Marketing Trendz Volume 19 October Edition 2015 | Page 2

editor's letter

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

THE HOLIDAY RETAIL STAFF CONUNDRUM:
You need to hire temporary staff during the holidays, but are they doing your mall more harm than good?

publisher: Brian Lehn
editor-in-chief: Myriam Beaugé
online editor: Nissa Campbell
art director: Emerito Pinlac
accounting: Fang Lu
advertising sales and

Here are 10 tips on making the most of
holiday staffing:
1. Be picky about your hires and keep temporary
staff informed. Use your mall app, function-focused
e-mail accounts, and social media platforms to
communicate any changes to your holiday master
plan, as well as give last-minute instructions.
2. Use a buddy system to match permanent staff with
temporary employees. Even some of your holiday
staff might have worked for you before, and could
therefore head up small teams.
3. Uphold standards in areas like grooming and
manners. It seems basic, but it is crucial. Shoppers
should not be able to differentiate between regular
and temporary staff.
With only a few weeks to go before Christmas, Hanukah
and other winter holidays, malls are getting in hiring
mode. As congestion builds in the parking lots and traffic
begins to surge inside the halls and shops, extra staff is
needed to step into crucial roles that range from mall
ambassadors and parking attendants to security guards
and promotional street teams. These employees not only
perform specific tasks according to the instructions that
they will have received, but also deliver a mall’s brand
experience. The latter is where problems could occur.
Learning where the washrooms are located or how to
enter a gift-card sale on a till is one thing; how to embody
a brand position is another. You have to be familiar with
the mall’s primary customer profile. Who are the core
shoppers? Why do they like coming to this particular
mall? What are their expectations? These are questions
that all employees, permanent or temporary, should
be able to answer without hesitation because they will
inform all the decisions they make as they interact with
customers directly or indirectly throughout their working
days. If they don’t, they could make mistakes that end up
having a lasting impact on customer loyalty and therefore
center productivity. In the short term, it could also affect
what should be a very lucrative shopping season.
According to the National Retail Federation (NRF),
sales in November and December should reach $630.5
billion in the U.S. alone. That’s up 3.7 percent over last
year’s sales, and it accounts for nearly 20 percent of
annual sales. Meanwhile, the NRF forecasts online sales
to increase as much as eight percent to reach $105 billion.
In America, as in every other market where the holidays
bring big retail business, there is a lot at stake during
those last two months of the year. That’s why retailers
there are expected to hire between 700,000 and 750,000
seasonal workers. These are people who, while eager to
work, do not necessarily feel the same responsibility to
represent the mall to the best of their ability.
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4. Knowledge is retail gold. Shoppers don’t want to
hear “I don’t know. I’m just a temp” from any staff
member. On every team, there should be someone
with the answers, or at least very quick access to
them.
5. Monitor your customer feedback channels so that
you can quickly addre