According to UK government figures, between May and August last year, an average of 40,000 additional young people were employed each month, compared with September to December. This seasonal jump reflects a well-established pattern: as demand surges across the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors during the summer months, employers turn to temporary staff to help fill gaps created by employee holidays and increased customer activity.
This seasonal variation is fuelled by ubiquitous summer holidays, some of the most popular sporting and music events of the year, and widespread growth in overall leisure spending. For employers, this represents both opportunity and risk, with a big part of the challenge coming from balancing increased demand with the need to maintain service levels without overburdening remaining staff or disrupting daily operations.
For businesses that rely on a significant number of frontline workforces, this brings some recurring and potentially disruptive issues to deal with. During the summer months, for example, many employees are either on holiday, need greater flexibility during the school break to balance childcare responsibilities or both. At the same time, relying on seasonal staff puts existing scheduling and training processes under pressure, often because they aren’t designed to adapt quickly enough to fluctuating availability or short-term staffing needs.
In many cases, outdated scheduling practices and technologies make matters worse. Indeed, some employers still rely on paper-based shift rotas or ask staff to arrange swaps via informal channels such as text messages or messaging apps. These systems are prone to errors and miscommunication and place unnecessary pressure on both employees and managers. Without a structured, flexible system in place, filling shifts becomes reactive, time-consuming and unreliable, especially at the scale often required during the summer.
 |
Get our essential daily HR news and updates. |
Managing the seasonal staffing squeeze
To manage the seasonal staffing squeeze more effectively, many employers are turning to digital workforce tools that support flexible, employee-led scheduling. These platforms give frontline staff greater control over when and how they work, enabling shift swaps, self-scheduling, and access to available shifts in real time through a centralised system.
Unlike paper rotas or informal messaging, these systems ensure full visibility of who is working and when. The positive knock-on effect is significant, with employees able to release shifts they can no longer work, pick up additional hours that suit their availability or directly swap shifts with colleagues – all without manager intervention. For those balancing work with holidays or childcare, this flexibility is critical, and for businesses, it means improved shift coverage, lower absenteeism and far less administrative overhead.
These tools also help onboard seasonal workers more efficiently. By assigning tasks to shifts rather than specific individuals, employers can ensure critical jobs are completed regardless of who is on duty. Combined with more flexible training, delivered in short, accessible segments, seasonal staff can get up to speed faster and spend more time contributing on the shop floor.
Room for improvement
Improving these vital processes can also provide the benefit of streamlined communication between the head office and staff. Instead of filtering instructions through local managers, as is very often the case, businesses can connect directly with employees at their place of work, an approach that helps avoid bottlenecks and gives store-level teams more time to focus on customer service.
Businesses also find it helpful to move away from rigid, one-size-fits-all rotas and instead adopt a digital open shift marketplace where employers can match shift requirements to employee availability and preferences in real time. This not only improves shift coverage but also contributes to higher levels of engagement, as workers feel much more in control of their time.
These options offer massive time savings for frontline managers too. With these options in place, shifts are moved and filled ahead of schedule with little effort from location managers, removing the issues associated with phoning around employees to cover shifts at short notice.
Feedback is also key to making these processes run smoothly. In particular, seasonal staff, despite their short tenure, can offer valuable insight into what is and isn’t working, particularly when it comes to onboarding, training and scheduling processes. Capturing this feedback consistently can help businesses improve future hiring cycles and reduce inefficiencies.
From a customer service perspective, businesses benefit from higher engagement and more consistent performance. When employees feel trusted and empowered to manage their time, they are more likely to deliver positive interactions, especially during busy periods when service quality is under pressure.
As demand hits peaks and troughs throughout the year, summertime included, organisations that prioritise this kind of workforce flexibility put themselves in a much better position to adapt without the need to rely on reactive fixes or unsustainable overtime. In doing so, they can ensure staffing needs can be met with efficiency, and for the benefit of employer and employee alike – an approach where everyone wins at work.
Mark is an experienced leader in the retail space with an extensive career, including 14 years at Shell (Retail) where he was responsible for retail's 'Global Frontline Digital Transformation' and executing frontline enablement strategies.
Mark has a proven track record of delivery against newly created roles, translating an enterprise vision into reality. As an experienced leader, he creates and develops high performing teams that deliver "real" commercial value.
