Christmas Staff: How to find (and keep) the perfect team!

We’ve all been there, at the counter of a retail outlet, in peak holiday shopping hour, just waiting to be served. It’s frustrating, frustrating for the consumer, frustrating for the staff and of course, frustrating for the business owner. So, what steps can you take to ensure this is not the case this Christmas in your store?

Hiring the right Staff

Hiring the right Christmas staff for the holiday period is a major step in ensuring that your business runs successfully and your profit is maximised. Having enough staff who are competent and confident will do wonders to your customer experience and ensure that customers return for their next purchase.

Staff Training

Training existing staff is just as important as training new staff and for this reason, it is suggested that once a team has been chosen for the holiday period, that entire team, old and new are run through complete training together. While this may seem unnecessary, it will save lots of mistakes over the busy season and ensure that all staff are on the same page with every procedure. Opening and closing, cash handling, stock control and customer service are paramount to a successful season, so having all staff trained the exact same way will greatly improve your chances of minimising mistakes and loss.  Retraining benefits everyone.

Scheduling is Everything

Create a flexible, permanent roster. Your staff will appreciate having some foresight into the hours they will be working each week but it’s not always easy to know when staff will have prior engagements. Give your staff the opportunity to request days off in advance and work as best as you can to accommodate them while making it clear that requests are not guaranteed. This will help ensure staff are happy and feel they are being treated with respect and will return that respect by happily working hard for your business. Being flexible with staff-to-staff shift swapping will also help keep shifts covered and remove stress when creating rosters.

Honesty is the BEST policy>

Be honest with holiday staff about how many hours they can expect and when they will likely finish work, following the holiday period. It is important not to overpromise hours and pay as staff will become resentful at this. This honesty will, in turn, ensure that staff are honest with you as well.

Procedures, procedures, procedures

Create procedures and stick to them. This can be as simple as creating checklists and printing them to be displayed in a staff room or as complex as ensuring that each procedure is allocated and signed off on paper or within a program such as excel, every time it is completed. Procedures help to control room for error and ensure that staff understand each task and will help with the day to day running of a smooth workplace.

Be Grateful

Lastly, it’s important to show your appreciation and thank your staff for a job well done. Staff who feel stressed, exhausted or angry will reflect this attitude to customers and therefore will create a bad experience. Creating a positive, productive workplace over the busiest and most profitable period of the year will ensure a wonderful experience is had by all involved.

If you would like help finding the right staff this Christmas contact us here. If you want find out how Recruit Career Consult is different from other recruitment companies find out here.

Happy Holidays!