Santa’s Workshop

Recruitment Challenges

With a global client base and operating in a highly time-sensitive logistics network, the not-for-profit Santa's Workshop, has relied on its 1,000-strong workforce to ensure Christmas's success for well over a century.

The burgeoning gig-economy, along with stiff competition from other seasonal employers was causing a talent drain, and the head office location was causing challenges in recruiting elves who wanted to work from home.

With a disengaged workforce and in a talent short market, Santa's Workshop turned to talent technology experts Talos360 for help with its attraction, engagement and retention strategy.

Results

To understand which aspects of its benefits package really resonated with its workforce, Santa's Workshop ran a complete employee value proposition and engagement survey using the employee engagement platform, Talos Engage. Data was segmented into key areas of the Santa's Workshop team so key motivators could be identified by departments, including air traffic control, inventory control, purchasing, manufacturing, demand control, packaging, customer success and reindeer handling.

The results from the Talos Engage survey were used to review and adjust the benefits package offered at Santa's Workshop, helping to reduce elf attrition in Q4 by 32%. It also dramatically curtailed a planned union strike over work conditions with the renegotiation of the warehouse team's Sonos access to the Ed Sheeran back catalogue.

Santa's Workshop also implemented Talos's applicant tracking system, Talos ATS. With the feedback from their Talos Engage survey, Santa's Workshop built their dream careers site with targeted landing pages for key departments. They also used Talos ATS to create an engaging onboarding site with an FAQs page to cover everything from North Pole work visas and where to park on their first day to frostbite top tips and canteen opening times.

The job advertising multi-poster in Talos ATS meant Santa's Workshop could focus on a direct-hire strategy, reducing their reliance on recruitment agencies. They also leveraged the huge free job board network in Talos Attract and supplemented this with some key premium job boards to ensure they were noticed as an employer of choice.

"Talos360 has been the best present to myself this year"

Santa Claus, Founder Santa's Workshop

Job advert writing was streamlined using intelligent AI to inspire compelling job ads to get the most talented elves off their shelves, and with aptitude tests, Santa's Workshop was able to widen its talent pool to include candidates with no prior cold-weather logistics experience.

Digitalising their old paper system using Talos ATS meant that time-to-hire was reduced by a massive 60%. This huge reduction allowed the founder of Santa's Workshop to focus on other areas of the business, enabling business productivity to flourish, resulting in the invention of forty-seven new toys and new shoes for Rudolph.