With the holiday season just around the corner, it appears as though more business owners and retailers will be hiring to accommodate the anticipated rise in customers this time of year.
According to global human resources provider Aon Hewitt, more than half – 53 percent – of business owners expect to see more customers coming through their doors for holiday shopping. As a result, approximately half of those polled said they will hire more seasonal workers.
Melissa Mounce, senior director and global operations leader, said even modest indications that the economy is improving is reason enough for retailers to do more hiring.
"Retailers anticipate a busier holiday season than last year, and hiring qualified talent to address this expected demand will be just one of many competing priorities for them," said Mounce. "Finding and keeping qualified talent requires having both short- and long-term strategies in place that enable retail managers to easily connect with the right pool of candidates and make more informed hiring decisions based on personality, cultural fit and capability."
One way in which to do this may be to offer employee benefits to seasonal workers. Though benefits are usually exclusive to full-time employees, making them available to part-timers may serve as an additional incentive for seasonal hires to remain with the company.
But before this can be done, the right employees need to be found. David Bradford, CEO of the digital interviewing platform provider HireVue – which helped fund the survey – said that employers should come up with new ways of finding prospective workers.
One way of doing this is through pre-screening methods, where applicants send in a video of themselves. Bradford noted that based on recent survey results, nearly 60 percent of retail managers said the hiring process would be easier if they could preview what an applicant is like through a video.
