Seasonal slump? Try our last-minute peak season strategies

It happens. You get busy or start a little later than usual, and you miss the first step of peak hiring…

Planning.

When our clients find themselves in a situation where they're a little bit behind, they have a kneejerk reaction and start to make changes. Drastic ones, shifting schedules, increasing headcount, or throwing together pricey contests.

I’ve been in staffing for 20 years. And let me tell you, big last-minute changes only make the situation worse – and usually just lead to candidate and associate confusion.

Whether you’re an international brand or a small local shop, clarity and transparency are top priority during peak season. If you're behind, here are a few recommendations I give my clients who are facing a shaky October.

Communicate. Re-communicate. Overcommunicate

The feedback we give most is that you’re not communicating enough with your associates. In fact, the goal should be overcommunication. During onboarding, did you truly set the stage for what the seasonal work is going to be like? Did you communicate – and re-communicate – the benefits they’ll be receiving, whether it’s free lunches or attendance bonuses?

Do they know who their supervisor is? Is the assignment matching up to what the expectations were? Do they know what to do in the event of an emergency?

You’ve built this great program, but you failed to go the last mile to engage associates and get ahead of any future problems.

And keep in mind if there are real barriers preventing you from reaching workers. I have a client with as many as 26 languages spoken in one facility, so you might need to ensure your team is prepared to handle non-English speaking workers. It can be as easy as offering translation tools or providing Wi-Fi access for them to use an app on their phones.

More workers won’t fix bad practices

It’s commonplace. Clients request a certain headcount, but from the get-go, workers start leaving. So, the client asks to bring in more workers.

But just throwing more headcount at the problem isn’t the solution.

Seasonal clients need to make sure temporary workers have the right resources and training when they start. One of the strategies we implement is our Team Captain program, which creates these player-coach positions. These associates are still producing and performing traditional warehouse work, but they're also marked as a guide and mentor to new temporary workers.

A normal supervisor-to-associate ratio may be 75 to 1, but with the Team Captain program, we can cut that down to 15 to 1. Temporary workers are getting better training on the floor because they have access to someone who knows how to do the job, and the Team Captain is closer to the action and can keep an eye on things.

Check out the other other competition

Just the other day, I had to tell a client: Quit looking at the wages offered by the factories and warehouses down the street.

You really should be worried about the workers going to Uber, DoorDash, and Lyft.

The gig workforce is changing traditional seasonal assignments, and this needs to be your new barometer. They’re impeding on your workforce because they’re offering flexibility and often higher wages.

They say the gig economy is growing three times faster than traditional employment, especially for younger workers. That means employers are stuck between wage inflation and gig inflation.

These are things you need to take serious stock of – not just as you look at your seasonal workforce, but as you look toward the future.

Ask associates for the truth

Track how many people show up for interviews. Keep an eye on your Net Promoter Score (NPS). Look to see how many temporary workers open your emails.

Focus on any metrics you can get on associate engagement, because the worst you can do is wait for something like turnover to appear. That’s a lagging indicator, which means your temporary workers have already turned on the assignment, and now it's too late to fix it.

We regularly use our Pulse Survey tool when we’re on site to gauge associates’ feelings throughout their assignment. We’re walking the floor daily and tracking feedback through the tool in real time, so we can address an issue before an associate decides to no-show. The Survey Pulse tool asks a mixture of employee engagement questions, so we can report out responses by shift, by supervisor, by building.

So, if they say, “Oh my first day was terrible. They left me sitting at a cafeteria table for three hours.” We can get a handle on that, same day.

Don’t wait to ask for help

Obviously, before you start, engage your staffing partner and solicit their advice.

Sometimes our clients wait too long or try to pull their own market data on wages or employment availability. I really encourage them to lean in to their staffing provider and work with accurate analytics.

At Adecco, we have access to that at our fingertips. Our analytics tools give us real-time data into what's going on within any given market and where wages currently sit.

Our tools also give our clients access to their candidate journey and performance metrics. What’s great about that is we don’t need to call a client to let them know we have a top-of-funnel apply problem. They have real-time access to it themselves, which provides good visibility and accountability. And for us, it means we can get to work addressing problems faster.

Because here’s the thing, you’re only as good as whatever your staffing provider's telling you is going on, and with Adecco, you can hear it in real time without a filter.

Contact Adecco today, and see what that could look like for your peak hiring.