Guest Post: Seasonal Employees

Professor Howard Weiss shares his insights with our readers monthly. This topic is especially timely.

Chapter 13 in your Heizer/Render/Munson text, Aggregate Planning, discusses temporary workers as one strategy to use to adjust for changes in demand. This is a useful strategy when the size of the labor force is large. Thus, using seasonal workers is the appropriate strategy for UPS to follow– and it does. This year, beginning now in October and ending in January, UPS plans to hire over 100,000 employees to meet the December holiday demand when the volume of packages doubles. One benefit to the seasonal workers who are hired is that 35% of them will later be hired into full time positions as package handlers, delivery drivers, tractor-trailer drivers, and driver helpers.

Many other organizations also require seasonal workers. Retail stores clearly have the same seasonality as UPS. Spirit Halloween is a company that sells Halloween costumes, decorations, props, and animatronics and has over 1,400 stores open in September and October in all 50 states and in 9 provinces in Canada. Summer is a season rife with seasonal jobs. Philadelphia and many other cities hire seasonal workers for the summer for parks and recreation. Summer camps do the same, as do zoos. Barnes & Noble hires seasonal workers for the beginnings of semesters at universities. H&R Block hires seasonal workers in the winter for tax preparation. Seasonal fruit pickers are hired during harvest times. Landscapers hire workers seasonally.

Your textbook notes the downside of hiring seasonal employees is that “new employees need to be trained, and productivity drops temporarily.” In addition, the training may not be as complete as training for full time employees. The book further states that “layoffs or terminations lower the morale of all workers and also lead to lower productivity.” In addition, seasonal workers may be less committed and less loyal than full time employees.

Of course, there are several advantages to using seasonal workers, the most obvious of which is the flexibility it affords to handle increased seasonal demands and keep wages and benefits costs as low as possible since the seasonal employees are not full-time employees. In addition, if there is an issue with a seasonal employee, it is easier to dismiss the employee. Or on the optimistic side, if a seasonal worker is excellent he or she can be hired full time, as is the case with UPS.

Classroom discussion questions:
1. How else can seasonality of demand be approached?
2. What products/services not mentioned above require seasonal employees?