The holiday season can be one of the most hectic times of the year for retail managers for several reasons. One of the most pressing concerns for managers during the holidays is putting together a work schedule that maintains sales productivity and a high level of customer service. With temporary employees added to the mix and the personal time-off requests from full-time employees, retail managers can find themselves overwhelmed by scheduling concerns. There are several reasons why retail managers need to be proficient at scheduling during the holiday season. The holiday season is the busiest shopping season of the year and it is important to have the proper number of sales personnel on the sales floor during peak hours to take care of customers, and help prevent product theft. The holidays can also be a time when managers reward full-time employees who work hard all year and could benefit from the extra hours and the extra sales commissions. Every employee and customer has an expectation during the holiday season, and the retail manager must develop work schedules that meet those expectations.
Ask for All Time-Off Requests Early
You should set a deadline for accepting time-off requests for the holiday season that falls no later than September 1. If an employee has an emergency situation, you can sort it out individually. But everyone else should have their time-off requests in on time if they want to get them approved. The staff is going to need to understand that the holidays are the busiest time of the year and you need time to process their requests and create the schedules.
Create Your Schedules Well in Advance
By analyzing the revenue numbers per hour for the store from the last holiday season, you can get a good idea as to when you will need the most coverage for the sales floor. Once you have all of your time-off requests submitted and approved, you need to start making schedules that give you the most coverage for the busiest times of the year. Seasonal employees should work primarily during the times that are least busy to free up your regular staff to take care of the holiday rush.
Hire Seasonal Employees to Fill In
Inevitably, you will have people calling in sick during the holidays and that will cause problems with your schedule. As you bring in seasonal employees, make notes of their availability times and use those employees as emergency fill-ins for anyone who calls off for a shift. This prevents you from overusing your full-time employees and creating animosity among them.
Try to Keep Your Schedule Fluid
Even though you created your holiday work schedules weeks in advance, you should still hold off on releasing them until the normal times each week. This allows you to analyze the revenue flow per hour for this particular holiday season and make any adjustments that are necessary. It may be that people are shopping later this year than last year and you will need to adjust your scheduling accordingly.
Develop a List of Emergency Contact Methods for Your Top Employees
Every manager has that group of employees they can count on no matter what happens. During the holiday season, that group expects to be called on when people call off work for the day and the shoppers are filling up the store. With all of the advances in technology, you can develop text and phone lists that will allow you to reach these employees instantly. Whenever you need someone to cover a shift or you need to quickly add a worker due to sales volume, send out a message to this group before contacting the seasonal employees. Retail managers are under a lot of pressure during the holiday season and it can get worse if their scheduling habits are not successful. Each retail manager should plan their holiday schedules weeks, or even months, in advance to make sure that the store is as profitable as possible during the busiest time of the year.
For more tips on how to handle holiday scheduling, please visit Take the Edge off the Holiday Season with These Time and Attendance Tracking Tips and Managing Retail Employee’s Time Off During the Holidays.
