With the holidays on the horizon, it’s a great time to start planning for your seasonal staffing needs. With labour shortages and high turnover, competition will be fierce among operators looking to add and manage staff to help through the busiest season.
Starting early means creating a strategy for success, and there are several steps restaurateurs can take to successfully manage seasonal staff for the holidays:
- Start the hiring process now. Hiring early allows you to avoid training during the holiday rush and ensures that your staff is fully trained, onboarded, and prepared to handle all that the holidays bring.
- You may have seasonal staff from the past that you would like to re-hire for the holidays. Reach out early to get a feel for whether they are interested in returning, to save you from starting from scratch with a completely new team.
- With all the stress and business of the season, scheduling intentionally is important to support your staff’s well-being. That means hiring the right number of employees and scheduling with the intent of spreading out the workload and keeping all areas covered. Help your teams maintain a balance, avoid burnout, and minimize absenteeism with efficient scheduling.
- Consider adding a technology component to simplify scheduling, shift changes, and access for your staff. Today’s tools can optimize scheduling, help with budgeting, time tracking, and payroll, adding efficiency to your operations.
- Communicate with your team to arrange early scheduling. With many staff members requesting time off, restaurant holiday closures, events, and more, make your schedule available for the whole month of December beforehand. That way, if there are any changes to be made, they can be spotted early, and you can do your best to avoid being short-staffed.
- You may want to retain some of your seasonal staff after the holidays, so work on creating a retention strategy to avoid unwanted turnover. Create a positive work environment with opportunities for growth, open communication, and employee recognition that motivates staff to stay.
- Schedule end-of-season check-ins to get feedback from staff on opportunities for improvement. This helps them to know that they are valued and improves your processes for future seasonal staffing.
It’s only the beginning of fall, but the holidays will be here before we know it, and operators who already have staff in place, trained and onboarded will get the upper hand over the competition in service and guest experience.
