Companies tend to lose employees over the holiday season for a variety of reasons. Employees have extra time on their hands to look for other opportunities, or they simply choose to resign for personal reasons. Other times, holiday staffers just fall off the face of the earth when their seasonal assignments end or they head back to college. No matter the issue, companies must know how to recover from the loss of employees during the holiday season. We will discuss the best ways to recover from the loss of employees over the holidays below.
1. Hire / Promote from Within
One of the first steps you can take is to hire from within. Begin promoting lower-level employees to higher positions that might have been vacated during the holiday season. Companies love to look for internal candidates when it comes to filling jobs because they want to show loyalty to their employees and promote their own talent.
2. Set Deadline for New Hires
Companies that have lost employees during the holiday season need to set a deadline for bringing new hires onto the staff. You cannot let the hiring process drag out too long or you will be passed up by some of the best talent within the industry. When you set a deadline for new hires, you prevent your current employees from suffering work overload.
3. Hire Temporary Employees
Another great option to filling empty jobs that were vacated by employees during the holiday season is to hire temporary employees. These employees can be brought into your company to work the open jobs while you go through the search process for permanent employees. The temporary workers will be able to stay with your company as long as needed, which means that you do not need to rush the hiring process.
4. Partner with a Staffing Firm
This can be part of the previous method, but we have separated it for a major reason; when you partner with a staffing firm, you can request that they perform the interview and vetting process for finding a permanent hire. Staffing firms provide companies with both temporary and permanent workers, so it might be a good idea to use them to find new permanent employees.
5. Shuffle Current Workers
If your company cannot afford to hire temporary workers, or replace the employees lost with permanent employees, it might be a good idea to shuffle current employees into those empty positions. You can merge their current duties with new ones or have them take over brand new duties from those empty positions. If you need to merge departments into each other, then take this option into consideration too.
6. Increase Workload
Some companies might not be able to hire new employees right away, which is why they increase the workload of current employees to fix the problem. Your employees might not be able to get all of the work done during normal business hours, which means they could start working overtime and might even suffer from burnout. This is a dangerous option, and could end up backfiring down the road.
Recovering from the loss of employees during the holiday season can be difficult for some companies. Put one or more of the methods outlined above to good use for your company in order to recover from lost employees.
