How Retail Managers Can Stay Sane for the Holidays
Ah, the holidays. A time of joy, family, community and, for retail store managers, grueling 80-hour workweeks, rapidly graying hair and an endless parade of employee- and customer-related fires to put out. Ho, ho, ho.
The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.
As Julie Boston, senior manager of customer relations and store technology for Pier 1 Imports, observed during her many years as a store manager, the two biggest holiday-related headaches facing most retail managers are staffing and scheduling. The key to not becoming overwhelmed lies in anticipating these headaches and communicating with your staff regularly, she says.
“During that time of year, you’ve got 75-foot trucks backing up, receipts of Christmas merchandise to sift through and hundreds of other things to take care of, so it’s easy to become task-focused and allow the people-development side to drop off the radar,” she says. “That’s why early planning and setting expectations for your staff is so important.”
Boston says early planning means knowing in August or September the amount of seasonal help you’ll need and when to plug those people in as business begins to pick up.
“Analyze your business, look at what you did last year, at ad run dates and at when new receipts are going to be arriving,” she says. “You won’t get it perfect, but these tools should help you make an educated guess about what your needs should be as the season picks up, which you can then communicate with your staff.”
