Training Your Temps for the Holidays

Training Your Temps

By Philip C. Wrzesinski for the Holidays

The holidays are coming. Time to put on your HR hat and start interviewing for seasonal workers. The biggest challenge this year will be finding those people. The labor market has arguably never been so tight.

The other challenge – the one you face every single year – is how to get those folks trained and quickly up to the standards you have for your store. We spoke with several ASTRA Members to get tips on some of the ways they prep their seasonal help. Make Them Great at Something

David Castillo of Red Balloon Toy Store in Salt Lake City says he gives his holiday workers a more narrowed scope of responsibilities focusing on the things that are easiest to train.

“We make sure to make them great at fewer things instead of making them ‘pretty good’ or ‘okay’ at a lot of things,” Castillo said.

This helps free up his permanent staff to do what they do best – sell to the customers.

Cynthia Compton from 4 Kids Books & Toys in Indiana agrees. “Every year I find one ‘new’ way to wrap something in our store,” she said. “Maybe one year I teach how to make gift bags for plush from wrap, one year I teach how to wrap a Bilibo, or show how to wrap on the diagonal when a piece is too short. That gives newbies a skill that puts them on the same level as seasoned wrappers and increases their confidence.” Checklists

Several retailers mentioned using checklists for training to make sure everything gets covered. One retailer said she uses an opening and closing checklist so detailed even a brand-new employee can follow it.

“The better you spell it out, the easier it is to train and see consistency,” she said.

Checklists also take some of the guesswork out of training by giving you a script to follow.

Along the same line, cheat sheets for everything from store policies to gift suggestions by age group can be handy for your seasonal help to keep in their pocket. Just having it often gives newbies the confidence they need to be the professional you want.

Videos

Bob Negen from Whizbang Training suggests you create a short and simple video for every item on your checklist. It doesn’t have to be polished or rehearsed, just a minute or two of you showing someone else how you want something done. That way everyone has visual proof of exactly how you want things done. Scripts

Another tip Compton recommends is to have scripts of explanation for some of the special services you offer. “We review HOLD and RETURN policies, and everyone adopts the same sentence or two of explanation,” she said.

Making sure everyone is giving out the same message is important for keeping customers happy during the busy season. It also saves you time when your employees know the right thing to say and don’t have to keep bugging you to answer basic questions. Customer First

While several retailers mentioned the most important part of training is teaching that the customer’s needs always come first, Ann Kienzle of *play in Chicago takes that notion a step farther. “I always remind them to [sell] with the customer’s budget in mind and not their own,” she said. “What a college kid thinks of as expensive and what a grandma, aunt, parent thinks of as expensive are usually two different things.” College Kids

Speaking of college kids, a few retailers said they rarely need to hire a lot of new employees for the holidays because they keep high school kids on the staff year-round who often come back on their holidays breaks once they go away to college. “We like to hire and train high schoolers who come back to work for us on break in college,” said Stephanie Sala from Five Little Monkeys in Northern California. “They are already trained and jump right into our busiest time of year knowing just what to do.” Invest the Time

No matter what you do to train your holiday help, the two important things are to set aside the time to do that training, whether it’s done by you, by your manager, or by videos; and have a plan for what you want to accomplish. Not only will your store run more smoothly throughout the season, but you also never know when that seasonal person is going to step up to be your next rock star staff.