The Benefits of Hiring Seasonal Staff

Once again Christmas is nearly upon us, and many businesses are gearing up for a festive season surge in customer and client demand. This can be combined with a shortage of permanent staff caused by illness and annual leave. But there are other periods besides the Christmas holidays when your business might consider hiring extra support. In this blog we’ll look at the reasons for taking on seasonal support, the advantages, and the disadvantages, of seasonal employment for an organisation and how hiring the right staff at the right time can benefit your business. 

What is seasonal hiring?

Seasonal hiring is the process of taking on temporary staff to cater for an expected surge in business demand, to cover peak periods of holiday or illness, or for another anticipated reason. Good workforce planning can help you predict times when you’ll need additional support or when you might expect your staffing needs to be highest. Temporary hires of this nature generally last between three and six months. 

One important thing to remember is that whilst all seasonal hires are temporary, not every temporary worker is seasonal. 

Common scenarios when this type of hiring may be necessary include: 

Heavy year-end workloads

Not only does the end of the year spell increased customer demand for many businesses leading to heavy workloads for customer service, retail, logistics and finance departments and the hospitality industry but other departments may also require assistance to meet deadlines. Of course, year-end doesn’t just mean the holiday season. For finance departments, the end of the tax year can also mean heavy workloads requiring additional administrative support.
 

Illness and holiday cover

Flu season and the Christmas and summer holidays can all result in large numbers of your permanent workforce being unavailable. By implementing this type of employment cover you can maintain your company standards and stop departments falling behind. Recent experiences with Covid have underlined the importance of hiring for this reason. 

Exploring possible growth

Perhaps you are considering expanding to a new location, developing a new product or lines of business. If so, temporary staff can help provide support, covering the day-to-day tasks, whilst permanent staff explore new avenues and work on special projects. 

Advantages of hiring seasonal staff

In all these scenarios you may consider hiring part-time permanent support. However, hiring temporary staff has many advantages over other forms of hiring: 

• Flexibility

  You have the option to extend or shorten contracts according to workload demand making these staff flexible and cost effective.
   

• Plug staffing and skills gaps

  Hiring in this way can help maintain your levels of customer service, provide additional help when things get busy or allow you to bring on board needed skills for short or fixed periods.
   

• Potential for full-time employment

  Often these hires are extremely qualified candidates who are looking for temporary employment to support study, bridge gaps in their CV or taking a break from full time work. You may find exceptional candidates for full time roles.
   

• Easy hiring admin

  When you take on temporary staff your agency, such as Australasian Recruitment Company, handles the administrative burden including contracts, payment, reference checks and any issues such as absenteeism. 

5 business support roles that can benefit from seasonal hiring

Business support roles may not be the first jobs that come to mind when you are considering seasonal hiring for your business, but these five surprising roles are excellent places to bring on board additional staff: 

 1. Customer support

Customer contact rates can increase by 5 to 10 times around the holidays making customer support staff critical to maintaining standards of care and service. If your business operates a customer support desk, this is an ideal place to concentrate seasonal hiring around the holidays.
 

 2. Front Desk

Your front desk is another area that experiences a surge in workload at busy times of the year, from deliveries and orders to an increase in phone calls. An extra pair of hands at reception can help ease the pressure and prevent your front desk becoming a bottleneck to productivity.
 

 3. Events Co-ordinators

Whether you are planning functions for guests in the hospitality sector, important clients and customers or just organising an office party planning an event can be stressful and time consuming. Avoid putting pressure on your HR department or distracting employees from their regular duties by taking on extra events staff who can take care of arranging venues, planning catering, and organising important events.
 

 4. Office Administrators

Having extra office administrators available in case of emergencies is always useful around busy periods and illness peaks. They can also be a great way to ensure that productivity doesn’t slow down as your permanent staff take their annual leave in the summer. 

 5. Marketing Administrators 

Whatever your brand, there is extra pressure on driving brand awareness and business around important holidays, events, and seasons. Ensure your marketing department can handle heavy workloads, drive traffic, and create content at critical times with seasonal support. If you are considering a large marketing project, extra staffing can also be useful. 

Businesses large and small can benefit from seasonal support in business support roles across their entire organisation. 

Australasian can help you hire seasonal business support and administrative staff!

Looking for seasonal business support and administrative support? With over 18 years’ experience connecting employers with the seasonal and temporary business support staff they need to meet their goals, we can help. Contact us today to discuss your requirements and we can source the staff you need, typically within 48 hours.