The holiday season drives more than a spike in sales—it brings a wave of temporary retail employees hired in a matter of days. Retailers such as Dick's Sporting Goods and Foot Locker add thousands of short-term associates each year to keep up with demand, creating both opportunity and risk for the brands on their shelves.
For brands, this seasonal workforce shift can quickly erode product knowledge and consistency at the point of sale. New employees may not fully understand the products they're selling or the brand stories they represent. The result is uneven customer experiences that impact sales and brand perception.
The holiday season has always been a critical time for retail brands. Stores fill up, product launches accelerate, customers browse with intent, and the window for impact narrows. For brands that sell through retail partners, the challenge isn't staffing their own teams—it's ensuring the temporary workforce hired by retailers can effectively represent their products during the busiest selling season.
For many retailers, the final quarter of the calendar year is when they ramp up hiring of seasonal associates—store clerks, merchandisers, cashiers, and other frontline roles. Those associates become the face of your brand in-store. Historically, brands could rely on large hiring waves to meet expected foot traffic surges and ensure that every location had enough staff to represent their products and story consistently.
But this year, the picture is shifting. U.S. retailers are expected to add fewer than 500,000 seasonal jobs—the lowest level since 2009. In comparison, the industry added 543,100 jobs during the previous holiday season. The slowdown signals both economic caution and operational efficiency: retailers are hiring leaner, relying more on flexible or part-time labor to manage fluctuating foot traffic.
Meanwhile, job-seeker interest in seasonal roles has surged. Indeed Hiring Lab data shows a significant rise in searches for holiday job searches across the U.S., even as job postings remain down about 9% year over year. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that retail job openings now represent a 3.7% job openings rate, down from the prior year's 4.4%.
In short: fewer roles, more competition, and higher expectations for every associate hired.
For brands, this shift creates an urgent question—how do you ensure consistent product knowledge, sales confidence, and brand representation when the majority of those selling your products are temporary, undertrained, and often juggling multiple retail jobs?
When customers walk into a store, they don't distinguish between the retailer and the brand they're engaging with. To the shopper, the associate is the brand.
For brands that rely on retail partners to move product, that moment of interaction can determine not just one sale—but a lifetime of loyalty. Yet, when seasonal employees arrive on the job with minimal training, the risk is clear:
For brands that have invested millions in product development, marketing, and distribution, this inconsistency undermines return on investment. According to Salesforce research, consumers are 55% more likely to abandon a purchase if a sales associate cannot answer a basic product question. That single interaction—or lack thereof—can determine whether years of brand building translate into an actual sale.
This year's staffing landscape reflects several converging trends:
Seasonal staffing solves short-term operational needs, yet it magnifies long-term consistency challenges. Compressed onboarding, rotating roles, and multiple competing brands on the sales floor create an environment where brand stories blur, product knowledge fragments, and execution becomes unpredictable.
Many U.S. retailers now onboard seasonal employees in as little as one to three days, and in some cases, just a few hours before they're placed on the floor. That accelerated pace creates an impossible expectation: to absorb product features, brand guidelines, and customer service standards instantly.
The result is surface-level familiarity without true fluency. According to the Retail Industry Leaders Association, 48% of seasonal employees report receiving less than one day of training before starting on the sales floor. Seasonal associates may know what to sell, but not how or why it matters.
When product details or promotions change—as they often do during the holidays—these workers rarely receive updates fast enough to adjust. For brands that depend on accurate product storytelling, that means inconsistent representation at the very moment customers are most ready to buy.
Seasonal employees are often treated as utility players—rotated between departments as needed. One day, they're assisting in footwear; the next, they're at checkout or managing stock. While this flexibility helps retailers cover gaps, it leaves brands at a disadvantage.
Each rotation resets the learning curve. Associates may forget key product details, default to generic talking points, or avoid engaging with customers on product features altogether. In categories like electronics, beauty, or footwear—where nuanced differences influence buying decisions—those gaps are costly.
When customers have different experiences with the same brand across stores or retail partners, they begin to question authenticity. One store may present a product as premium and feature-rich; another may frame it as a budget option. The result? Mixed signals that diminish perceived value.
Research from Forrester shows that inconsistent product knowledge can reduce conversion rates by up to 25%. For brands operating through large retail networks or multiple partners, this fragmentation is a serious threat. Marketing teams can invest heavily in storytelling, but if those messages aren't reflected uniformly across locations, brand equity declines.
This inconsistency doesn't just hurt short-term sales—it lingers. Customers carry those impressions into future interactions, influencing loyalty and word of mouth. Once brand trust erodes, rebuilding it's expensive and time-consuming.
To maintain product knowledge and brand consistency amid workforce volatility, leading brands are taking a more active role in retail enablement. They are no longer leaving training entirely to their retail partners—instead, they're creating direct bridges to the sales floor.
Develop a single source of truth for all product details, campaign messaging, and promotional updates. Make it mobile-accessible and easy to navigate. Seasonal associates should be able to access accurate, brand-approved information in seconds.
Traditional onboarding doesn't scale in high-turnover environments. Instead, leading brands deploy micro-learning modules—short, three- to five-minute lessons or interactive videos that fit into busy shifts. Companies using digital learning and enablement tools see 26% higher training completion rates and 20% higher knowledge retention. This format improves both retention and participation.
Seasonal workers respond to recognition and inclusion. Brands that gamify learning, spotlight top-performing associates, or tie recognition to retail incentives help drive better engagement and stronger brand advocacy.
Enablement platforms allow brands to monitor training completion, product display compliance, and sales-floor readiness in real time. This visibility ensures consistency across hundreds of retail partner locations, even when each has a different staffing profile.
The holiday season will test how agile brands truly are. With fewer seasonal employees in the U.S. retail workforce and greater variability across locations, brands that rely on traditional training and delayed feedback will struggle to keep pace.
Those who adopt a proactive approach, combining centralized product knowledge, scalable training tools, and data-driven visibility, can turn a labor challenge into a competitive advantage. When every associate can confidently explain a product or represent a brand promise, temporary labor becomes a strategic asset rather than a liability.
Third-party retail enablement platforms bridge the gap between brand strategy and real-world execution—ensuring that every associate, no matter where they work or who employs them, has the information, training, and confidence to represent the brand accurately and consistently.
Retail moves fast—especially during the holidays. Promotions change weekly, campaigns shift overnight, and product assortments vary by store. Without centralized, real-time communication, associates often rely on outdated information or assumptions. An enablement platform allows brands to instantly distribute updates on product features, pricing, or limited-time offers to every associate across every location.
Seasonal and part-time associates have limited time for training. Long courses and static PDFs don't fit the pace of the sales floor. Using mobile access, associates can complete quick refreshers on product features or selling techniques between customers. This helps brands scale training to thousands of associates without disrupting store operations.
Knowledge doesn't just need to be delivered—it needs to stick. Enablement platforms often include engagement features such as quizzes, leaderboards, and recognition badges to encourage completion and retention. When associates are motivated to learn about a brand—and see immediate recognition for doing so—they become active ambassadors rather than passive sellers.
For many brands, the greatest challenge isn't creating training—it's confirming that it's actually being implemented. Platforms provide analytics dashboards that show who completed training, how associates are performing, and what's happening on the sales floor in real time. With this visibility, brands can identify where product knowledge gaps persist, validate whether promotions are being executed correctly, and provide targeted support to stores or associates that need it most.
Seasonal staffing challenges are unavoidable, but inconsistent brand experiences don't have to be. Insights from industry research show that the holiday season is when every interaction counts, and product knowledge on the sales floor directly impacts both conversion and customer trust.
Brands that take control of their in-store presence—by centralizing training, standardizing messaging, and enabling real-time updates—ensure that every associate, no matter how temporary, delivers a consistent brand experience.
ThirdChannel's retail enablement platform helps brands maintain product knowledge and brand consistency across every retail location. With tools designed for real-time communication, micro-learning, and field visibility, brands can transform seasonal hiring from a vulnerability into a competitive advantage—creating stronger connections with customers and lasting brand equity that extends well beyond the holidays.
Ready to ensure brand consistency this holiday season? Schedule a demo to see how ThirdChannel empowers brands with the tools to succeed at retail.