Christmas and the retail industry | Why your shop needs a time and attendance system
To say Christmas and the retail industry go together better than strawberries and cream is an understatement.
While the nation dreams of a white Christmas, jingle bells are ringing in tills all over the land.
Christmas is the best performing, busiest and most anticipated time of the year for the sector. Look! We’re talking about it now, and it’s only November.
Even in times of economic uncertainty, the feel-good factor of the festive season encourages greater spending.
But what can shop owners do to prepare their business for this period, and ensure they get maximum profits during the season?
Invest in a time and attendance system.
This is vital during busy Christmas periods, as it’s easy to forget who started when, or what pay rate you’re giving members of staff.
Swapping shifts, illness, demand and more can mean you are in chaos when it comes to staffing.
You could even find yourself hiring temporary staff to cover the period.
A time and attendance system will help you keep control of all these things, by:
Tracking hours this Christmas in the retail sector
Whether you choose a clocking terminal such as fingerprint or facial recognition. Or device clocking such as App or web, uAttend will accurately keep track of your team working hours.
Best of all, whatever method of clocking you choose, you will be able to tell that you’re staff are on-site, through biometrics or geofencing.
Payroll eases
By accurately tracking hours, you know your payroll data is correct. You can even add pay rules, such as breaks, overtime, roundings and more.
This will mean when you download your payroll it is fully ready to submit. No more faffing around with adding or subtracting hours.
Temporary staff
One of the most time-consuming aspects of seasonal employees can be onboarding admin.
With uAttend we take away the pain. Choose clocking via App or RFID fobs and set-up is a breeze.
As soon as you add users to the system they can get working (and track their hours). When they leave, apps can be deleted and fobs reused at no further cost to you.
Scheduling your workforce
Another way that time and attendance software can help during busy periods is through its scheduling functionality.
Although shifts may change, or temporary staff added on, ensuring you have your base hours covered is vital.
Not having your shop open, and staffed correctly could lose you thousands.
Our system, uAttend, offers an easy-to-use scheduling tool that comes free with your subscription.
Managing staff
Finally, uAttend enables you to manage staff remotely. So if you have a business that opens across the period, and your managers aren’t booked to work Boxing Day, they can still check things are running smoothly.
How? By using the app or online browser to check staff are in, manually clock employees, check labour costs, ensure staff matches the schedule, approve time off and more.
Christmas and the retail industry statistics
The Centre for Retail Research found that in 2020, due to lockdowns and COVID-19 precautions, online spending at Christmas increased by 56.2% compared with Christmas 2019.
In the Lockdown 2 period (ie November 2020), online sales grew by as much as 80.0%. The online share of retail sales rose to 32.8%, compared to only 21.5% in Christmas 2019.
What does this tell us?
While Christmas gives the online retail industry a seasonal boost and digital baskets overflow, the lesson for retailers is to be prepared.
Even in times of literally being stuck in your home – consumers are still willing to spend at Christmas.
This year, despite being allowed to shop more freely. Many consumers are still choosing to shop online for safety or health reasons.
So make sure you are ready for a digital Christmas mark two.
You will still need scheduling, time and attendance and payroll services.
This goes for warehousing, distribution and shop staff.
Why choose uAttend?
Talking of online shopping – uAttend will have its own Christmas offer available from Dec 1st 2021.
uAttend is flexible and scalable and it’s simple to add new stores as businesses grow.
uAttend includes:
- Unlimited UK helpdesk support
- Online training
- Software updates & feature releases
- Lifetime warranty on all uAttend terminals.
To book a demo, click here.
To watch a pre-recorded demo, click here.