The HR tech solution for Retail businesses that simplifies seasonal hiring

Retail has undergone significant transformation over the last decade. Ecommerce has gained major market share, reaching 20.1% of the total Retail market in 2024. And while we collectively become more accustomed to online shopping, there’s just one thing it can’t offer — the tactile, sensory, and interpersonal experience of in-store shopping. 

Physical retail is still very much desired, and managers need to calibrate their workforces to continue delivering a personalised, customer-centric experience. Doing so, however, can prove difficult due to the seasonal hiring complexities they face throughout the year.

Why is seasonal hiring a concern for Retailers? 

Consumer behaviour heavily influences the way Retailers operate. Peaks and troughs in spending and traffic mean that Retailers must remain agile, adjusting their strategies to generate revenue all year round. This affects processes like inventory management, promotions, marketing events, rosters, and critically — the hiring process.  

Retail managers hold the responsibility of balancing their rosters within an acceptable labour budget — this means bolstering the workforce during peak periods, and leaning it out for quiet ones. For example, you’ve probably come across ads for Christmas or holiday causal positions. These temporary workers, often hired on a temporary basis to support the core workforce during peak periods. And oftentimes, these workers know the score: they will work for the business for a limited period of time and afterwards, they will not be rostered. It’s a mutual agreement that helps Retailers avoid hiring more costly full- or part-time workers.  

Seasonal hiring can be difficult. The recruitment process takes time and resources, especially when looking to bring in high volumes of people. Consider the time needed to write the job ads, conduct multiple interviews, contact successful candidates, undertake background checks, onboard, and train them — all in time for the busy season.

Humanforce Talent can unlock stress-free seasonal hiring 

Given the seasonal hiring needs of Retailers, having access to a pool of pre-qualified candidates that can be called up on-demand is invaluable. 

Humanforce Talent is an all-in-one talent acquisition platform that pools pre-qualified candidates, contractors, internal staff and alumni into a single Talent Community. Managers can analyse demand forecasts and tap into the power of volume-based hiring, with the ability to contact the desired number of candidates for the job at hand.  

Each member of the Talent Community is given a profile complete with qualifications, achievements, preferences, and work history. This reduces the time to hire and is a modern solution to contingent hiring — this being a real consideration for Retailers needing to mass-hire at short notice. For example, managers who require extra workers with POS experience can filter by skillset and experience in the Talent search, quickly matching with suitable talent without the need for interviews. 

Humanforce Talent can also help build and reinforce your employer brand to stand out from the pack. Managers can create a career site that showcases their business’ culture with standout job listings, development opportunities, and wellbeing perks. The application process can also be enhanced with engaging visuals and content tailored to each role. It allows Retailers with a powerful brand image to use it to their advantage, creating a more desirable place to work for budding applicants.

Onboarding & Offboarding 

Retail hiring periods can become overwhelming for managers. Juggling the constant interviews, onboarding, and offboarding logistics while running a busy retail store can hinder overall productivity during peak periods. 

The Humanforce Onboarding & Offboarding solution facilitates faster, more tailored onboarding at the start of tenure, and smoother offboarding at the end of tenure. It enhances compliance and cost efficiency by automating many time and resource intensive tasks in the pre-boarding stage, such as employee information gathering (bank details, tax details, qualifications, etc.) and policy signoffs. This can be gathered early in the onboarding process, reducing logistical delays and engaging employees from the onset.  

The onboarding workflows can be customised for each new hire’s specific role, team, and location. This can be shortened to ensure that only the most crucial onboarding tasks are included. This is valuable if a casual worker is returning to a previous employer, (which is a likely scenario if the employee is part of your Humanforce Talent community), removing the need to repeat the same steps twice. At the end of tenure, offboarding workflows can also be customised to the needs of each role, the tenure of each employee, or their employment type (full-time, casual, contractor). 

Great talent forms the backbone of a successful Retail organisation. These workers are the ones who provide exceptional customer service, who go above and beyond to meet the needs of loyal customers. Thankfully, having the right technology in place can ensure you're attracting, hiring and onboarding the best talent out there.

About Humanforce

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK. 

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses. 

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.