Christmas is a time of joy, celebration and festivities, but it can also be one of the most stressful for retail staff. With Black Friday in full swing, we’re well into the silly season. Customers just keep flooding through the door, and it can be hard to keep up. Your team members are busier, working longer hours, and dealing with their own personal Christmas stress. 

That’s why it’s so important to prioritise their mental health and well-being during the peak sales period. It’s key to check in with your team and encourage them to be open with their moods and emotions. You don’t want to push someone to breaking point without knowing it and lose an employee.

Here are four ideas to support your team and prevent those situations. 

Manage your staffing

Being understaffed means long hours for your team, aggravated customers and high stress. The most simple way to lower stress over the Christmas rush is to find enough seasonal team members to meet increased demand. However, if you’re short this year (like most are), think about how you can best schedule your team to maximise customer flow and ensure your team gets enough rest. 

Reward your team

Make sure your team are really relaxing when they’re on a break. Going above and beyond to provide something special on your busiest days can really boost morale. There are plenty of low-cost initiatives such as free coffee, cold ice blocks, snacks or even just some cold bottled water. It really makes the team feel cared for and appreciated.

Provide adequate training and encouragement 

Christmas comes with many seasonal hires, most of whom won’t have much experience, which can add to their stress. To build up their confidence, you must provide quality training before and during peak trade and give them frequent encouragement. It’s as simple as a quick congratulations after a successful sale or a tip for their next customer interaction. 

Managing stress

Another valuable strategy is teaching your team how to manage their stress. There are lots of tools and techniques that can help your team perform at their best, both in peak periods and throughout the year. At RedSeed, we have a dedicated well-being section in our content library, which includes courses such as “Building Personal Resilience” and “Managing Stress and Anxiety”, where we partnered with Active and Thriving. Check it out. There are also many useful Apps like EverYellow that you can promote to your team.

Thinking differently around this time of the year will help you get through, make the most of the increased customer flow, and keep your team intact! 

RedSeed.com is an online learning ecosystem with seriously good content for customer experience teams. If we don’t have it in our library, we can make it for you.

And you can use it on your platform or ours.

• Video-based course library
• Build knowledge and change behaviour.
• Integrated manager-led coaching.
• Simply, powerful LMS.

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