Management 101: Improving Retail Workflow During The Holiday Season

Holiday season is just around the corner, and that means it’s time for you to strategize your approach to this busiest sales time of the year. Here are some tips for improving retail workflows during the holiday season:

Choose the Right Staff

It’s easy to find help during the holiday season (because it seems most everyone is eager to make some extra cash during this gift-giving time of year), but the hard part is choosing staff that you can count on to improve the workflow. Hiring temp employees is tricky business; it’s advisable that you go through a temp service that carefully screens applicants and maintains a pool of regular employees who are accustomed to the nature of temp work. That way, you can shorten your own hiring process (the hiring season is only so long, after all) and have some sense of confidence that the temp employees you are hiring are committed to the scope of work entailed.

Avoid Scheduling Problems

The holiday season can present some scheduling problems, brought on by extra staff, irregular hours, and surges of traffic to the storefront. You can go a long way in avoiding a lot of the typical scheduling problems by making use of scheduling software that automates a number of scheduling processes. For example, you can create schedules, send schedules to employees, log employee hours, notify employees of schedule changes, and much more, through scheduling software. The more features your tools allow, the better.

Stock Off Hours

Chances are that during your store’s open hours, the holiday crowd will be keeping your staff very busy–so much so that stocking can be anything from a distraction to a near impossibility. Therefore, you should plan on hiring (or keeping) extra staff to work off hours, stocking the merchandise that flies off the shelves and hangers during open hours.

Take Advantage of Technology

In addition to scheduling software, there are other technological resources that can help you streamline your workflow and boost your sales during holiday season. Beef up your website with holiday content, deals, and shipping specials. Consider using mobile checkout equipment like Foursquare, so that your retail employees can travel to customers in long lines for checkout. Use QR codes throughout your retail space so that your customers can get their own answers, and right away, to basic questions about your products.

The holiday season can be a great source of stress, or of extra income, depending on how you approach the influx of holiday shoppers. The trick to making the most of the holiday season is improving the retail workflow. Make us of these suggestions to get your retail business in shape in time for the holidays.