Holiday Hiring During These Uncertain Times: Guidelines for Business Owners

Hiring for the holiday season can be a challenge even during the best of times—and as most of us know, this is not the best of times. As small business owners, none of us need to be reminded about the devastating effect Covid has had on our livelihoods. A slightly relaxed summer season may have put your business back in the black, or at least closer to it, but unfortunately, it looks like we’re not quite past this thing yet. And with the holidays right around the corner, you may be wondering what to expect for your business in Q4, and how to staff for it, especially with the Delta variant throwing a wrench in small business hiring plans.

In normal times, businesses beef up their staff in preparation for the holiday season, particularly in the retail and service industries. Holiday shopping, travel, and celebratory gatherings mean an influx of customers across a wide range of business types, all of which spells good news for many business owners.

But times haven’t been normal since 2019. And as the virus surges on, consumers are continually evolving their own behaviors and comfort levels which casts a shadow over the upcoming holiday season. Air carriers and restaurants report the Delta variant is making a dent in the swift recovery they’d been having since vaccines became widely available. Some states have even reinstated their indoor mask requirements in an attempt to once again flatten the curve.

Which is to say, the next few months are up in the air for everyone—including small business owners, who somehow have to try to find a way to predict how much business they will get and how many employees they will need to cover the workload.

While only you can make the determination of how many new workers to bring on this holiday season (if any), there are some things you can do to help ease the uncertainty, no matter which tack you plan to take.

Hiring tips for the coming holiday season

1. If you want to hire a full staff for the holidays

Maybe your business does a lot of its sales online or has otherwise been fairly insulated from the bulk of the pandemic’s fallout. Maybe you fumbled through last year’s holiday season without seasonal hires, expecting a dip in sales—and ended up understaffed.

Either way, if you’re planning on padding your team for the holidays, now is the time to start looking for workers. The ever-changing landscape means eager, experienced new hires may be harder to find, especially if you need people to work in exposed, customer-facing roles.

For instance, you may consider hiring multiple part-time workers rather than a few full-time workers so you won’t have to slash a dedicated employee’s hours. Focusing on candidates with flexible availability is probably even more important now than ever.

Of course, if you do end up with more staff than you can afford, there are some fixes available, such as payroll loans—but they’re only a good idea for a short-term cash flow problem and you’re reasonably sure you’ll be able to recoup the funds in the near future.

2. If you want to hire a partial staff for the holidays

The middle road might look like an attractive one in a year like this, when things are so hard to predict. And to be sure, taking on a partial seasonal staff level comes with benefits—like not biting off more than you can chew, payroll-wise—but it comes with some risks, too.

For example, absences due to illness or a family emergency can wreak havoc on a small business’s schedule, even without the added pressure of a holiday rush. That’s why it’s important to include a relief factor when you start making a list of roles your need to hire for. You may also want to set your sights on flexible workers who are able to perform tasks in more than one position.

Once again, it’s still a good idea to start looking for these new faces sooner than later, particularly if you’re planning to train a few people to cover multiple duties since you’ll have fewer staff members to work with. Another alternative: offer overtime or holiday-pay incentives to encourage your current workers to cover more time or workdays that they’d usually take off.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• How Implementing a 4-Day Work Week Can Benefit Your Business
• Traditional Business Plan vs. Lean Startup Plan: Which Is Best When Starting Your New Business?
• Holiday Staffing 101: How to Ensure a Smooth Holiday Season
• Want to Retain Your Best Employees? Start With Their Work Schedules
• Here’s Why Your Business Should Hire During the Holidays

3. If you want to get through the holiday season with a lean team

After an extremely rocky year, maybe you don’t want to take any chances when it comes to over hiring. Or maybe yours is an industry that’s already showing the effects of the Delta variant’s progression. In any case, opting to weather the holidays with a lean staff, with few or no new hires, may make a lot of sense for your ledger—but it’s important to ensure it makes sense on a practical level as well.

After all, there is a chance that businesses will rally. Many states aren’t (yet) moving to reinstate shelter-in-place restrictions or mask mandates, and many people are moving through their lives pretty much as usual, even before vaccinations began en masse. If crowds catch you by surprise, you may find yourself short-staffed, and hiring people on a last-minute basis while you’re already overworked is not an ideal scenario.

Once again, it’s critical to ensure you’ve got at least enough people on board to account for unforeseen absences, and it might also be helpful to train existing employees to cover more positions, or pay them extra to cover additional shifts. You yourself may have to put in some extra-long hours over the holiday season, depending on how things shake out, so plan for that, too.

Taking care of your employees and customers

No matter which hiring strategy you go with this year, be sure to enact safety policies for both customers and employees, like maintaining social distance and wearing masks indoors. After all, people are the most important part of any business on both sides of the register. Protecting yourself and others against the virus protects your business in the long term.

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