How The Warehouse Group secures top shelf candidates with Docusign

The Warehouse Group (TWG), is New Zealand's largest general merchandise retailer with its extensive network of retail and online stores under brands such as The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, and Noel Leeming. Their supersized fulfilment centres dispatch to over 260 stores, filling shelves with everyday household items, stationery and technology supplies and groceries, making them the go-to retail chain for locals. 

Keeping customers happy is their 10,500+ workforce of manufacturing, warehouse, administration and retail employees, which expands in numbers during peak shopping seasons. 

Shelves stocked with paperwork, not products

Before implementing Docusign, TWG’s primary obstacle was their traditionally cumbersome and manual process of recruitment, business contracts, and legal paperwork. All forms went through a process of printing and scanning. "The nature of how we performed contract paperwork was so much time spent doing repetitive manual tasks," said Emily, HR Contract & Compliance Specialist. 

This inefficient process had a significant knock-on effect on the recruitment process. The retail industry is dynamic, and when The Warehouse Group needs to rapidly increase their manpower in peak seasons, efficient hiring is paramount. In a competitive job market, and country with a relatively small population, the speed of recruitment is not just an operational goal but a critical success factor. 

"Job markets are a lot more competitive, so it’s imperative to recruit quickly. The Warehouse Group needed a solution to make their processes more efficient,” shared Emily. 

Part of the tactic to a successful hire is speed of signing. "The first employer to deliver the contract is more likely to secure a candidate, or get the preferred candidate. Even more so for senior leadership roles, or specialty skill sets like retail analyst roles, it's definitely all about efficiency in getting an offer in front of candidates quickly,” said Emily. “Weeks, or months into trying to secure a candidate, only to turn around and lose them because of this final step in the process can be heartbreaking for recruiters.”

Transformative recruitment and operational efficiency

Identifying Docusign as the solution to their cumbersome recruitment process, The Warehouse Group was drawn to its ease of use for staff and users, comprehensive features such as bulk signing, Power Forms, Web Forms, and Docusign University resources. 

Emily highlights the efficiency gains: "It allows us to capture the information we need to input them into our system,” adding “that's all tracked that way and is much more efficient than the old manual form that we had people filling out and emailing."

Ahead of the hiring curve

With Docusign, The Warehouse Group not only expedited contract issuance, sending 109,000 contracts since 2015, but also slashed average completion time per contract from two weeks to just three days. 

"Docusign has streamlined the contracting process which allows me more time for other value-add product projects. If I didn’t have Docusign it would be someone’s full time job just doing contracts and paperwork and printing... it's invaluable," Emily remarks on the transformation brought about by adopting Docusign.

It has now become integral to The Warehouse Group's daily operations with uptake across other departments, including IT for their vendor paperwork, executive assistants for internal approvals, commercial teams to execute B2B agreements, and fleet team for vehicle contracts. 

Securing success with speed and efficiency

In the retail race, where every second counts, The Warehouse Group found their hiring boost with Docusign. From the aisles to the administrative offices, their journey from paperwork purgatory to digital delight has been nothing short of a checkout-line miracle. With contracts processed at lightning speed, Emily and her team have transformed their workspace into a Docusign-powered hub of productivity and efficiency. With Docusign by their side, they’re not just filling shelves—they’re filling their ranks with the best and brightest.