Home Depot expands mobile onboarding to streamline associate training

Home Depot is extending the mobile tools it uses for recruiting into associate training, a move meant to shorten the gap between hiring and the first day on the floor. A corporate news post titled “Onboarding on the Go: Mobile Application Enhances Associate Training” carries the same digital convenience used for interview self-scheduling and Text-to-Apply into the training experience.

For hourly associates, that changes the first week from a paper-heavy orientation to a more mobile workflow. Instead of waiting for a single classroom session or a manager with enough time to walk through every step, new hires can start learning sooner and more consistently. Home Depot has more than 2,300 stores and hundreds of thousands of associates, so onboarding has to work across stores, distribution centers and support functions, not just one location at a time.

Home Depot sped up its online application process by as much as 80 percent in 2017 as it began filling more than 80,000 positions in stores and distribution centers. In 2018, applicants could self-schedule interviews 24/7 on a smartphone after completing an application. Those moves set up the newer onboarding push: less time spent on paperwork, less dependence on one supervisor’s schedule and more standardization in the early compliance and training steps that every new hire has to clear.

Home Depot was founded in 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia, and is the world’s largest home improvement retailer. Home Depot ran recurring spring hiring campaigns of 80,000 or more associates in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022, including more than 100,000 hires in 2022. At that scale, even small delays in onboarding can ripple across garden centers, pro desks, lumber aisles and stockrooms during the spring rush.

In 2023, Home Depot was rolling out a homegrown in-store app to help store associates prioritize tasks more effectively and improve customer experience. BlueFletch has supplied software and mobile application services to the retailer since 2011. Learning and development remained a steady focus in Home Depot’s annual and ESG reporting.