The summer months from May to August or the holiday season from October to December are likely to result in longer lines for your furniture business, particularly for furniture, and the demand for more help to keep those lines moving. Because there are fewer permanent employees available than seasonal ones, you need a plan to boost their professionalism.
Data is king when it comes to strategically staffing a furniture company. In order to avoid wasting resources and increase sales, POS reports can tell you everything from how many seasonal employees you need to hire to how big your on-the-floor team should be at any particular time of peak season.
Let’s explore some strategies for enhancing your sales season and supporting your temporary employees with POS data:
Choose the right team, the right person
Everyone benefits when there are enough people on hand to assist customers as they shop. But mistakes in hiring can be expensive, just like misjudging product inventory.
If the furniture business is booming, if you don’t have enough personnel on hand, you’ll have to make your clients wait for service, which could ruin their shopping experience and make them go somewhere else. Additionally, you’ll spend more on the payroll if you have too many staff when in-store foot traffic declines.
You could experience some trepidation when selecting your peak season employees because you want to get assistance as soon as possible. However, you should not rush the process of locating the appropriate assistance or consulting the appropriate facts to guide your judgments.
Determine just how many new employees you need to hire by comparing the sales figures that the POS system helps furniture stores with your current staff roster. Run this report at each location if you have more than one. The information might reveal a different tale.
Additionally, it is important to note that hiring a temporary worker does not relieve you of your responsibility to be aware of and compliant with any laws. When hiring seasonal workers, you must maintain records, collect taxes, and confirm applicants’ employment authorization.
Onboarding and training
It could seem like a waste of money to spend on seasonal employees’ training as they are often only employed by you for a short period of time. However, employees won’t be able to accomplish their jobs successfully if you don’t provide them with enough training. This causes a chain reaction that results in their lack of job satisfaction, displeasure, and a negative customer experience.
We can all agree that training is essential for efficiency at that point. How should you approach seasonal training, though?
Prioritize the important skills and fundamental procedures they’ll need to understand up front when organizing your training program. Then incorporate the remaining material gradually using micro lessons or quick, concise training that lasts only a few minutes and concentrates on a single subject.
Set up the POS precisely as it would be used in the store before educating the personnel. Each employee should have a separate, individual POS user account with defined duties and permissions, and all hardware and attachments should be properly connected.
Experience working with new POS systems firsthand is the only way to truly master them. To assist store personnel in becoming familiar with their systems, many POS vendors include video lectures and illustrated product documentation.
Schedule the peak season
To arrange your staff schedule, think about using previous sales data. Don’t be hesitant to make changes throughout the day and shorten shifts if you find that you have scheduled more personnel than is necessary.
Based on information from your POS reports, you construct shifts. Run reports to examine the number of tickets sold by the hour, day of the week, and even holiday. This enables you to determine the peak sales periods for your furniture company and how to adjust staffing levels accordingly.
To find the best achievers, you can also combine gross sales with staff sales reports. Put your top sellers in the lineup on your busiest days after reviewing your staffing plan and traffic count, while allowing time for training for newer seasonal employees during slower hours.
Reward and track progress
Even further, you can develop an incentive program that rewards employees for achieving particular training or sales targets by offering them a unique discount or gift card.
Your POS system may also be useful in this situation. To track the number of products sold, you can extract POS reports with filters tailored to your contest to track sales by sales associate or server using their average price value (ATV) or units per transaction (UTP).
Conclusion
The size of your seasonal team must be determined before you can assemble it. It’s a good thing you don’t have to hazard a guess. This is when your POS system will prove useful. They are more likely to have a positive encounter if they feel respected. They’ll also be more likely to come back and assist you the following season as a result.
Keep in mind that using your POS solutions will help your furniture business succeed while making crucial staffing selections and carrying out hiring, onboarding, and scheduling duties. Make sure your software supports your success rather than hinders it.
