Opinion piece: Black Friday readiness starts well before the first order
By Quintus Sliep, MD at Worldwide Staffing
Black Friday is coming up, and even a well-stocked warehouse can experience difficulties getting orders out on time. The importance of the right number of staff on the payroll versus having a workforce ready to perform under pressure can be the difference between a retailer successfully navigating peak season, or wasting valuable time recovering from avoidable operational challenges.
Festive trading places enormous pressure on fulfilment operations year after year, with seasonal recruitment often being reactive. That could be a mistake. Retailers must plan ahead because recruitment, screening, training and assessment take time to ensure new staff are ready, not just available, when order volumes increase.
Before order volumes rise, the talent race starts
The first step is to hire new workers to increase capacity, but competition can be fierce. The warehouses and e-commerce fulfilment centres are likely all tapping into the same local labour pool for similar roles such as picking, packing, stock handling and dispatch. When several companies are hiring at the same time, the best candidates are always ‘snapped up’ quickly, which means wages can go up and the available talent pool shrinks.
Starting the hiring process early lets businesses identify the right candidates, confirm availability, complete paperwork, and set expectations around shifts and responsibilities. By planning in advance, businesses can avoid hurried hiring and get the right person in the job.
Filling vacancies is one thing; building a strong workforce is another. A worker may be available to start immediately, but this does not mean they are ready to do the job safely, accurately and at the needed pace. This is why recruitment plans of companies must include enough time for screening, training and assessing candidates after an offer has been accepted.
More people does not equal more capability
A modern staffing role requires more than a basic intro. New employees need an overview of the entire onboarding process and to become familiar with scanners, inventory systems, picking and packing procedures, stock-handling requirements and safety rules. This is where training is important. It gives workers the knowledge they need to be successful, and practical assessments ensure workers can apply that knowledge.
Having to release staff prematurely causes unnecessary stress for supervisors and experienced workers who have to fill in. They may have to troubleshoot, re-educate and handle a heavy workload themselves while trying to meet dispatch deadlines. This can result in wrong picks, missed shipments, damaged inventory, returns and customer complaints. These are issues no business can afford at such a pressurised time.
A retailer who brings in temporary staff the week before Black Friday might have supervisors correcting picking errors during peak trading periods. Capability gaps can be identified earlier in the recruitment process, through practical readiness checks and monitored training, before deployment and not when orders are already piling up.
The key takeaway is that workers only add capacity if they are willing to contribute. As such, retailers need to build recruitment, training and assessment into their staffing timelines. A good staffing partner can help you through this process and ensure you have workers available when your operation needs them.
The staffing partner starts working prior to the first vacancy
Partnering with a Temporary Employment Services (TES) provider upfront helps translate expected order volumes into a manageable workforce plan. A TES partner can identify priority roles and match recruitment, screening, training and deployment with the dates when staff are needed to be ready and working with the retailer’s operational team.
In addition, the partner should be able to track operational progress, flag risks before they impact operations and provide clear visibility of workforce readiness. It can also maintain an appropriate pool of reserve workers and coordinate replacements when absenteeism or unexpected demand creates gaps. This shifts the focus from filling vacancies to managing the delivery of a ready and reliable workforce.
Success is not measured by headcount but by having the right people trained, available and able to perform when demand increases. A staffing partner might take care of readiness and continuity, but the retailer is still accountable for running its business and ought to gauge the partnership by the value it delivers during peak trading.
The deadline is the time by which the operation must be finished
Planning for peak season begins with lessons learned from the previous year. Retailers should start by looking at what created delays and bottlenecks, which jobs were hard to fill and how long it took for new hires to become fully productive. These insights will feed into a realistic workforce plan, agreed early with the staffing partner and built backward from the date the operation must be live at full capacity.
Black Friday is just around the corner, and the peak shopping season is coming. Once a retailer’s orders are surging, it’s far too late to start prepping. We don’t measure readiness by how many vacancies we fill, but by whether the workforce can deliver the required volume, accuracy and consistency from the point demand peaks. This is what early planning, structured training and an engaged TES partner strives to achieve.
