Newswise — Each holiday season, employers traditionally hire temporary staff in preparation for what they hope will be a busy and prosperous Christmas season.
This year, though, the sluggish economy has chipped away at seasonal positions. Only 19 percent of 100 major retailers responding to a survey by Aon Consulting said they will hire more workers this season than last, while 44 percent plan to hire fewer and 37 percent intend to hire the same number. With employers hiring fewer seasonal staff, competition for available jobs is intense this season, according to the Aon survey, with a majority (54 percent) of hiring managers expecting more applications than last year.
John Arnold, president of Polaris Assessment Systems, a Michigan consulting company that designs assessment systems for companies’ permanent and temporary employment needs, says employers should look for a few key traits when adding seasonal employees in order to make the most out of each hire.
“What you look for in seasonal employees is not very different from what you would look for in a permanent employee,” Arnold said. “But there are a few characteristics that an employer will want to emphasize even more strongly than usual.” Thos include:· Reliability· The ability to learn quickly· A personality that makes them easy to supervise· A customer-oriented personality
He said reliability and the ability to learn quickly are probably the most important.
“Temps are coming and going very quickly within the organization and it is a hectic time of year, so you need people who are going to be reliable and whom you know will be there to work,” he said.
Arnold said it is also important to hire self-starters who are able to learn quickly, since there is little time for temporary employees to learn skills on the job. “You want people who are going to come on board and learn as quickly as possible because you just don’t have the luxury of training time you would with permanent employees,” he said.
Learning how to do the job, though is important, said Sandra L. Fisher of Clarkson University School of Business and seasonal employees must be adequately trained. “Even though it may seem not worth the investment since the employees won't be there long, having employees who can't effectively do their work, especially during busy times, will create challenges for full-time employees and may cause the business to lose customers. Given the record high unemployment rates, it should be easier to find temporary employees with higher skill levels (this year).”
Arnold, who is also a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Wayne State University, explained that different types of organizations may differ somewhat in what they look for in their seasonal employees. Many seasonal jobs are in the retail sector, he explained, which will need a customer-oriented attitude, but other employers will need to stress traits that work best for them.
“Around the holiday season, you certainly see a lot of retail employees being hired, but you also see a lot of people hiring seasonal help in distribution centers to get all of the retail products out to consumers,” Arnold explained.
“For those jobs, customer orientation is less important. Instead, the emphasis is on reliability and work ethic.”
Robert Sinclair of Clemson University said it is important for managers to take into account the various reasons people are looking for temporary work.
“There are high school and college students, who may be seeking the income to pay educational or social costs; moonlighters, who have another job elsewhere; supplementers, who have a spouse as the primary breadwinner; and primaries, who depend on their current job for most of their income,” Sinclair explained. And some are just looking to earn some extra money to cover the higher costs of the holiday season.
“Employers need to appreciate that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to managing might not work for people in these different groups,” Sinclair said. Also there are many temporary employees seek full-time work.
Fisher said research suggests that contingent workers, or temps, are more likely to develop some commitment to the organization if they feel there is potential to convert the temporary assignment into a full-time, more permanent job,” she said.
However, managers need to be honest with temps. “If they plan to bring some of the temps on full-time after the holiday season, they should tell the temps there is a possibility of being hired full time. However, to minimize conflict, full-time employees should be assured they will not be replaced by the temps.”
The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is an international group of more than 7,800 industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists whose members study and apply scientific principles concerning workplace productivity, motivation, leadership and engagement. SIOP’s mission is to enhance human well-being and performance in organizational and work settings by promoting the science, practice and teaching of I-O psychology. For more information about SIOP, including a Media Resources service that lists nearly 2,000 experts in more than 100 topic areas, visit www.siop.org.
SIOP’s 25th annual conference will be April 8-10 at the Hilton Hotel in Atlanta, GA. More than 4,000 members will attend, including many of the world’s top workplace scientists. There will be hundreds of peer-reviewed sessions spanning a wide variety of interesting topics related to current workplace issues. For more information, contact Stephany Schings or Clif Boutelle at SIOP at 419-353-0032.
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