Retailers - plan ahead for the next Bank Holiday weekend

Retailers large and small do well over the bank holiday weekend. This weekend in my part of the world, the weather wasn't typical of a bank holiday and the crowds flocked to the shops for beer, barbecue items and all the other reasons people like to spend! Town and city centres were very busy with people spending their wages on the three-day weekend. It only happened a few times a year and any retailer that was caught on the hop this weekend needs to think about getting ready for the next one at the end of May. To add to this, it will be payday weekend where people will have just been paid. It is the ideal time to boost your sales early in the financial year.

Retailers need to look at these mini-events through fresh eyes because it really makes a difference to their trade. Nor being prepared means losing out on potential sales. Many of the small retailers that read my blog will benefit from a few extra thousand pounds in sales. So you need to think about what the next bank holiday weekend will mean to you.

Opening hours

If you are a small retailer then it can be difficult to alter the opening hours of your business. Your team deserve the bank holiday weekend to relax but you want to make the most of that extra passing trade. Opening on the Bank Holiday Monday can feel like a pain but if the other stores around you are doing it too then you can get a big uplift in sales.

Think about when you are open over the weekend and plan ahead, which leads to...

Staffing

You and your team need to be ready for the trade on that weekend whether you are opening longer hours or not. If you have access to extra staff then it may help to get them involved that weekend. People like to shop somewhere that ha staff on hand to help and can control their queues even in the busy times. So look at your staffing schedule now to see if you can draft in extras. It will be important at the busier times of the day.

Stock

A quick visit to my local Tesco this weekend showed that even the biggest companies can get it wrong with stock. A rush on certain items meant that they lost out on sales. the bigger stores can more easily divert customer to alterative items, but smaller stores don't always have this luxury. Think about what you will need, keep a close eye on the weather and decide where you need to keep extra stocks.

Promotions

If you are going to the extra trouble of staging an event or opening on the Monday, then you need to let as many people as possible know. With social media and websites, we can more easily let customers know that we are ready and available for trade on those days. Get your team to speak to your customers in the weeks before so they know you are open for them at that busy weekend.

As a retailer you need to remember the little details that make a difference. The big events such as Christmas are always planned in advance, but it is easy to overlook the smaller events that can add up to more sales. Get ready for the next one!

Have a happy retail Christmas! Beware of Boxing Day

It's that time of the year when many retailers are rushed off their feet. I know my traditional readership falls at this time because people are too busy. I wanted to take this opportunity to say Happy Christmas to all of those that follow me. I know that my readers consist of independent retailers and people who work for bigger companies. This short blog today is going to be about the current debate on Boxing Day opening.

I have worked in retail for a long time and I know how tough it can be at this time of the year. Often the most important people in a store only get a day off at Christmas as they are needed on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. This is far too much pressure with the pay to match.

I know of many good retail managers that will look after their people. Most workers will get some time off over Christmas or the New Year period if it can be worked properly. I completely sympathise with all of the people that are signing the petition to stop retailers from opening on Boxing Day. I can honestly see a huge amount of sense in it but in my eyes it does not solve a problem. There are so many people from different industries that have to work on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day at all timed of the day and night that it is impractical to take one part of one industry and exclude it. If the shops were not open then people would shop online and then the pickers and delivery staff would be working anyway. There are no real winners here.

Healthcare, hospitality and taxi drivers are some of the many people that work on these days. Retail staff cannot be made an exception.

So what can be done?

I have worked with many retailers who try to make this as fair as possible. In the places I have worked with in the past it was either done on a 'year-on, year-off' basis or worked that it was voluntary where possible. Some (particularly those with older contracts)  are rewarded with higher pay rates on these days and are happier to come in as a result. Take a look at what might work for you.

As I said, this is only a short blog and a chance to say 'Happy Christmas.' I think that there will only be one more blog before Christmas so if I don't see you again have a good one. Here's to a fantastic retail 2017.

It's payday weekend - what does it mean to me?

Its payday weekend again - either this weekend or next weekend for your customers, with the last day of June on Tuesday. I've often posted payday weekend notices on my blog here (http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2014/03/it-payday-weekend-again.html & http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2014/02/payday-weekend.html) but without too many mentions of what that actually means. So I'll go back to the basics.

What is payday weekend?

In basic terms, it's the weekend straight after the majority of your customers get paid. This is when they are feeling the most flush with money and traditionally when they spend more of this money. The last week or so of the month before payday has often been where people have cut back and only dorms on essentials. They then break over that threshold and have their monthly salary in their account and are ready to treat themselves again. This is when the pursestrings are loosened.

What is different?

In actuality nothing is different - even more so in these days of ready credit but psychologically people feel that they have more money. And this applies to your team as well. And the difference to the town you operate in is that there are more people out shopping for more items at more money. And you have to prepare differently. Depending on your retail business, you will probably need more staff, more stock and your shop needs to be as ready as it can be in time for the expected footfall. So all non-customer tasks should be completed and out if the way long before the weekend trade really kicks in. Replenishnemt needs to be spot on and targeted in the right areas - as effective as possible and not disruptive to the flow of customers.

To some of you, this may seem like the basics but it's important to ensure that you have a plan and a routine to ready yourself and your team for these occasions, a they can make the difference in gaining new customers and retaining existing customers.

Customers

How you are set up for payday weekends and how your customers experience you at this time sets the time for their future visits. If you are more likely to see customers at this time, then you will have a larger pool of customers to make an impression on than normal. Each customer's experience with you this weekend can determine whether they see you as a delight to shop in (for those of you prepared for the extra trade) or a hassle (for those playing catch-up) and you need to ask yourself what you want to be here. The "delights" will see new customers converted and existing customers retained. The "hassles" will see a slow erosion of their trade.

It's time to step forward!

Not everything can be bought on the High Street-

How to avoid being short-staffed, and what to do when you can't avoid it

It happens to all managers at one time or another, when you end up scratching around trying to get shifts covered left right and centre. Holidays, sickness or other factors can sometimes all happen at once and leave you in a situation where you're making frantic calls to people or ending up covering shifts yourself.

So how can you avoid it? If you can't avoid it, how can you manage it?

Firstly, the best way of avoiding it comes with a dual approach - having flexibility in your team and planning long term. I'll look at both in more detail below.

Flexibility

Having a team that's flexible in terms of the hours they are available for work will help in all sorts of ways at all times of the year. And particularly in a time of crisis, where you are really short staffed. Although it starts to go against some of the points I've made in a previous blog, flexibility comes from having a good degree of part-time workers in your team-

Blog

The trick here is to have a good mix of both, with perhaps a progression plan for the better part-timers to move into full-time roles as people progress up the ladder or leave for another job.

The benefits of part-timers are clear to see in a short-term basic financial way. The current threshold for employers National Insurance is £156 per week, or £8,112 per year. So if your employee earns under that, you save having to pay a 12% tax on those earning above the threshold. If there are any other areas a business can find a 12% cost saving in one move then I've yet to find it!

So in terms of cost, part-timers can make done sense. And in terms of flexibility, they make sense too. Being able to call on someone who perhaps only works 16 or 20 hours per week presently to cover extra shifts is easier than trying the same with a full-timer. Plus you may have to pay overtime rates, depending on their contract.

Planning

It goes without saying that every manager needs to look at the long term as far as their business is concerned. Day-to-day events often take over, but having a long-term plan is essential. One aspect of long-term planning is the organisation of staff holidays. Starting to give out holiday forms and having a holiday planner set up gives you some certainty over when people are away from the operation and when you can allow others some holiday time. It helps here to set up rules for holiday requests being granted. And these rules will depend on the size of your team. I've worked many places where only one full-timer and only one part-timer off at the same time, and at least 3 weeks notice for a holiday request. This allows you cover, and time to arrange that cover.

From the point that you are organised and have set the rules, all you need to do us communicate the rules and remind people who haven't booked their holidays to get their requests in.

Staffing at the weekend - how do you manage this?

It's another weekend in retail and it's a story of work for some full-timers, some part-timers and weekend staff. I've worked in retail and with retailers for a long time, so I've seen the staffing at the weekend dealt with in a host of different ways. I'll look at some below-

Weekend-only staff

There have always been weekend-only staff in retail situations. Often school, college or university students that are looking for a little extra money or (mainly) women whose husbands work during the week. There are benefits to this, mainly that you can give your week team a good rest, keep them happy and more likely to stay. However the lack if experience that the non-full-time staff have can sometimes be a barrier to great customer service and high standards. But that's where you come in as a manager. If you ensure that as many hands and as many tasks as possible are customer-facing on the busy weekend trade days, then you minimise the need for staff that aren't in the building as long to carry out what are perhaps the more complex tasks.

In addition to this, it's a case if ensuring that your own workload is majorly focused on customers at this time, so you are there as a guide and influence to your team, as I spoke about in the blog below-

http://mytimeinretail.blogspot.com/2015/02/be-on-shop-floor-and-connect-with-your.html

Full-timers working every weekend

I have worked with retailers that do this, and there isn't really as much long-term objection to this as you might think. If you set up the store or vacancy in the basis that this will happen then there isn't a change to cope with. If a full-time member of staff has two days off during the week and works the weekend or a day off in the week and works one if the weekend days then they soon get into a routine and it isn't a problem. Upsides include a continuity in staffing as the busy days will have your more experienced team members. A possible downside is that your team members may (and I mean only may) look elsewhere to employers that don't currently require their team to work at the weekend. Although it's usually not an issue, there is still the stigma attached to working at the weekend and some may want to look at alternatives even if when they sit down and look at it, there isn't an issue that affects their life that much.

A mix -weekend in, weekend off

I've recently seen a rise in the alternate weekend rota as a way of covering staffing, where there is half of your regular weekday team in on one weekend and the other half in on the alternate weekend. This gives a good balance of both worlds, so you have some experienced team members alongside the weekend-only team and it gives everyone the opportunity of every other weekend off. I personally like this idea, as it gives people a weekend off but also gives them time to get things arranged in the week on the alternate week. If you're full-time then it can be a struggle to arrange doctors, dentists, hospital appointments without disruption to your normal working hours. This arrangement can be better for employees and employer.

Amazon's 13,000 seasonal staff

Christmas planning should be well under way by now

Christmas is on the way! Didn't anyone tell you? Your planning for Christmas will depend in what type of retailer you are, but the planning stage should be through or almost through by now.

Some retailers see the trade uplift from towards the end of October, whilst others don't see that until December.

Planning takes many forms and needs to cover many areas-

Staffing

Generally retailers will hire temporary staff to assist with the uplift in trade. For me, it's all about looking at your needs from the outset. Not just what hours you want to be covered but the exact nature of the duties you want these temporary staff to carry out. Think about the areas where you will see an uplift in sales, where your existing team will be best used and then you can identify any gaps in your weekly planner.

From this point you can plan extra hours x number of weeks x hourly rate to work out the costings of your extra Christmas staff.

When you are happy with the costings, it's about advertising the vacancy/vacancies whilst you design the recruitment process and timescales.

Advertising

The fact that it's Christmas will be a part of the natural advertising for any retailer - people will arrive at your door looking to buy.  You need to enhance this by your own marketing or advertising. This doesn't have to be expensive - changes to your shop window, your website and your social media presence can have a big impact.

Range

Now I'm probably too late for Christmas 2014 but changes to your range in time for Christmas can and will make a difference to your sales. Gifting and capturing the imagination of someone buying for someone else has become a massive industry. If your range is too static to change this close to Christmas this year then ease consider what you may be able to do in time for next year.

Hope this helps.