Scaling the “Three Peaks”

• Black Friday – a relative latecomer to the party starting in the UK on Amazon as far back as 2013, but really becoming more of a ‘thing’ in 2015, most of our retail clients are now finding this to be the “spikiest spike” of the year, even though last year’s growth didn’t see as big an increase as expected.
• Christmas – traditionally the biggest peak, now that there are three peaks close together it simply blends into the season, with Cyber Monday being the spike for internet retailing orders.
• January Sales – after Christmas comes the frenzy of the January sales, closely following by the arrival of the new season’s new lines, requiring careful management of stock & space.

As specialist consultants covering the retail sector for more than 13 years, we are already working with many of our retail clients to help establish their staffing requirements for this years' Three Peaks;

1. Assess how many people you need to recruit?

We work in partnership to help companies assess how many people are needed in each function.

2. Understand what interim employees will be doing?

Businesses must then assess where these people will work and where they can best master the skills to take the place of an experienced employee. It’s important to identify which stage they will work at and where they can add the most value in the least amount of time.

3. Ascertain who is available in the market?

Businesses work closely with us as specialists in the market to help them understand their local market and the type of talent that is available at a given time.

4. How you are going to find them?

Companies work in partnership with 1 or 2 recruitment consultancies who can not only provide the headcount but also understands exactly what your business is about and the skill sets that are required to help with Peak. Whether its temporary staff or interim managers, it’s about partnering with the correct company. Having the correct employees in place is simply the start of the onboarding process. Below are 3 aspects of People Planning for Peak that businesses should take into consideration.

1. Induction

It’s important that seasonal employees can turn up on day one and start to add value straight away. Ways this can be done are by using work-ready training programmes, pre-employment training, online learning portals, outsourcing training to companies and using government training initiatives such as Job Gym.

2. Training

When temporary employees start, necessary training can be undertaken using;

• On-the-job training.
• ‘Buddy Up’ schemes where new staff work alongside an existing employee to learn from.
• One-to-one training with a mentor and assessments using tick list to qualify that each person has developed the required specific skills.

3. Management

Managing seasonal employees through their time with your business can be done by;

• The use of ‘Buddy Up’ schemes, ensuring that targets are met and maintained.
• Allowing people that want to progress the opportunity to be a temporary team leader or manager, therefore increasing the size of the management team during peak. At some sites, many of the management teams started out as temporary peak workers.
• Employee engagement with existing employees is vital in ensuring they work well with temporary employees.
• Supporting people’s personal goals by demonstrating to temporary staff there is an opportunity for them at the end of their contract if they want it and giving them something to aim for.

For clients that are at the top of their game, they see the three peaks as an opportunity, not a challenge. The Benefits – Peak is an opportunity to create;

1. A talent pool for finding new employees.
2. An opportunity to develop future team leaders and managers.
3. An opportunity to streamline business processes because new people coming into the business always find new and easier ways to carry out tasks that your existing staff may never have thought of. Many major continuous improvement projects and simplification of processes can arise suggestions from temporary staff.

If you have recruitment requirements for the peak period in your business and would like find out more, visit our contract recruitment page here. Alternatively, get in touch with one of our logistics recruitment experts today on 0161 825 0825.