Seasonal Temporary Staffing Solutions for Retail and Hospitality

Retail and hospitality businesses tend to get hit harder than anyone else by seasonal fluctuations. As seasonal demand goes up, so does your need for staff. Many companies struggle to find enough well-qualified staff for their seasonal needs, while others may over hire and end up with higher-than-necessary expenses.

Seasonal staffing takes an experienced touch. Here are some tips that can help you manage staffing during your busy season more effectively.

1. Start As Early As Possible

The best time to start planning for seasonal staffing is yesterday, but the next best time is today. The earlier you start, the easier it will be to avoid worker shortages and poor service for your customers. 

Some businesses in hospitality and retail begin posting job ads several months before the season begins. That gives them plenty of time to attract top talent. Even if you’re looking at a shorter timeframe, starting now will give you time to assess candidate quality and help you snap up motivated seasonal employees.

2. Aim for Flexibility

In hospitality and retail, customer numbers can fluctuate drastically. The best way to avoid being overstaffed or understaffed is to have a mix of different employee types you can call on. 

Think about hiring a mix of full-time, part-time, and on-call seasonal employees. A staffing agency can help you manage this type of setup and optimize for staffing efficiency.

3. Fix Up Your Job Postings

If you’re struggling to get well-qualified applicants, it may be time to take a second look at your job postings. It’s usually easier to attract the right people if you:

• Use concise, immediately clear job titles. Job seekers likely aren’t familiar with your company’s branded lingo, so stick to job titles like “holiday cashier”, “seasonal housekeeper”, or “night-shift manager”. People will scroll right past if they don’t immediately understand the job title. If you use a more niche or creative title, the right applicants might not find your job post to begin with because they’ll be searching for more standard titles.
• Highlight shift scheduling information and pay. This information is often a make-or-break factor in whether someone can take a job. If job seekers can’t find it quickly enough, you’ll lose some potentially great applicants.
• Use the right marketing channels. Different job websites and platforms tend to attract different pools of talent. If you’re not getting qualified candidates with your current methods, it may be time to try posting your job through a more specialized channel or a staffing agency.

4. Speed Up the Hiring Process

Hiring for seasonal needs may mean putting other tasks on hold until you have the workforce you need. Seasonal workers often apply to multiple jobs, and a drawn-out hiring process likely means losing your best candidates.

Look for ways to speed up parts of the hiring process, like using an automated tool to schedule interviews, having candidates answer pre-screening questions, or getting a temp staffing agency to help. That way, you can focus your team on the parts of the process that require the strongest human touch and get the job done faster.

5. Keep Onboarding and Training Simple

Good training is essential for any workforce, but that doesn’t mean your seasonal temps need to go through the full onboarding program for long-term employees. You can likely cut down some parts of onboarding and training that aren’t as important for someone who will only be around for a month or three.

That said, don’t skimp on cross-training, especially if you run a smaller hotel. If all of your staff can handle multiple roles, you’ll be better able to reassign them as needed during busy periods.

6. Plan For Post-Season Transitions

Don’t forget to plan for after the busy season. The post-season wind-down is a great time to offer long-term roles to standout seasonal employees. 

Even if you don’t have any long-term openings, you can at least foster good relationships with your seasonal workers. Some of them may want to come back in future years, which will enable you to spend that much less time on next year’s seasonal hiring.

7. Hire a Staffing Agency to Help

A staffing agency can help you handle seasonal staffing with grace. Many agencies have a large pool of pre-qualified talent that they can quickly draw from to meet seasonal full-time, part-time, or on-call needs. With the right agency partner, you will have plenty of flexibility to staff your business as needed during the busy season.

At LG Resources, we provide flexible staffing solutions to help employers throughout Utah, including many in the retail and hospitality industries. After you fill out our contact form, we will reach out for a consultation, typically within a few hours. We can sometimes hire seasonal employees on the same day, although it depends on the type of job, pay restrictions, and working conditions.

Fill out our form to request qualified seasonal employees from LG Resources today. We’ll get in touch with you soon about how we can help with your staffing needs.