3 Ways to Engage and Motivate Your Part Time and Seasonal Workers

Yesterday I talked about how your workforce is increasingly more part-time workers. Read more about that here.

Many of you are relying more and more on part time or seasonal workers to deliver a stellar service experience to your customers. So how do you motivate employees when you both know they might only be with you for a short amount of time? Although it might seem counter intuitive, you must invest in your employees, even though they might only be with you for a short time.

Here are 3 ways you can enable and engage your seasonal and part-time workers:

Provide learning and development opportunities

People want skills and opportunities that will make them more marketable now and in the future. When you provide your part-time employees with learning and development opportunities, several affects will happen. You will attract (and then retain) the best talent. You will give them skills to interact more effectively with your customers and provide better service. You will provide alignment with your company’s culture and values. You will teach and motivate them to provide better customer service.

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Remove obstacles that get in the way of them delivering exceptional service

Many large companies have too many bureaucratic processes and procedures in place that get in the way of their employees delivering exceptional service to their customers. Because many part-time workers are part of the front lines, often they do not feel enabled to go the extra mile to help a customer; however, this can often mean the difference between losing a customer and creating decades of loyalty. Examine your policies and procedures and assure that they are absolutely necessary to function. Remove those that do not serve your higher company mission. Some of the most successful customer service companies place very little rules on their employees (e.g. Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Netflix, Apple, etc.) with very high success and exceptional performance. Plus, when you enable your employees with learning and development (as mentioned above), you set them up to understand your company values and deliver service with those values in mind.

Recognize and reward them for exceptional performance

Every employee wants to be recognized for their work and treated uniquely. To motivate employees to continuous levels of high performance you should have an employee engagement recognition program in place. The most successful recognition programs are customized and personalized so that your employees get the rewards and recognition they want, at every touch point. During the holidays, and in December specifically, many people have split focus – thinking about everything they must get done, tired and distracted from holiday parties – and their energy starts to wane. That is why it is critical to motivate them (and especially seasonal workers) with incentives, rewards and recognition to continuously keep their eye on the prize – making your customers happy!

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