Archived RedisRad and GSTL question

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pellinore

Life sucks and nothing good can come of it.
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Check out the thread of "Lack of appreciation for Redcards" you'll find some answers as to what we think GSTLs could do to help make this a better experience.
 
Check out the thread of "Lack of appreciation for Redcards" you'll find some answers as to what we think GSTLs could do to help make this a better experience.

Thanks for your response! But here's my issue...

So, you're one of the cashiers that actively DOES your job. That's AWESOME. I'm really being sincere, I appreciate people who give 100% because I do the same. I'm more curious about what people want me to do about the cashiers that DON'T do their job.

Like I've said in previous posts, I'm not a fan of micromanagers or managers that act all high and mighty. I'm the kind of person that will jump on a register first when we need back up. Just the other night I let one of my cart attendants take the guest I just convinced to get a redcard, just so he could be excited about it and get the team excited. Heck, I still get excited every time I get someone to sign up when I jump on to back up the lanes (I love my redcard... Not faking that at all).

I have a LOT of cashiers (let's just say about 90% of mine) that, for whatever excuse, just won't ask. And the thing of it is, I don't have the time to get in their face and be pushy about it.

I also disagree with conditioning them with prizes, but our conversion is SO bad that we do it anyways.

I change up the prizes and competitions weekly... Only works for a day usually...

So all of those things you mentioned were great advice for someone who is a nag, but I'm just not. And ironically enough, my strengths (agreed upon by many etls) is relates well to others and engages and inspires, but this only seems to work on the days that I can be right over the cashiers shoulders :-/ not so fun for anyone.

I just feel pretty lost and it stinks. I'm not a tyrant but my cashiers (while I'm cool with them on a personal level) have no motivation to try to hit our goals, despite the numerous things I've tried...
 
Just so you get an idea of what I'm dealing with... In the past week I caught a few cashiers not asking. One's excuse was "I forgot... Okay, not really, I just didn't...just because....::big smile::" and the other said "it's 9:30".... :-/

*facepalm*

HELP!
 
Try this. You get a red card & then challenge your team to get one too. Then get another red card with hl tm bringing up patio. Just make sure that you ask the hl or br teams, when they bring a grill or patio, let me know. Pounce on it. That is what I do with patio stuff. I suggest red cards & esp's on grills. If I have no luck, that's when I call my gstl/GSA, this is HLM coming up with some patio. thats a signal for a double team. Usually, the gstl or me, will open up a lane & one of us will ring up the guest. We suggest the red card again, takes less than 60 seconds. You can do this & save 5% while waiting for my cart person to help take it to your car. This works on anything big, just try. The Salesfloor team can help you get red cards, just ask them for their help too. One of my hl tm's got 3 red cards for doing backup cashiering the other night. It's a team effort.
 
honestly, it's not going to be a popular idea but you need to start coaching your cashiers. If they are seriously just not asking and think it's funny you need to take care of that. Once we started coaching our conversion went WAY up. It's like the finally understood that we were serious and they needed to do their job. We don't coach based on conversion scores but on their behaviors and if they're asking and actually explaining the benefits. You need to hold your team accountable.
 
I agree with redandkhaki. I lead by example: not a day goes by that I don't get at least one REDCard and I'm rarely on the lane. I sell WITH the cashiers. I role play with them. I have them shadow more successful cashiers. We don't do prizes anymore but every REDCard is acknowledged personally by the GSTL and the ETL and often times the LOD. But in the end, if the cashier refuses to ask in a way that will sell the card, then I coach. And it's a fairly harsh coach with the line, "Hey, the pressure to get REDCards will only get worse. We can't let up. If you don't feel as though you can fulfill your core roles, then perhaps it's time to look for another job."

What I'd like to do is transfer them to a work center that doesn't involve such high standards regarding the REDCard. But our ETL and ou STL won't let anyone transfer off the lanes without green conversion. That makes absolutely no sense to me. If you can't or won't do your job, how the heck will you ever get out short of quitting. And some of these people are really good TMs - they just won't ask.
 
honestly, it's not going to be a popular idea but you need to start coaching your cashiers. If they are seriously just not asking and think it's funny you need to take care of that. Once we started coaching our conversion went WAY up. It's like the finally understood that we were serious and they needed to do their job. We don't coach based on conversion scores but on their behaviors and if they're asking and actually explaining the benefits. You need to hold your team accountable.

Those two incidents were coached. And I've been coaching like a maniac, only problem is, the minute I started doing them, I had 5 people quit, and not enough decent interviews to fill... Hence the reason I'm now stuck with myself and one other GSA and hardly anyone trained to do anything :-/. My time is incredibly precious, and I'm kind of afraid to keep the coachings coming, because, out of the people that didn't quit, 3 are on correctives and all of the cashiers (minus maybe 2 out of the approx 12 I actually have) have at Least one coaching.

Just to add, I have a good relationship with them but I am new to them and they weren't really held accountable at all before I got there. So I'm not being an ass to them, and I'm not being too lenient either. These people just all seem to be teetering on their breaking point.

At least I know, if I can come out of this mess, I can do anything they throw at me!
 
Try this. You get a red card & then challenge your team to get one too. Then get another red card with hl tm bringing up patio. Just make sure that you ask the hl or br teams, when they bring a grill or patio, let me know. Pounce on it. That is what I do with patio stuff. I suggest red cards & esp's on grills. If I have no luck, that's when I call my gstl/GSA, this is HLM coming up with some patio. thats a signal for a double team. Usually, the gstl or me, will open up a lane & one of us will ring up the guest. We suggest the red card again, takes less than 60 seconds. You can do this & save 5% while waiting for my cart person to help take it to your car. This works on anything big, just try. The Salesfloor team can help you get red cards, just ask them for their help too. One of my hl tm's got 3 red cards for doing backup cashiering the other night. It's a team effort.

Love this, and I have to say, I've been working with my sales floor as well to get the whole building involved, and sales floor is actually pulling higher redcard counts than my front end on some days... They've definitely stepped it up. :)
 
honestly, it's not going to be a popular idea but you need to start coaching your cashiers. If they are seriously just not asking and think it's funny you need to take care of that. Once we started coaching our conversion went WAY up. It's like the finally understood that we were serious and they needed to do their job. We don't coach based on conversion scores but on their behaviors and if they're asking and actually explaining the benefits. You need to hold your team accountable.

Those two incidents were coached. And I've been coaching like a maniac, only problem is, the minute I started doing them, I had 5 people quit, and not enough decent interviews to fill... Hence the reason I'm now stuck with myself and one other GSA and hardly anyone trained to do anything :-/. My time is incredibly precious, and I'm kind of afraid to keep the coachings coming, because, out of the people that didn't quit, 3 are on correctives and all of the cashiers (minus maybe 2 out of the approx 12 I actually have) have at Least one coaching.

Just to add, I have a good relationship with them but I am new to them and they weren't really held accountable at all before I got there. So I'm not being an ass to them, and I'm not being too lenient either. These people just all seem to be teetering on their breaking point.

At least I know, if I can come out of this mess, I can do anything they throw at me!

ALSO, so I don't get reamed by the negative Nancy's on here) I did NOT come into this store immediately doing coachings. I did spend about a month and a half just being available and listening and giving helpful tips and encouragement before I started having the more serious conversations.
 
Understand & know your team is the goal. Communicate to other teams outside of front end are important too. You have come a long way. Your target is green score.
 
while it sucks that you're having those problems you need to keep coaching. If you don't show that you're serious and hold them accountable no one is going to respect you now if you stop. Keep your head up and keep trying and i promise it will get better! Don't hire anyone you don't think would be good. I turn down most interviews because i'm not going to hire someone i think i'll be coaching in 3 months. If you're on the fence, say no.

Are you at an ULV? how do you only have one GSTL and one GSA? What hours are you working then?
 
while it sucks that you're having those problems you need to keep coaching. If you don't show that you're serious and hold them accountable no one is going to respect you now if you stop. Keep your head up and keep trying and i promise it will get better! Don't hire anyone you don't think would be good. I turn down most interviews because i'm not going to hire someone i think i'll be coaching in 3 months. If you're on the fence, say no.

Are you at an ULV? how do you only have one GSTL and one GSA? What hours are you working then?

We are supposed to have 2 gstl's and 2 gsa's, we are calling in people left and right to cover the shifts, but my poor GSA and I are pulling 6 day weeks.
 
I appreciate your feedback.
Sure wish that I could offer you some ideas on how to get your team to get Redcards.

Go with the coachings. Also, see if your ETL-GE will talk with the cashiers.,,sometimes people need to see that there are others in the store who are talking about the importance of Redcards...and not just you.
 
Thanks everyone for all the positive encouragement :) its rough but I know some how some way we will slowly fix all these issues. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger... Right?
 
Yes.......but sometimes I'd rather just stay a little bit weak!
 
i can't imagine only having one gsa and one gstl. Are they giving you a timeline when you will be getting another GSTL? Right now we have 2 gsa's and 2 gstl's and i hate it! the schedule has been so hard. I'm assuming your store doesn't do this but we're only allowed to have gsa's in the cash office so it has been interesting. Luckily we just hired another gsa last week and once she's trained we're offering to another tm that applied for this one. so we'll be back up to four gsas and two gstls.
 
i can't imagine only having one gsa and one gstl. Are they giving you a timeline when you will be getting another GSTL? Right now we have 2 gsa's and 2 gstl's and i hate it! the schedule has been so hard. I'm assuming your store doesn't do this but we're only allowed to have gsa's in the cash office so it has been interesting. Luckily we just hired another gsa last week and once she's trained we're offering to another tm that applied for this one. so we'll be back up to four gsas and two gstls.

So get this... They told me I would get another gstl to help lighten the load, but they just informed me that we aren't anymore. I know we are a low volume, but the problem is that we have too many tl's in the building.

We have non-GSAs do cash office, but I worry if one calls out because we have no backups trained (I'm trying to get someone trained at the moment).

When I started it was me and 3 GSAs and it was alright, but my ETL-GE is also ETL-sl and that means that I get left alone on pretty much everything.

So right now I'm dealing with dangerously low staffing, half of my registers down, no one to help with ordering, about 10 coaching and 3 correctives that need to be written... I take care of the entire schedule which only took me about 3 hours when I had the staff, it now takes me a full 8 hour shift. No one can cover the front lanes pretty much so I have a difficult time leaving the front end. My cashiers call me over for EVERYTHING, it's so ridiculous. I mean, I'm there in a second for problems, but they're unable to solve simple problems on their own. (example, one of them called me over to get a number for a product that had the UPC cut off... And the product had 2 upc barcodes printed in a row, so you could still get the whole number... :-/...) this is an ongoing issue that I'm trying to work on with them. We have low staffing on the floor so I don't have much backup, and someone keeps changing around my schedule without adding cashiers, so I come in with only 1 cashier during rush times...

Sorry, turning into a vent session... But all I'm hearing from the uppers is that our conversion sucks. (we are currently at a 1.02) it was steadily increasing over the past couple months, but then when I started the coachings everyone started quitting. I have a very unreliable staff which calls out all the time.

When I was trained for gstl I was so excited because I love the idea of being around a team and getting to work with them, but I'm quickly learning that we are the last department anyone cares to deal with at my store. I have to fight for my team in our meetings and get a lot of pushback from the others. Some are coming around, but my ETL-hr actually apologized to me for the way some of the other team leads talk to me.

I get so jazzed to get the store involved (because that's one of the biggest complaints from my cashiers is that they feel alienated) and for the most part, I get no support.

I think you get the idea. I just really want to be an ETL and it feels a little like I was thrown to the sharks. I'm pretty resilient but this is borderline insane to expect someone to fix all these issues alone without any support.

(and don't EVEN get me started on how hard it is to set my endcaps and x5 when they all have the same set date without the staffing!! And we have a huge issue with our one spot section that the flow team keeps destroying it after we spend hours that no one has to spare to clean it up.)

So yeah... Fun stuff.
 
When we had 1 GSTL and 3 GSAs it was still tough to get everything done. And that was with a powerhouse of a GSTL. She is fantastic. But that was during review time and she had something like 30 reviews to write by herself. She was able to depend on her GSAs for backup during that. I couldn't imagine one GSTL and one GSA. You at the very least need another GSA. You don't even have enough GSTL/GSAs to cover every opening and closing shift at this point. How are you managing that?
 
When we had 1 GSTL and 3 GSAs it was still tough to get everything done. And that was with a powerhouse of a GSTL. She is fantastic. But that was during review time and she had something like 30 reviews to write by herself. She was able to depend on her GSAs for backup during that. I couldn't imagine one GSTL and one GSA. You at the very least need another GSA. You don't even have enough GSTL/GSAs to cover every opening and closing shift at this point. How are you managing that?

We both work 6 days a week at the moment, and then we use people who don't have numbers but know the process to fill in the couple other shifts. It's a nightmare. We are trying to call in GSAs from local stores to help with coverage right now as no one is applying for the position :-( and no one in my store is allowed or interested in being a GSA. Can't say I don't blame them with the current situation.
 
Don't forget her DTL who also apparently sucks.

Keep up the fight, Red. You are destined for greatness, if not at Target, certainly somewhere.
 
And you might very well be superwoman, but they need to get someone hired ASAP. You can not operate the front end like this for very long.
 
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