Planning for the holidays is always tricky – will sales be up, requiring more sales staff, or remain the same as last year?  Big box stores often roll out their seasonal hiring plans in October, and an AP story in today’s newspaper predicts a 3% sales increase between November and January.  However a study by EY Parthenon, the consulting arm of Ernst & Young, warns that a big part of that growth will come from inflation. In other words, if they are correct, roughly the same number of items will go out the door as in 2023.

How was your staffing level last year? Ideally you were able to have enough employees on hand to provide welcoming personal service to every customer. That doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t sometimes a wait to check out.  You may be surprised to learn that most US customers are willing to wait up to 15 minutes before becoming frustrated. They may even feel that spending time in line indicates that they’ve made a popular choice as to where to shop. There are rides at Disney’s theme parks which average over an hour in wait time – without a loss of customer loyalty.

We do try to acknowledge the patience of customers who are at the back of the line when our store gets busy. In addition to thanking them for their patience, and letting them know that the line moves quickly, I’ll sometimes grab a handful of chocolate coins to hand out as a token of our gratitude.

Once you’ve been in business a year or two your should be able to create a holiday schedule for your staff based on the times you anticipate will be busiest. Most POS systems will give you a breakdown of sales and transactions by time of day and day or the week so that you can plan for when you’ll need the most sales associates.  In addition to our regular staff members, we now often bring in an additional “swing” from 11:00 to 3:00. This person waits on customers, and can also cover lunch breaks and help restock supplies.

Some of our large competitors micromanage their staffing by scheduling employees for different times every single week based on real-time sales predictions. This makes it difficult for employees to have a dependable income, to arrange for childcare, and to take classes or participate in other activities. It should be possible to maximize the efficiency of your store’s scheduling without minimizing the appeal of working retail job at the holidays.

Happy Retailing,
Carol “Orange” Schroeder