Hiring Beyond the Holiday Hustle–Embracing Total Workforce Management

The holiday season is already here. 

That means retailers and manufacturers are scrambling to build robust seasonal workforces that will carry them through the holiday rush. But the principles that go into building a successful seasonal team extend far beyond this festive period. 

Rather than create a staffing plan that will cover the next month or so, organizations can use this moment to adopt a more comprehensive approach to workforce management—and make it a year-round initiative. 

Here are three ways that this total workforce management approach can ensure you’re hiring for the long run.

Embrace a Holistic Hiring Mindset

Hiring great talent can do more than carry you through the holiday rush. It’ll ensure that you’re starting the new year on the right foot. Truly successful hiring strategies pursue a holistic approach and take the entire organization into account. However, to properly plan and manage the labor needs, it is critical to understand who is doing the work and how effective they are.

Total workforce management establishes a clear view of the skills and capabilities of the entire workforce— both permanent and temporary staff. This transparency is crucial during the unpredictability of the holiday rush, when companies need to pivot at a moment’s notice. It is especially important considering an estimated 50% of organizations plan to increase their use of external workers like independent contractors, freelancers, temporary workers, and other outsourced labor. 

With an end-to-end view, companies can stay on top of compliance needs, track employee performance in real-time, enable visibility into holistic costs, and create a dynamic and adaptable workforce, regardless of the season. 

Match Skills to Needs

While the need for organizations to increase staff during peak periods will always remain, this can be offset by utilizing existing resources more effectively. The key lies in establishing real-time visibility into the entire workforce’s skills year-round, so organizations can easily redeploy talent and make challenging staffing decisions with speed and agility. 

By focusing more on skills and less on rigid role definitions when undergoing workforce planning, organizations can ensure an adaptive workforce that evolves in parallel with the demands of the business. 

Capturing the information of all workers as a single, cohesive strategy can help reinforce this idea. With up-to-date organizational charts and a full worker directory, workers at all levels—even temporary staff—can see where they sit in context of the larger organization and enable organizations to manage the full workforce holistically.

Organizations that foster the skills and experiences of their entire workforce will gain a competitive advantage and be better positioned to succeed, no matter what the future holds.

And given the labor shortages that virtually every company is facing, this strategy not only addresses the short-term needs of the holiday season but helps retain skilled talent long after it ends.

Tap Into Technology 

One thing that should not go unsaid: hiring can be hard. It's not easy to find the right people at the right time. If that is the case for your talent team, it might be worth turning to technology for a little extra help that can effectively identify the right candidates throughout the year. 

Emerging AI tools are helping hiring managers streamline the recruitment and onboarding process for both full-time and temporary staff. With capabilities like resumé ranking, targeted job descriptions, and automated interview scheduling, companies can find candidates and get them in the door quicker and easier than ever.

With the holidays in full swing, this is crucial for companies looking to onboard new team members or other external workers. By digitalizing these elements of workforce management, companies—as well as service providers and other partners—can focus on getting the work done to meet their business objectives, rather than getting bogged down with hiring and the onboarding process.

Hiring great talent has never been so competitive. To succeed, businesses must be ready to adapt their approach to changing workforce trends, and they must remain open to new and specialized tools and technology. So, whether you are trying to attract new employees that will get you through the holidays or developing the talent within the organization for the long run, total workforce management is vital for today’s businesses.