For the retail industry and small businesses in general, the holiday season has started, and for them, this season can be a financial boost for their business.
The significant change in sales, profits, and employment take a front seat during the holiday season, and it can be a breaking or making point for many businesses across many industries.
By November, the retail industry has hired many part-time sales personnel to help with the holiday season, expecting those employees will be ready when black Friday sales start. Many of those businesses will let go many of those employees, but some of them will stay with the business well after the season is over.
The benefits associated with keeping those employees on payroll are many, but most importantly, it is the expense associated with hiring new employees every few months that make sense. Many businesses strive to hire quality employees and can see the benefit in training them and keeping them well after the holiday season is over. The expense of hiring new employees regularly makes no financial sense for them considering the rise in costs associated with it.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the cost of hiring a new employee is $4,129. Not only that, but it also takes weeks for those employees to be ready to perform their job well, and if not trained properly, the cost of retraining puts a financial strain in the business and their profits.
When paying for a background check before hiring a new employee, or for proper training the first time around, the costs associated with acquiring quality employees can become minimal if done properly the first time around.
Many businesses now a day hire new employees constantly, never training them well and getting rid of them before their first paycheck arrives. That’s a very costly way of acquiring employees or retaining the ones they have, and acquiring good employees using this method is riddled with problems from the beginning.
A business needs to invest in properly hiring and training their new hires. The financial benefits will follow for the business.
Traditionally Black Friday has been the kick-off of the holiday shopping season. Families spent Thanksgiving together dining, celebrating, catching up with each other and maybe even watching a football game on television. Early Friday following Thanksgiving store employees would start reporting to work preparing for early openings which often took place at 6:00 am. Retailers had advertised their Black Friday specials (Door Busters) and customers would start queuing up at the doors ready to find bargains. The shopping would then continue into Saturday and even Sunday patrons continued to look for bargains to stretch their dollars further. Then something began to happen, stores started competing for those dollars by opening their doors earlier and earlier. We ( I did this for quite a few years) would report to work and 3:00 am for a 5:00 am store opening. The next year we moved to 2:00 am arrival for a 4:00 am opening. Today stores are opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day. There are Pros and Cons to this shift that I think is worth exploring in a bit more depth.