more effective,” he says.

The regular product training delivered to sales associates online also has boosted sales, he adds. For example, an online module was developed to support the launch of a new mattress in the stores this spring. “Sales of that product jumped off the sales floor across the country after that module went up, and it’s a direct correlation to the people who took the training. They were able to demonstrate product knowledge to a distinct competitive advantage,” Laskin says.