I recently had a chance to speak with a franchise leader at one of the country’s largest tax prep companies about how they retain seasonal staff. It was eye-opening.
They’re miles ahead of their competitors, having invested in franchise-wide people protocols and incentives so that experienced tax preparers actually want to come back year after year.
But the tactics they use to do this aren’t specific to financial services franchises. Any franchise system that experiences seasonality and relies on seasonal workers to meet customer demand can benefit from their approach.
Prep for next season on day one
The focus on a new hire’s first day isn’t just “how do we get this person up to speed?” but also, “what’s going to make this person want to come back next year?”
Onboarding sets the tone. Not just the paperwork and orientation checklist, but with an experience that connects someone to the role, the team, and the brand.
When people feel set up to succeed, they leave the season with a good feeling about the job. That good feeling is what you’re counting on in November when you need to staff up again. CareerPlug’s onboarding flows makes it possible to build customized tracks for seasonal roles so every location is giving new hires the same strong start.
Survey before they leave
The tax prep org I spoke about earlier does this twice a year. Once at the start of the season during reorientation and again at the end. The end-of-season survey includes an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) and a direct question about their likelihood to return.
The answers tell you who’s “definitely coming back” and what you need to work on, who you lost, and why. CareerPlug’s pulse surveys are meant for this kind of check-in, which help individual locations get a sense of next year’s cohort and gives franchisors insight into patterns across your whole network.
Email in the offseason
Send little check-ins about how things are going, ask what people are up to. It’s a low-lift way to stay on their radar so that when the season rolls back around, your franchisees aren’t strangers.
An automated email sequence with two or three touchpoints between seasons is enough to impact who says yes when you ask them back. Most franchise systems skip this entirely and then wonder why they’re starting from scratch every year.
Track retention by location, share systemwide
The reason this tax prep org can do all of the above at scale is something most franchise systems don’t have — every franchise employee is registered in a systemwide database.
PartnerHub can give franchisors a network-level view. You can see retention trends by location, so that FBCs can know which operators need the most help.
Franchises that rely on seasonal workers and don’t have a plan for how to reach people (outside of a “post and pray” approach to job boards) end up reactive, rushed, competing with everyone else who also waited. It pays to be organized, have a system, and, even better, to have some hiring experts in your corner.
More soon,
Clint