Seasonal staff: what changes in your records and your planning
Echipa HR 365 · reviewed 2026-09-13 · 5 min read
The rule that solves most of the problems: seasonal staff are reported separately, in every figure. Mixed in with permanent employees they double the turnover rate, distort absenteeism and make any year-on-year comparison impossible — because their number varies with the season, not with the health of the organisation.
What breaks if you do not separate them
| Indicator | What it shows with seasonal staff included | What it should be |
|---|---|---|
| Turnover | Enormous and meaningless: every season end is a departure | Two separate figures, each comparable with itself |
| Average headcount | Varies by 40-60% across the year | Permanent headcount, plus a seasonal line |
| Absenteeism | Diluted or exaggerated, depending on the period | Separate; the patterns are completely different |
| Cost per employee | Wrong in both directions | Calculated per category |
What to prepare before the season
Six to eight weeks ahead
- HR — the list of people who worked last season and whom you would take back — the cheapest source of candidates there is
- HR and manager — the requirement by week, not by season: the peak and the quiet stretches need different numbers
- HR — the compressed onboarding material: safety, operations, who the mentor is
- Manager — assigned mentors, with time allocated; at volume, one mentor cannot take more than two
The first step is the most profitable and the most often skipped. Someone who has already worked a season needs no training from scratch, knows the place and the people, and comes with a far higher probability of staying. A message sent in February to last year’s people saves half the recruitment.
What changes in your records
- A clear category marker, from hiring, not added later in the reports.
- The planned end date, recorded from the start — otherwise the end of the season looks like a run of unexpected resignations.
- A history that persists between seasons: who worked, what they can do, how they got on.
- Training marked with a validity period, so that on their return you know what needs redoing and what does not.
The third point delivers the most over the years. A company that keeps its seasonal history can, by the third season, call the good people directly for the right roles — instead of restarting selection from zero, with the same individuals, knowing nothing about them.
Planning at the peak
In season, shift planning becomes the activity with the largest operational impact and the greatest pressure. Two practical rules that survive volume: the schedule is published at least a week in advance, even if imperfect, and unavailability requests have a fixed deadline, or the planning never ends.
The second rule is the first lost under pressure and is exactly what produces the pressure: without a deadline, requests arrive continuously and the planner rebuilds the schedule five times a week.
Is full onboarding worth it for three months?
Compressed, but not reduced to nothing. What gets shortened: organisational context and development. What stays identical: safety, operations and the mentor. The errors of a badly integrated seasonal worker are paid for within those same three months.
How do you get them to come back next year?
Largely through how they were treated, not through the offer. The second factor, far cheaper than it looks: being contacted personally, in good time, by someone they know — not through a public advert.
Where to start
Check whether your reports already separate the two categories. If not, that is the first repair, and it completely changes what turnover and absenteeism show.
Then draw up the list of last year’s people you would take back and contact them two months before the season. It is the cheapest recruitment action available to you.
What a seasonal intake costs
Thirty seasonal workers, three months
Recruitment without an agency, compressed onboarding of 6 hours per person, internal mentors. Average hourly cost 11 EUR, mentor 13 EUR.
- Recruitment and selection (60 h HR × 13)
- 780 EUR
- Onboarding: their time (30 × 6 h × 11)
- 1,980 EUR
- Mentors’ time (15 mentors × 8 h × 13)
- 1,560 EUR
- Equipment and paperwork
- 900 EUR
- Start-up cost of the season
- ≈ 5,200 EUR, i.e. 173 EUR per person
Nu intră în calcul:
- reduced productivity in the first two weeks, real and hard to estimate
- the cost of errors during the learning period
The figure is useful for one comparison: if ten of the thirty are people who have worked with you before, the start-up cost falls by almost a third, because their recruitment and onboarding are far shorter. That is the argument for the February message.
The end of the season
It should be planned like the start and usually is not planned at all: people leave on the contract date, with no conversation and nothing written down. What is worth doing, and costs ten minutes per person: a short conversation about how it went, a note on file about what they did well, and the question of whether they would come back.
Those three pieces of information, gathered from thirty people, are exactly the raw material for next season — and they disappear entirely if they are not collected in the final week.
Separate staff categories in reports, with history retained
Seasonal workers get their own line in every figure, and whoever worked last year stays on file with what they can do — so next season starts from a list rather than from zero.
Free account, every module for 7 days, no card required.