Stores increasing workforces up to 40 per cent
About 70 per cent of Future Shop’s sales happen in December. To handle this increase in demand, the retailer, which has a centralized recruiting system for its 146 stores across Canada, began its nearly six-week-long holiday recruiting at the end of September, said Chris Taylor, vice-president of human resources at Future Shop in Vancouver.
The goal is to hire between 4,000 and 5,000 seasonal employees, which would increase Future Shop’s workforce by more than 40 per cent, said Taylor.
“It’s important to us to make sure we put the right bodies in place to meet that customer demand for December,” he said.
The holiday season is the busiest time of year for all retailers, with sales topping about $30 billion nationally, said Mark Beazley, director of communications at the Retail Council of Canada in Toronto.
Current forecasts for the holiday season predict a five-per-cent to nine-per-cent increase in sales compared to last year, he said. And retailers across the country are ramping up hiring to meet the increased demand.
Along with Future Shop’s plan to hire up to 5,000 seasonal workers, Best Buy Canada announced plans to hire more than 2,000 seasonal workers for the holiday rush, which will increase its 6,500-employee workforce by 35 per cent. (The two companies are owned by Best Buy in Richfield, Minn.)
“Though not all retailers are going to increase their numbers by this significant an amount, a lot of them are looking to increase their staffing anywhere from 10 to 20 per cent,” said Beazley.
With so many stores looking to recruit from the same group of jobseekers, Future Shop is turning to social media, along with traditional methods, to recruit this year.
“We realized we have to hit as many demographic sectors as we can. Social media is an obvious choice for us with our tech-savvy customers, with our associates,” said Taylor.
“It’s just a really logical transition for us.”
The retailer has more than 82,000 fans on its Facebook page and more than 14,000 followers on its various Twitter accounts. It uses these sites to let people know when and how many positions will be available and answer questions they may have about what kind of experience they need, how much the jobs pay and how to apply, said Taylor.
Not only are candidates better informed about opportunities, but social media networks also build buzz among jobseekers and attract more candidates to Future Shop, he said.
“Getting that buzz out there gives us an edge to market and we can get those associates applying early,” he said. “Hopefully, we’re beating our competitors to the punch in getting those folks on board. That way, we get the best of the crop for sure.”
Most people who apply for seasonal retail jobs are students looking to make some extra money during the holiday season, said Beazley.
“I think Future Shop has been very smart in leveraging social media to reach that audience,” he said.
More retailers will be using these tools to recruit employees going forward, especially seasonal employees, because social media helps employers reach more jobseekers and hire them quickly, he said.
Best Buy is also using Facebook and Twitter to promote seasonal jobs to people who are following the retailer online, said Janice Antaya-Finlayson, vice-president of human resources at Best Buy in Vancouver.
“The type of talent we’re interested in are people who love technology, they love to have fun, they have high energy and they want to play with the latest and the greatest tools,” she said.
The retailer added social media to its traditional recruitment efforts which include ads on its main website, job postings on Monster.ca and an employee referral program, said Antaya-Finlayson.
Training essential
But hiring seasonal workers is just one-half of the challenge. Retailers also need to have them trained and ready to serve customers.
Most of the large retailers have policies and procedures in place to hire and have seasonal workers trained in time to handle the Christmas rush, said Beazley. This includes starting the hiring process earlier, using experienced staff to help out new employees and giving the new employees tasks that are appropriate to their experience level, he said.
Future Shop’s seasonal employees undergo standardized training of about four days for non-sales employees and two weeks for sales, said Taylor. The retailer also likes to rehire former seasonal employees so there’s less of a learning curve, he said.
At Best Buy, all seasonal hires go through the same training as regular hires, said Antaya-Finlayson. The training includes 12 hours of orientation and training with role plays as well as on-the-job, online training that continues for four weeks after employees begin work.
“Seasonal employees are critical to our permanent workforce in helping us to meet the increased number of customers coming into our stores,” she said.
“It’s absolutely critical that we invest in their hiring and their training.”
Many employers, in various industries, are increasingly turning to contingent or temporary workers to meet spikes in demand, said Byrne Luft, vice-president of staffing operations at Manpower in Toronto.
“Companies save tremendous amounts of money by using a variable workforce because they’re not holding the workers on their payrolls for long periods of time,” said Luft.
However, the main challenge of having a contingent workforce is getting workers trained as quickly as possible so they can be as productive as the organization needs them to be, he said.
Other industries that are hiring contingent or seasonal workers can learn a lot from retailers in terms of how quickly they have employees hired and trained, said Beazley.
Structured recruitment and hiring processes, as well as an onboarding program that helps new hires quickly assimilate into the work environment, are critical for employers hiring any kind of seasonal or contingent workers, said Antaya-Finlayson.
“It’s critical your permanent employees really share their knowledge and really support these new hires and show them the ropes,” she said.
“A lot of our contingent workforce today spend several months on an assignment,” said Luft. “When you look at two weeks or three weeks or less than that in the onboarding of the staff, the savings in labour are so significant that the offset in the onboarding and training of that staff is really a fraction of the total cost.”
