Yesterday’s post covered some best practices for hiring seasonal workers. Today’s post will cover best practices for training and retaining seasonal workers. Keep reading to learn more.
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How to Train Seasonal Employees
Even if they’re only around for a few months, you’ll want your seasonal employees to stay with your organization for the entire time that you need their help. Here’s what you can do to ensure their onboarding and training are effective and stick so that they want to stick around.
Adopt a BYOD Policy and Implement Mobile Learning
It can be tough getting a large group or several groups of seasonal workers up to speed at your company in time. So, you might want to consider adopting a bring your own device (BYOD) policy that allows new hires to access training content from their own mobile devices at any time.
In addition, you’ll want to consider implementing learning technology that allows new seasonal hires to access helpful video clips and virtual learning content while they’re on the go. This way, you can train your seasonal employees at all hours of the day, even when they’re not physically present.
Apply a Buddy System
Pair your seasonal hires together so they can help each other during their entire time with your company. They can stick together throughout their training and while they’re working and will serve as peer mentors to each other. They can also motivate each other to show up on time and to consult company resources and ask questions when they’re unsure of how to do or handle something.
Gamify and Incentivize Learning
Make seasonal work fun by offering incentives to seasonal hires. For instance, you can offer a gift card to the first person to reach a certain sales quota or to get a high score in one of your onboarding training modules. Or, you could offer a bonus to your top five performers at the end of the season when their work contracts are over.
Provide Real-Time Support and a Wealth of Resources
Because your seasonal workers aren’t going to have much time to complete their training and may never be 100% familiar with every operation or guideline at your organization, make sure they have a designated person they can consult when they have a question or need help. And make sure they have a lot of manuals and other materials that they can consult with frequently asked questions and guidelines when they need resources and help while at work.
How to Retain Seasonal Employees
Offer Permanent Jobs to Top-Performing Candidates
If you want to retain your seasonal employees long term, you can offer full-time roles to your top performers at the end of the work season for which they were hired. And if you advertise that you will be doing this before seasonal work starts, performance ratings and productivity will also be much higher throughout the entire season.
Hiring, training, and retaining seasonal workers doesn’t have to be complicated. Refer to the best practices listed above and in yesterday’s post to keep your efforts when hiring seasonal employees successful.