Managing Seasonal Spikes – Right Resource, Right Time
The Challenge
A national retailer and an insurance provider had similar issues:
- Seasonal spikes (holiday shopping / policy renewals) led to extreme short-term resourcing needs
- Hiring temp staff each year was time-consuming, expensive, and inconsistent in quality
- Their internal teams were overworked during spikes, and underused during quiet periods
- Fixed headcount led to high base cost, regardless of volume
The Solution
Shared Workforce Group designed a dynamic workforce-sharing arrangement across multiple seasonal employers. We:
- Built a shared talent pool of trained support and admin professionals
- Implemented a calendar-based demand model across all organisations
- Allowed teams to scale up or down by the week or day, with recall guarantees built in
- Shared knowledge across seasons (e.g., some workers shifted from retail at Christmas to insurance in Q1)
- Integrated a blended pricing model (on-location, remote, peak/off-peak)
The Impact
- Saved £1.2M / $1.5M annually in temp hiring costs across participating organizations
- Maintained consistent service levels during both high and low volume periods
- Staff worked continuously across the year, reducing churn and increasing retention by 34%
- Removed stress of rapid seasonal hiring and training
- Created a new revenue stream by lending underutilised support staff during off-season
