Your Seasonal Employee Training Can Make or Break Your Holiday Revenue

Many retailers rush training for seasonal employees for several reasons: the need to get them up to speed, typically seasonal employees only stick around for a few weeks or months, and there just doesn’t seem to be enough time. This is especially true if your new hire training is based on traditional e-Learning or teach, study, test learning models delivered through your LMS.

This could be a costly mistake. 

Customers come to brick-and-mortar stores because they want an experience. They want to interact with products—and most of all they want knowledgeable, attentive service before making a purchase. Yet, how can you balance proper onboarding training, with the short tenure of seasonal hires and the need for a great customer experience? 

An effective find, learn, do model of training delivered on a mobile, digital training platform can help you find this balance which is critical to ensure that seasonal hires are ready to handle the pressure.  

Training To Go

Onboarding your seasonal employees need to be taken out of the back office and onto the retail floor. You can do this by putting the tools to succeed in their hands, on any mobile device. But, mobile learning doesn’t mean you can just throw outdated content onto a mobile device. Creating engaging, interactive experiences that show off your brand and keeping new employees productive is no problem with mobile features like using digital assistants such as “Hey Siri” or “Ok Google” to search for content.

Traditional teach, study, test models of training are often delivered in the manager’s office and can be time-consuming and often ineffective as employees often forget the majority of what they learned by the time they need to use it. By transforming your training model to find, learn, and do, your new seasonal hires have the chance to learn what they need quickly, and then when they are working their next shift they can easily find the part of the training they need as a refresher, learn or relearn it and then apply what they have learned immediately by doing it as part of their job. This speeds up the process and makes training and knowledge more sticky while also serving customers and operating your store.

In the Flow of Work Training

Seasonal employees have less time to train than permanent employees, which is why onboarding becomes so critical in that ramp-up time to the holidays. Adding to the imperative that training needs to be on the floor is this idea of training in the flow of work.

Give your employees onboarding and training that meets them in their moment of need. Learning on the job is a common training practice, even during onboarding. Breaking seasonal onboarding training down into bite-sized microlearning makes it easier to absorb and remember.

The biggest drop in retention often happens soon after learning something as demonstrated by the forgetting curve. Microlearning effectiveness keeps employees engaged so they take in the most important points without being overwhelmed—and that creates a more positive experience.

Opportunities for Growth

Some seasonal hires will leave after the holiday season, as many only want short-term employment. But, you can still find those who might want to stay by motivating them with long-term opportunities. 

Investing in upskilling and continuous learning in your seasonal employee training can definitely pay off. Many employees don’t feel like there are real opportunities beyond their initial hire. A survey conducted in 2021 by an online community of startups and tech companies, found that 94% of employees would stay in their current jobs if they felt their company was investing in their learning. 

A smart way to let seasonal hires know there’s a future with you is to say a seasonal job is only a starting point, and then show them their potential progression. Employees need to know the steps to get where they want to go.

If you’re looking for an effective retail and hospitality employee training solution, contact us or chat with us today to learn more about how Inkling can help with your problems.