Seasonal Employees Holiday Hiring – ‘Tis the Season!

Seasonal employees are a necessary part of the workforce for many retail stores and delivery services. Between UPS announcing that they will be hiring 100,000 workers for this holiday season, Target stating they will be looking for around 130,000 and other companies needing employees to cover the large holiday demand, it puts things into perspective for these companies. The question then becomes what are the challenges of competing for talent, and what they should be doing to find the talent, hire the talent and retain the talent for the season.

One of the most important things a company can do is to be recognized as a great employer with a great culture. Even for seasonal employees that might just be hired for a couple of months, they want to work for companies that are good to their employees. Sometimes this comes down to wages, or incentives, but it’s also largely about the reputation of the company. Even though many seasonal positions might not lead to long term employment, there’s always the chance that it will, which means companies willing to offer skill based training or job flexibility might help entice better talent to come there way. While many of these are temporary hires, companies should want to try and get the best talent available which only helps to enhance their reputation as a great employer.

Some companies started hiring seasonal employees towards the middle of summer. For those that are now in full hiring mode, the recruitment to hiring cycle needs to happen fast as prospective employees might apply to multiple places, but are just wanting to know they have secured the employment.

One of the most important factors for hiring seasonal employees is to ensure the company is minimizing compliance risks, following all applicable laws for hiring, and doing their due diligence to understand who it is they are hiring. For example, companies that hire across the country need to know which cities and/or states have ban the box laws, or salary history bans, or equal pay laws. There are issues that can arise quickly if due diligence is not done in the flurry of the holiday season to get that talent in place.