Retailers Recap Highs and Lows of COVID-Era Holiday Shopping Season
The versatility and resilience of retailers helped many stores survive 2020’s complicated holiday shopping season, which was plagued by frequent understaffing, high turnover, workplace anxiety, and a host of recruitment challenges, according to the annual end-of-season survey commissioned by UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group). While COVID-19 was undeniably disruptive to business, 3 in 5 retailers either reported an increase in year-over-year holiday sales in stores (37%) or no significant change (22%).
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“the burden lies on managers to execute on an all-new set of in-store safety requirements in addition to running day-to-day store operations. Throughout this challenging season, we have seen workforce technology emerge as a lifeline for many.”
“Retail’s 2020 Post-holiday Season Review,” the second annual study from UKG surveying 300 U.S. retail managers1 responsible for hiring and/or staffing decisions in stores, reveals challenges and trends defining the 2020 holiday shopping season and insights that will help retailers streamline workforce operations in the year ahead.
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Were retailers prepared for the 2020 holiday shopping season? Not exactly.
Despite best efforts to recruit, rehire, and attract seasonal staff for this most unprecedented season, only 2 out of 5 retail store managers (43%) said they fully met their hiring goals, and a mere 1 in 3 deemed stores fully prepared (35%) or felt they had adequate headcount to consistently meet shopper demand (33%) throughout the holiday season, even while COVID-era protocols dictated less foot traffic than years past.
A side-by-side comparison with UKG’s 2019 holiday hiring survey2 reveals little variation in terms of store preparedness year over year, according to managers—but it does show a noticeable rise in HR technology adoption to aid recruitment: More than twice as many retailers invested in talent acquisition (52%) and onboarding technology (50%) in stores ahead of the 2020 holiday shopping season compared to 23% and 21% of retailers, respectively, in 2019. It’s unclear whether technology adoption spiked in response to the pandemic, or if these investments were part of a larger HR transformation initiative among retailers.
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