In Print » August 2010 » Features » Staff Training

It’s January 15, 2011, and you finally have a minute to take a look at the preliminary holiday financials. Wow! Sales were up 15 percent over last year, but labor dollars were up only 3 percent, so labor as a percentage of sales was down. The number of mistakes was down also, as was the number of customer complaints.

In a way, you’re not surprised. Despite the craziness of the past month, everything seemed to be clicking (at least most of the time). Customers were smiling, employees were humming “Frosty the Snowman” and products were flying off the shelves. Notably, the seasonal employees were up to speed faster than ever before—and got along much better with the permanent staff than in years past. In fact, several people who were hired as temporary holiday help are being seriously considered for full-time permanent positions.

Hard to believe? It can happen! How? With a good Bottom-Line Training® plan for your seasonal holiday help, a concerted effort to get holiday training systems in place early (no, it’s not at all too soon to start) and, of course, a little luck.

Most retailers bring on additional help for the November-December holiday season. In small shops it may be a matter of pulling in friends and family or recruiting the neighbors’ kids who are home from college. But in some businesses, holiday sales account for close to—or more than—half of annual revenues so that temporary, seasonal staffers who can come up to speed quickly and perform effectively are an essential element of the business. For example, the staff at Zingerman’s Mail Order grows from about 45 in the summer to approaching 400 in November and December.

Wherever you fall within that spectrum, advance planning is the key to a smooth holiday season. No doubt you’ve already made your holiday product selections and have placed orders to increase your stock of product on hand. But have you taken the time to put a holiday training plan in place? A plan that will bring your holiday staff up to speed quickly and also ensure that your year-round employees are well versed in any special products that you’ll carry at that time of year?

To create a training plan that is focused on your holiday bottom lines, begin by answering ZingTrain’s 4 Training Plan Questions:

• What is expected of the trainees—and by when?
• How will that information be made available?
• How will we know the expectations are/are not being met?
• What are the rewards/consequences for meeting/not meeting the expectations?

In this month’s column I’ll focus on answering Question 1. Documenting clear expectations for your holiday staff is the single most important thing you can do to ensure a satisfying work experience for them—and bottom line results for your business. Next column I’ll address Questions 2-4.

What do you expect your staff to know, or to be able to do, before the holiday rush begins?

Once the holiday season is upon you, it’s too late to do any real training. Sure, you can throw “warm bodies” behind the counter and onto the sales floor, but you certainly won’t get the positive results that the manager was enjoying in the scenario above.

So, pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit down with a pad of paper (or your computer) and list the key skills (things they need to be able to do) and knowledge (information they need to know) that your holiday staff will need. Once you’ve got a first draft list, prioritize it based on what will have the biggest impact on your bottom-line targets for the holidays.

It goes without saying that this exercise is most effective if you have specific bottom-line results that you’re striving to meet— sales goals, labor cost targets, maximum number of mistakes, etc. If you haven’t set those targets yet, do those first, then prioritize your expectations.

Here are some categories that will help you organize your thoughts:

General Information
There is a certain amount of general information about your organization that employees need to know to operate effectively and to feel that they are a part of the team. Who are the company founders? What are the products that the organization’s reputation was built on? Your permanent staff could probably recite this stuff in their sleep. But the holiday staff needs to know it too. Ask yourself, and your year-round staff, “What are the questions that customers are most likely to ask about our company?”

Customer Service Skills
What are your customer service standards? How do you want staff to handle customer complaints? What are employees empowered to do if a customer requests a refund? Your customers will expect the same level of service from your holiday staff that they have come to expect throughout the year.

Operational Skills
Is it realistic to expect your holiday staff to perform every operation in your business or will you have them focus on specific tasks that they can learn quickly? The answer to this question will depend in large part on the size and complexity of your organization. From a training standpoint, it often makes sense to focus holiday help on specific tasks that you know will be in high demand, for example making gift baskets, gift wrapping packages, or making deli trays. If you will need them to be “all-purpose,” it still makes sense to figure out which tasks are most critical to their (and your business’) success and to document clear expectations for how those tasks should be performed.

Product Knowledge
It is not possible for temporary help to know your inventory with the same depth and breadth of knowledge that your year-round staff has. Therefore, it is up to you to decide which products they need to know about in depth and which ones they just need to know who or where to go to for more information. It is likely that you will carry some special products during the holidays and these should surely be among those that get a top training priority—not just for seasonal staff but for permanent staff as well.

Safety and Sanitation Standards
Less glamorous than the products, but no less essential to your business’s success, is making sure that all staff understand and follow your guidelines for safety (knife handling, slicer use, lifting heavy boxes, etc.) and sanitation (bleach buckets, danger foods, case temperature, etc.)

Sales and Quality Targets
To feel part of the team, employees (both seasonal and permanent) need to hear your vision of what a really successful holiday season will look like. What are your revenue and gross profit targets? Are you shooting to keep the cost of mistakes under a specific percentage of sales? What were last year’s results and what are you aiming for this year? People are motivated to higher levels of performance if they feel they are part of a team that is working together for a challenging, yet attainable, goal.

Last- Minute Helper Tasks
We all have those people who show up for just the last few frantic days before Christmas. They are often family members, who hope that by working they’ll help us get home a little sooner (and if not, at least they’ll get a glimpse of us and remember what we look like!) Unless they are returnees from previous years who already know the ropes, you’ll want to focus their contribution on a limited number of specific tasks that need very little explanation—preferably not in direct contact with customers. Breaking down boxes for the dumpster, bagging condiments for catering orders and behind-the-line restocking come to mind. If you’ve already compiled a list of such tasks, you can scan the list and give out assignments quickly instead of trying to come up with something suitable on the fly.

Let’s face it. We all have expectations for our temporary holiday staff; however, we may not give those expectations much thought until we realize (sometime in mid-December) that they are not being met. If you get those expectations down on paper now, you can start making them clear during your holiday hiring—as well as in your holiday training. The clearer the expectations, the more likely they will be met, and the better results on your bottom lines.