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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."
Beat Holiday Turnover
Retail consultant Anne Obarski of Merchandise Concepts agrees, noting that effective, two-way communication is often the store manager's best tool for keeping staff happy and minimizing that other holiday humbug: Turnover.
"You have to get people on board," she says. "Early on, you need to sit down with people one-on-one and tell them, ‘I know this is going to be tough, and there are going to be weeks with long hours. But to make it easier I'm going to work with you. If you want Mondays off, I'm going to do whatever I can to make that happen.' People don't like surprises, so when you say to them, ‘Sorry, but there's too much that needs to get done, so you have to work six days this week,' that affects employees' attitude, and that bad attitude gets directed at your customers."
Sell Up to Keep Stress Down
Scratch beneath the surface of managers' scheduling and staffing woes, and you'll find the true source of all that holiday stress: Concerns about the bottom line. Retail managers know that the consequences for failing to hit their holiday sales numbers can be severe. As Patricia Norins, publisher of Gift Shop magazine and author of the Ultimate Guide to Specialty Retail, points out, training sales staff in the art of holiday upselling is an effective, inexpensive way to boost seasonal sales figures.
"During the holidays, if someone comes into a store asking for help finding a gift for Aunt Jane, salespeople should know to ask questions that uncover what might be the perfect gift," Norins says. Other upselling techniques include asking customers if they need help selecting other gifts on their lists as well as asking if there's anything they might want for themselves, she suggests.
Spread Holiday Cheer
Obarski suggests boosting morale by holding motivational meetings every Friday where you talk about the week's best sellers and give an award for the funniest story about something that happened on the floor with a customer.
"By making light of the stress you're all under, you take a lot of the pressure off," she says. "You say, ‘We're not going to let Christmas get us down.' And part of that is offering fun rewards throughout the season."
Regardless of what you do to optimize staffing, scheduling, selling and morale, Boston says your employees will give their best effort if you're with them on the floor.
"You have to be on the front lines, doing what they're doing" she says. "That's the best way to gain their respect. If you manage from a distance in the office all day, you're not going to have the same respect -- or the same work results."
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