• Undertaken the extra learning …
• The comparative ease of employing people…

In some sectors of the economy, the boom of seasonal workers is coming to the end.  The close of another summer season will see the students who have served in the restaurants, cleaned the guest house bedrooms and covered for holidaying colleagues in supermarkets return to their studies.

But while one industry will swell the ranks of its workers during July and August others will need people at other times of the year.  It was only recently in my home area that schools abandoned ‘Wakes Weeks’ – a one week holiday in September, timed to coincide with mill and factory shutdowns – designed  to enable the crops to be gathered before the autumn.

And with the sand brushed off the bottle of sun tan lotion for another year, many organisations will be gearing up for Christmas.  As the sound of sleigh bells echoes in the shopping centres before the end of the cricket season, those companies like the post office, high street retailers, warehouses and office Christmas party venues will be recruiting the next round of seasonal staff.

From a Learning and Development viewpoint, this continually shifting employee landscape presents a series of unique challenges.  How do you get people who will be on site for only a matter of weeks up to speed?  How do you balance achieving fundamental competence with the duration of the short term contract?  How do you ensure that the revenue added by their employment isn’t swallowed by the training budget to generate the extra cash?

One industry which has a long history of people moving in and out of employment – not only seasonally but on short term contracts or as a supplement to other careers – is the contact centre industry.  The key issue for contact centres is not that they have short term workers, but that they have individuals who have repeated short term contracts.  For a recent contact centre client we proposed a slight adjustment to our Involve Learning Management System and learning portal to address this exact issue.

The focus of a Learning Management System is traditionally managing and tracking the training of people who are within the business.  What about – we asked – the people who were temporarily out of the business but keen to return?

This led us to a solution in which we suggested an ‘alumni portal’.  The way it works is pretty simple.  Employees who leave to pursue their studies, take an acting job, etc, have separate access to an externally hosted version of Involve.  This enables the user to launch learning, news and discussions specially selected for workers who are off doing something else for a while.  The web 2.0 facilities of Involve enable conversations to be undertaken between the firm and those with access, and the news function enables the organisation to call for recruits.  Say a two week contract comes up to do some market research on behalf of a client.  The news function explains to all registered users that there is an opportunity.  The automatic email function sends them a mail to their inbox or – increasingly their mobile phone.  They log on and see the pre-requisites – maybe the need to have completed one or two general modules to keep their skills updated, plus a specific module about the job to be undertaken.  Within 40 minutes they’ve been able to do the requisite online modules, submit a response saying they are interested in the job and within 30 minutes of walking on site the following Monday are up to speed, on the phone and speaking to customers.

The fact that they’ve undertaken the extra learning – in their own time, to keep their knowledge and understanding up to date – demonstrates their willingness to do the job and their commitment to the organisation. Clearly anyone who left under a cloud or who wasn’t invited to the party to celebrate their departure won’t have been given access to the portal when they handed in their pass, so we know they are OK and able to do the work.  If there are degrees of competence, perhaps we can give them some kind of passport – create levels within the alumni and set up separate networks for groups with different skills and different levels of experience.  Then you simply push news to the right level – got a job which is complicated and requires lots of sensitivity?  Send only to your really experienced former team members.  Got one which can be done by anyone who has completed basic training – publish to the whole of the alumni. 

But what’s that got to do with seasonal workers?  I was speaking to a few people who undertake seasonal work and a couple of people who employ staff on short term temporary contracts.  The picture from both sides of the recruitment issue was pretty much in agreement. In both cases, the seasonal workers and the employers not only wanted continuity – to return to places year on year, to recruit the tried and tested rather than the new and unknown – but the idea of individuals keeping up to date was attractive to both sides.  However, in many businesses the comparative ease of employing people repeatedly on short term contracts is not an option.  And we’ve heard about some of the problems when things go wrong.  From short term staff who feel they have no investment in the job, the organisation or the customer base who simply fail to turn up, to Christmas posties dumping their deliveries in the nearest canal – the horror stories are legion.  There will always be recruitment mistakes – I’ve never yet seen a recruitment process for long or short term appointments, casual workers or executives – which was foolproof.  However, the initial training, the sharing of values, the development of core competence and knowledge, is at the very least an insurance policy for companies.  At best an effective initial training offer can build loyalty and commitment even amongst the most short term of team members.

So one of the challenges for those employing seasonal workers who can’t – for whatever reason – rely on re-recruiting the same team year on year is to reduce the time to deployment.  Again we can look at some lessons from those employing non seasonal, permanent members of the team. 

The first example is that of getting some of the initial induction out of the way.  When Virgin Atlantic needed to review their initial training for cabin crew under the exacting conditions of the Civil Aviation Authority, they chose to use the ambition and drive of their new recruits positively in their favour.  They created an online induction and health and safety programme which needed to be done online in advance of actually joining for initial training.  Other organisations looking for graduate trainees and using assessment centres as part of the selection process, regularly make their initial training available before the new recruit takes up his or her post. 

Why is this so effective?  In the first instance it plays on two emotions of the new recruit.  The first is the positive feeling about the new employer caused by having got through to the relevant stage of the recruitment process.  The average person rarely gets such an endorsement as being offered a job, so using these positive feelings, benefiting from the compliment they have been paid, seems sensible.  The second is the anxiety faced by newbies.  The new kid at school syndrome is never a good feeling.  Are there ways of using this desire to avoid being out of one’s depth positively?  I think so.  In fact, using the externally hosted learning portal which our call centre colleagues were so excited by, there is a real chance to communicate, provide learning resources and monitor some uptake amongst new recruits.  Want to de-risk the issue of recruiting people on short term contracts who may actually be no good?  Let’s see if those same potential rogue post dumpers commit to undertaking an hour and a half of initial induction.  I bet they don’t.  In fact in Virgin Atlantic’s case, the cost of not equipping and training those who were insufficiently motivated to complete initial learning in their own time  (or switched off by the idea, or tried it and found it too hard) was enough to ensure that they were awarded the eLearning Age award for best online solution proving return on investment.  Yes, that simple expedient of not bothering to bring on board the ‘can’t be bothered’ paid for the e-learning solution within considerably less than a year.

So, taking seasonal workers sometime this year?  If you can, build an alumni who will return again and again and use an online presence and some online materials to keep them up to date and in touch.  If you can’t recruit the same people over successive seasons, how can you shorten the initial training – while gathering some risk reducing idea of commitment by asking your new starters to take an hour out of the week pre-employment to undertake at least some elements of induction. 

Can’t put induction online?  Maybe not all of it, but think how much of your current induction is a group of uncomfortable new starters listening to presentations from somebody who’d rather be doing something else. 

Quite a lot of it if the induction’s I’ve observed are anything to go by. 

Do yourself a favour – take those bits online and make it available before they start.