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Getting It Right When Hiring Temporary Workers For Inventory Season

1kristinthomasRetailers made a decent showing in the 2015 holiday season, with U.S. sales totaling approximately $625 billion. Now that the dust has settled, retailers are catching their breath before the next busy season descends upon them. And many are taking stock — literally — of their inventory levels.

Nothing is more important to a retailer’s success than having the right product at the right time and in the right quantity. While inventory management systems have helped to automate the bulk of these processes to enable real-time tracking, many companies still rely on a human element — hiring temporary workers to count inventory in stores, in warehouses and in distribution centers, especially leading up to and out of peak shopping seasons.

Hiring temporary workers for inventory-taking enables retailers to keep their permanent employees focused on serving customers, and reduces the need to pay overtime.

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But hiring temps poses its own set of challenges. With that in mind, here are six strategies that retailers can adopt to make sure they have a positive experience with their seasonal inventory staff:

  1. Plan ahead: Retailers should plan their inventory workforce needs with the same exacting standards they do for inventory itself. It’s not just about planning for Christmas. Depending on your business, you might see bursts of activity at other times of the year, including Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and the weeks leading up to the beginning of school. Fortunately, retailers armed with accurate sales data can predict when their stock-taking needs will be most acute and plan accordingly.  

  1. Don’t reinvent the wheel: Since you can plan for these demands, create effective processes that can be used time and again, whenever the next spike occurs. Take notice of your top performers in the past: What qualities made them successful, and how can you ensure you capture those strengths in your next group of new hires? Develop standard job descriptions, advertisements and interview scripts that will yield the right types of candidates — and repeat them. Establish milestones for job postings, interview windows, hiring deadlines and onboarding or training. And create routine training programs for temporary workers.

  1. Keep ‘em warm: You most likely won’t hire every qualified applicant. But, by its very nature, temporary employment is a fickle field. You should always keep qualified people you didn’t initially hire warm and ready to go, so that you can account for attrition (either within a season or from season to season).

  1. Don’t settle: Hiring the best isn’t just something you do for your permanent staff. Don’t change your overarching hiring strategy — including your employer brand proposition — for inventory season. You’ll need people who work well as part of a team, and you’ll want to hire people who fit your culture, because they’ll inevitably interact with some of your permanent employees.

  1. Look for good ‘career’ temps: When you’re reviewing a candidate’s resume, look for stability. If you have a candidate who has worked multiple inventory seasons for the same retailer, you can be confident that they’re a productive, trustworthy worker. People who never go back to the same company twice should raise a red flag.

  1. Treat them well: A seasonal position might not be a path to a permanent job — and the candidate may not even be interested in one — but you should always treat temporary employees with the same level of respect you would a permanent worker. If they perform well, let them know, so that they’ll think about coming back during the next inventory season. They’ll appreciate that kind of loyalty and can be great ambassadors for your brand. And remember: they may also be customers!

Temporary workers in retail make up a much higher proportion of workers than in most other industries. A 2014 study by the NRF and the University of Georgia found that 32% of retail workers are temporary (defined as working less than three months at a company), while 31% are part-time.

Retail lends itself to temporary work, both customer-facing and in the back-office, where inventory sits, because of its seasonality. But the rigor with which you hire these employees should be taken no less seriously.


Kirstin Thomas is Senior Vice President at Alexander Mann Solutions, responsible for overall global delivery to clients in the retail sector. She has worked in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing industry for nearly 20 years.

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