The holiday season is fast approaching and with it, the prospect of a significant spike in sales for many of Australia’s 155,000 retail trade businesses (1).
Last year, local consumers spent $35.1 billion across the country in December, an increase of 0.8 per cent (2) on the previous year’s figure, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Black Friday, which traditionally falls on the last Friday of November, heralds the commencement of the seasonal rush while the January back-to-school sales mark its official end.
In the interim, many retailers are run off their feet and rely heavily on Christmas casuals to help their regulars unpack the stock, assist customers and work the registers. Some may ramp up their headcount by as much as 50 per cent over this period, to capitalise on surging demand.
Working up a top team of temporary recruits
Until recently, finding, onboarding, training and managing these short-term hires was an unavoidably protracted exercise for large retailers.
Situations vacant advertisements might elicit thousands of applications and sifting through them could be the work of many days or even weeks for HR personnel.
Compiling shortlists of potentially suitable candidates, conducting face to face interviews, checking references, generating offer letters and collecting the personal data necessary to onboard new hires – think tax file numbers and bank account, super fund and next of kin details – could also be time consuming and expensive.
In today’s times, with retail margins under extreme pressure and back-office teams being asked to do more with less, it’s a modus operandi that’s becoming less and less sustainable.
Turning to technology to make the process more efficient
Fortunately, there are now alternatives for retailers that want to staff up for the holiday season and offer relief without expending excessive time and resources in the process.
An automated HCM platform can help them recruit, screen and onboard temporary talent efficiently and effectively.
Choose one with full support throughout the employee lifecycle and it’s possible to harness the power of AI to assess online applications automatically against a pre-defined set of criteria. Instead of HR staff spending hours attempting to identify candidates whose profile matches that of the ideal staff member, the platform can generate a shortlist of contenders for store or hiring managers to consider, in a matter of minutes.
Candidates can be interviewed in real life or virtually, via live or pre-recorded interview, and their applications progressed to the hiring and onboarding stages, with as much or as little human intervention as desired.
Getting the gang back together
The most powerful ideas are often the simplest! Bringing back old hands – former employees who are willing to return on a temporary basis – is another strategy retailers can employ to keep holiday staffing costs down. It’s cheaper, quicker and lower risk than starting the hiring process from scratch and means that retailer management are dealing with a known quantity – tried, tested and trustworthy workers who don’t need as much training as raw recruits coming in cold.
Having systems that allow you to optimise and do this effectively and at scale is another thing entirely. Keeping track of these ‘alumni’ from season to season may once have been a challenge but deploy the right HCM platform with dedicated alumni solutions and reaching out to them at the appropriate juncture becomes a straightforward matter. Those who are interested and available can be re-boarded with minimum fuss and rostered when and where they’re needed.
Right people, right place, right time
AI-powered machine learning embedded in HCM technology can also help HR teams and store managers optimise staffing levels throughout the holiday period. Being able to synthesise data from multiple sources – think foot traffic counters, historical sales figures and current forecasts – allows them to develop rosters that reflect fluctuating demand across December and January.
The result: fewer occasions on which the staff on shift are either utterly overwhelmed or huddled in a corner folding t-shirts, trying to keep busy while they wait for customers. From a business perspective its simple. Businesses either save money and avoid paying staff they don’t need or they can increase staff and avoid the risk of paying customers walking out of the store due to lack of service and increase revenue.
Overtime can be minimised too, if store managers have information at their fingertips about employees’ availability and the hours they’re rostered to work during the current pay period. Should someone call in sick or extra hands be needed unexpectedly, it’s easy for them to determine who they’re best to call first and optimise their spend.
Making it simple to staff up
The retail calendar features a string of special events, with the festive season chief among them. An automated HCM platform makes hiring additional workers to augment your team during these busy periods simple and cost effective. If having the right resources in the right place at the right time matters to your retail business this Christmas, and all year round, it’s foundation technology you need to have in your ICT stack.
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