How time flies, the ever constant pressure of hiring escalates and heralds the coming of Christmas. It seems like only a few weeks ago that you were doing the same thing last year! With many retailers doing 30% of their year’s trade over the Christmas period, there is a real need for increased staffing to deal with stock and customers.
So how do you take the pain out of short term hiring? Check out the top 5 hiring tips for the silly season:
- Get organised early. That’s right about NOW. Look at last years figures, dig out the rosters, talk to your current team about their preferred hours and time off. What do you really need?
- Give yourself some flexibility. If you need 40hours, think about hiring 2 Part timers. You have extra cover if someone gets sick and you may be able to pull more than 40 hours from them if you need it.
- Don’t promise what you can’t deliver! Don’t stretch the truth to make the job sound more attractive. Don’t promise hours that you can’t deliver, or time off if you need your team in the store.
- Don’t hire monkeys. That is unless you run a circus. It’s true when they say, ‘one bad apple will spoil the barrel’. A great, highly functioning team can go way off track if you hire a demotivator or the wrong ‘fit’.
- Train them. Do what you can to get them off on the right foot. Tell them what’s expected of them and SHOW them how to do it. You will reap the rewards as trade picks up and you have happy staff who can do the job. If they’re really good you might want to keep them! We recommend our retail sales training programmes.
Christmas trade is a stressful time of the year at the best of times. Do yourself a favour and reduce the pressure by doing some straight forward things to get the right people on board and have them perform over your key trading period.
