Who Will Work on Black Friday?

It’s almost August: do you know where your new holiday season employees are?

Back in the …mumbles…umm… 60’s and 70’s, an announcement would come on television each night at 10 PM:

It was a warning to parents, a way to tell them something they should already know. To double check that things are as they should be. To stop an issue before it gets too late.

This is your warning, and I’ll state it again: It’s almost August: do you know where your new holiday season employees are?

ABR and ABH: Always Be Recruiting and Always Be Hiring

It has been said (and it’s the truth); the best time to find a job is when you have a job. My experience has taught me that the best time to find a new employee is before you need that new employee. That may never be truer than right now.

Casual/non-career workers are choosing to skip the team rigmarole and do their own side hustles of food delivery and car services. They are working remotely. They are making their own product, creating and monetizing digital content, and examining their expenses to reduce the need to engage in the traditional work environment.

How do you compete with that if you are a traditional employer? Especially if you are a traditional retail or food service employee?

It’s simple. You can’t compete and you don’t compete.

You offer something different.

Appeal to the Solo Entrepreneur

The solo worker enjoys making their own schedule, their own work day, and not answering to anyone about their choices. That can be a hard fit when integrating that worker into a team.

But it isn’t impossible, because you have some things that they likely also want:

1. great workplace culture
2. cohesive and supportive team
3. advertising support
4. safe place to work
5. great boss/manager/owner
6. predictable hours and paycheck

Pro Tip: If you DON’T have these things today then don’t worry about getting new employees. Your first step is to get your house in order immediately and build an environment where people want to come and work… and more importantly: want to STAY and work.

Retaining the Former Solo Employee

While the following may be welcomed by all employees they are extremely important to workers that have been their own boss!

1. Get their schedule availability and use it!
2. Post the schedule at least 2 weeks in advance (a month in advance is even better!)
3. Don’t change the schedule.
4. If you can’t stick to #3, then make sure everyone knows about the change, why it is needed, and why it is an exception. I know that you may think that is going overboard, but lack of ‘why’ will scatter your employees to the winds. Explain. Take them as partners in the problem. Use the team approach and exceptions will happen less often.
5. Periodically ask for input on how well the schedule is matching the customer/task volume. Your frontline employees already think and talk about it; have them share the intel with you.
6. Clearly define the tasks to be done and the estimated time to do them. NOTE: If you haven’t timed the tasks assigned to employees do it right away. There isn’t a better way to make sure your schedule is realistic than to know how much time is needed in the average day, the slow day, and the busy day; however those are defined in your industry. Be open about what you are doing when you conduct these timings and ask your team for a reality check. Keep a list of ‘record times’ for the people that are excited when they beat records. Do NOT penalize people for hitting the time and not beating it! You are going the distance together, not sprinting alone. As long as everyone knows the goal times will generally be above your first recorded effort.

Rewards

Your solopreneurs may be used to just themselves and the tunes of their choice, but praise is music to everyone’s ears.

• Praise a job well done. Praise it in public. Put it in writing. Give out an award for it. Share it on social media. Good things are a BIG deal.
• Make your thanks appropriate. Did you see the viral Burger King anniversary package? Licorice for a 27 year anniversary? Never missed a shift that whole time and he received a thank you gift of (to quote People magazine) “a single movie ticket, a Starbucks cup, some Life Savers, a bag of Reese’s Pieces and a few other items stuffed into a clear, plastic backpack.”

Of COURSE it was filmed!

OF COURSE the TIKTOK Twitterverse lost its mind!

OF COURSE the official line is that it was an unofficial playful thingy!

Of COURSE the world reached out and this loyal employee is the recipient of a HUGE GoFundMe amount which you can read about here:

But all of that good stuff for one person came at a terrible cost to Burger King’s credibility. And it isn’t going to make applicants line up to work for the franchise anytime soon.

Make sure that a ‘thank you’ is either appropriate to the achievement OR a clear and understood token.

• Give signing bonuses to new employees- AND employees that make referrals. Make it two-parts:

* Existing employee suggests someone and you hire that someone. Give both the existing employee and the new hire a small ‘signing bonus’. I suggest the amount they would earn in one day, before taxes.

* After ‘some time’ that is appropriate to you, your industry, and the job: give both people a second bonus. Make it larger, perhaps the amount that they would make in a week.

It rewards lasting past the ‘ditch point’ for the new hire, and gives the referring employee skin in the game to mentor and hire the referral succeed.

Is All of This Too Much?

I don’t know.

How much are you losing right now on recruiting costs? How much more could you make if you could have normal hours?

How much do you pay for onboarding new employees constantly? How much team productivity do you lose when someone leaves?

Only you can do the math, but what do you have to lose? Maybe, just maybe, you’ll go back to having at least one day off every week.

~

When you hire those new employees be sure to include these not-so-obvious things on their first day!

And if YOU are the one seeking a seasonal job- this is essential reading:

While you’re here, please do one or all of the following!

1. Leave a comment and share your thoughts. Do you have advice for new job seekers?

2. Click on the little heart to let me know that this clicked with you.

3. Click on the subscribe button and get a FREE notification when my next post goes live.

4. Feel free to share a link to anything I write on your social media.

5. A one-time tip or even a monthly pledge to support my writing is always appreciated if you are so moved!

You can also find me on Medium, where a version of this article was first posted. AND you can find me on Threads!