For this year’s upcoming peak retail trading periods, planning will be your superpower to maximise your time and resources as well as create efficiencies.
Ramping up your temporary retail workforce for peak trading periods isn’t just a one-person job – it takes a team to set new hires and your business up for success.
The real test? How engaged your casuals are and how smooth their onboarding feels. Even if they’re only around for a short time, their experience can leave a lasting impression on your brand. To get it right, it’s worth spending time planning in key areas, such as maximising resources and establishing compliant rostering, induction training, communication plans, and how you’ll wrap things up after the season.
To give you a head start, here are some key areas to focus your planning efforts for the busy season ahead.
Pre-hiring planning
Workforce planning should be a key focus from the start. Take the time to review past peak-season hiring data and feedback, and use these insights to figure out where this year’s focus should be in terms of implementing improvements and carrying on with what worked well.
Use a simple tool like Stop, Start, Continue and ask questions like: ‘What worked well for us?’, ‘Did we hire the right people for our needs?’, and ‘How we can improve communication?’ Your answers will help reveal where to focus your efforts for better results.
Recruitment
A solid recruitment plan is essential for a smooth hiring campaign. It should be led by a central team like HR, which is accountable for coordinating deliverables to meet key timeline dates.
Clear communication across all departments – especially between stores and corporate teams like payroll and retail operations – is crucial to avoid confusion, keep everyone aligned, and deliver a quality experience for your future employees.
Consistent messaging is also vital during the recruitment process. Candidates should receive clear, honest messaging throughout the process to build trust and ensure they understand the role. From developing job descriptions and interview questions to tailing your onboarding and first-day training, everything should align to create a seamless experience that meets company and employee expectations.
Onboarding and training
Planning what the onboarding experience will be like and developing training initiatives in advance is key to getting new hires up to speed and ready to work with customers from their first shift.
Things to consider for creating a successful onboarding experience include:
- Identify key expectations and develop new hire induction plans for the first couple of weeks.
- Identify ways to efficiently manage documentation and integrate with payroll systems.
- Develop consistency with messaging – each store/new employee should receive the same communications.
- Bundle key policies and store operations toolkits for quick referencing.
- Support store manages to ensure compliance.
- Review/create training programs and consider how this training will be delivered, who will deliver it, and if new materials needed to be developed. Efforts should focus on product information, compliance and safety.
Involve key stakeholders and gain their input from past years’ experience. Each store or department that has new temporary recruits should help shape these initiatives to ensure a consistent and effective approach to onboarding and embedding learning.
Stay ahead with our complete checklist, designed to keep your team organised, compliant, and confident as the retail season kicks off.
Team management
As part of seasonal hire planning, consider reviewing and identifying any basic skills gaps your store managers may have, and build in initiatives to embed capabilities that will support effective team management throughout the seasonal campaign.
Manager basics for effectively managing temporary employees include:
- ensuring store managers understand how to allocate compliant rostering
- setting clearly defined shift expectations and goals
- establishing a working plan for check ins
- monitoring employees during training sessions and on the job.
Post-season wrap up
Lastly, consideration should be given to the offboarding process and employee experience when the temporary recruits finish up with your business.
Questions and processes to consider include:
- Will there be an exit interview performed, or a survey sent out to capture feedback for improvements?
- Will the company organise a token farewell gift or message to thank the employees for their effort and support?
- How will internal teams (such as payroll) be notified of the offboarding and process?
- Will systems need to be created to facilitate inter-department notifications and offboarding?
These processes can be developed and ready to go from the pre-hiring stage, so that you’re all prepared for the campaign wrap up.
There’s a lot to juggle when getting ready for peak hiring, so keeping communication and planning at centre really helps everything run smoothly.
When you prioritise preparation, teams can work better together and it not only makes the experience better for new hires but also leads to success for the whole business — because great people experiences lead to happy customers.
Get ready for your busy season with our helpful checklist. We’ll take you through all the essential steps for navigating retail peak periods with ease, plus a handy bonus template to easily identify what is working, what can stop, and what new initiative can be created when reviewing previous hiring campaigns.
Need extra help with hiring talent during peak periods? Source can provide a dedicated human resources solution that functions like your very own in-house HR team. Contact us today or find out more.
