The holiday season is pretty much here, and yet businesses in the UK and elsewhere find themselves scrambling to get ready. Analysis firm Fung Global Retail and Technology predicts that “Total UK retail sales will climb by around 5% year over year, adding nearly £4 billion to holiday sales and taking the seasonal total to £78.7 billion.” Half of that increased holiday shopping will come from inflation, while the other half will be through more goods purchased.

If there are more customers, then businesses need more employees. But hiring seasonal employees comes with all sorts of challenges, whether we discuss hiring them, dealing with the legal minutiae, and how to get them to work as effectively as possible. HR and management have key roles to play in ensuring that the Christmas recruitment process works as smoothly as possible, and remembering the following steps and conditions can help.

Workers versus Employees

With unemployment down recently in the UK, businesses should already have a plan in place to hire seasonal workers. But that assumes that businesses hire workers and not employees. Remember that these are different things, as the British government explicitly states that “all employees are workers, but an employee has extra employment rights and responsibilities that don’t apply to workers who aren’t employees.”

Employees have extra rights such as the right to claim unfair dismissal or maternity leave, which may tempt employers to hire more workers. However, the catch for using workers is that the employer cannot control when and where work is done. The employer asks a worker if they can come in at certain hours, and the worker is free to refuse. This is not ideal when your business is dealing with an unexpected surge in demands and needs people to come in quickly, and so a better option is to offer a fixed-term employment contract.

Understand Fixed-Term Contract Legalities

A fixed-term employment contract specifies that business are temporarily hiring workers for a fixed term with the understanding that dismissal will happen after the term is over. While these are a business’s best option for hiring over the holiday season, businesses need to understand the regulations which apply to them.

First, businesses cannot place any distinction between fixed-term employees and permanent employees. If your business offers training programs to your long-term employees, you must do the same with your fixed term employees even if your business would not reap the long-term benefits of such training. There are certain exceptions which can be made for business reasons, but your business should offer roughly the same benefits package to avoid legal troubles.

Furthermore, there can be challenges in terminating a contract. Employees with at least two years’ continuous service can challenge dismissal when the contract ends. The key here is that the two years can add up. If you hire a temporary employee for five months every year from 2013 to 2017, you will have hired the employee for a total of 25 months and the employee can argue unfair dismissal after the end of this year’s contract. Employers thus need to follow the proper redundancy procedures as dictated by the government, be prepared to show that the dismissal is fair, and make clear to potential employees that being hired this holiday season is no guarantee of employment in future season.

Getting the Best Employees

All of the above legal details may discourage businesses from hiring additional holiday help, especially because finding good, talented holiday employees can be a challenging task. But there are various steps to improve your chances of getting good employees who may perhaps become a permanent part of your business.

For starters, many employers start their labor search by posting a sign on the storefront window or on some general job board, and then end up surprised when the prospective applicants know little about the business and care about nothing but a temporary paycheck.

Employers need to look beyond their business and find people who are familiar with what they do. Ask current and former employees if they know anyone who would be a qualified employee. Sometimes, you can get former retired employees out of retirement for a little while, which is particularly useful as retirees make up a larger percentage of the country. Also try to recruit from your own customers as they are another demographic familiar with your product and store.

Thinking in the Long Term

When the holiday season is over and your fixed term employees have left, do not forget that you may need them again next year. While you have to emphasize to them that work this year does not guarantee work next year for reasons discussed above, the fact remains that they should be the first people you turn to next year. Keep their names and contact information on file. In addition to being a pool of holiday labor for the future, they may be the first names you want to look at if you are considering hiring more permanent employees.