Hello Everyone,
My name is Jember, I'm a third year business student minoring in retail. I currently work for Uniqlo, at the flagship store in center city Philadelphia. In this post I will discuss training of new hire employees, the process and personally what my training has been like thus far.
I started working at Uniqlo about a month and a half ago and caught on fairly quick. Formal training consisted of watching instructional videos about typical employee policy, some things that were not so typical were some cultural customs that were brought over from Japan, where the company originated. Things such as handing patrons items with both hands, whether it be items during transactions (the bag of their clothing, their receipt, their tag for the fitting room etc), we also do not point in any given direction when explaining things to patrons, we always use an open hand similar to directing traffic. Uniqlo has certain standards that we must uphold especially being that we are a flagship store, and the Philadelphia store happens to be ranked #1 in different categories of standard. So we personally have an extremely high standard for many aspects of the brand. New hire employees will learn/pick up on these things as you begin working.
As far as the specific process, after you complete the training videos and orientation you do a bit of shadowing of more seasoned associates when your supervisor wants you to learn specific tasks. There are
many things you learn as the situation presents itself. I'm a month in and I still have questions that arise as I'm working, whether it be specific questions or requests from customers, there is always something new and certain things that our policy allows and sometimes doesn't allow is not always in the training videos because they are typically more situational.
In general the culture of Uniqlo is extremely friendly and I believe it is due to our diverse nature in employees and upper staff. Also and mainly because it is also a company that originated outside of the U.S. so with bringing the ideas and customs of Japan to Philadelphia, one has to have an open mind and be accepting of different cultures so that we can best represent that in our store and through our service. I have noticed that we typically have a lot of international customers that come in due to the international recognition and following that Uniqlo already has, and if not that Uniqlo is a very appealing store visually, for those who are not already familiar it's aesthetic draws them in. Below I have included two photos of the outside of the store (day and night) where you can see how visually appealing it is.
Besides just aesthetic, Uniqlo goes above and beyond in quality and that is something that is known and attached to the brand worldwide. The quality exceeds just the clothing, it includes the service as well and shopping at Uniqlo is often referred to as an experience.
That is another big part of our training is adapting to the culture of providing an experience for customers. And it is mainly a ongoing theme of how we present ourselves as employees to the customer and how we treat the merchandise when handling it. We have an incredibly high standard of how merchandise should be folded, displayed and even how our 'point of purchase' items are assembled. There is a color order as well as a standard order, where the color of items are arranged in a particular way. As you are being tained you learn these things as they come up and often, especially when closing the store, you must uphold these standards.
