Your Seasonal Employee Tool Kit: Everything You Need to Know About Seasonal Hiring

‘Tis the season to hire seasonal employees. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation, retailers are expected to hire between 700,000 and 750,000 seasonal workers during the 2015 holiday season. Hiring full time employees, managing them, and keeping them engaged is hard enough – but accomplishing all of that with seasonal employees, while running a business, is another thing to pile on top of the stress that comes with holidays. Here is a toolkit we assembled for you, full of tips and tricks to making sure you get the most from your seasonal employees.

Before You Start:

1. There are several rules and regulations about hiring seasonal employees and how you classify them.SBA.gov shares some important information to make sure you stay within compliance.
2. Before you start posting on Craigslist or local newspapers, you need to understand tax regulations.Review best practices for hiring and paying seasonal workers.
3. Hiring disabled veterans as seasonal workers is a great way to meet your high customer demand and receive several benefits, such as tax credits. Here’s a look at what those benefits are, and where you can find disabled veterans looking for jobs.

Hiring Seasonal Employees:

1. Sometimes, it pays to be creative with your hiring. Think beyond the basic job boards and target your key demographic.
2. Let’s be honest, one of the most nerve-wracking parts of finding seasonal help is finding quality employees. Here’s how to find seasonal workers who don’t suck.
3. Make sure your hiring game-plan is on point, and serves to help you staff up quickly. Consider these 11 approaches to fielding superlative workers when the annual rush is on.
4. Interview questions are very important, and they are not a one-size-fits-all prospect for full time and seasonal help. Here’s a quick list of interview questions aimed at seasonal employment candidates.
5. One of our favorite resources for seasonal hiring tips is this webinar from Adecco USA:

Training and Managing Seasonal Employees:

1.  Making sure your seasonal employees are well-trained is vital to ensuring that things run smoothly, and that your business ultimately meets its sales goals. Beyond how to work the register and the overhead music, here are 15 things every retailer must train their seasonal staff.
2. Of course, customer service is everything. You don’t want an employee who doesn’t reflect the values of your business when it comes to how they treat your customers. Check out these six ways to train your seasonal employees on customer service.
3. Engaging and motivating your seasonal staff goes beyond training. In fact, according to this expert, 70% of it comes down to the job their manager is doing.
4. Keeping temporary employees motivated can be difficult, consider competitive options to keep them engaged.
5. Choose motivation techniques that fit with your managerial style, the personalities of the seasonal employees and the industry.

Would you like more tips and tricks to get you through the holiday season? Our weekly holiday email course features unique advice from small business experts, advocates and influencers to help you survive and thrive the holidays. Click below to sign up. It’s free!