THE SITUATION: The retail industry experiences its peak sales period during the Christmas season. Shopping Centres are overwhelmed with customers looking to purchase Christmas gifts and to partake in the festivities.  Because it’s the busiest time of the year, carparks become a nightmare and present a challenge to manage.  To relieve the pressure and offer a better parking experience, Shopping Centres can offer a pop-up valet program in order to retain customers and make a good first impression.

A valet parking service presents an opportunity to add a heightened customer experience during busy periods.

THE CHALLENGE: The main challenge for shopping centre owners and managers is finding a pool of skilled labourhire during peak recruitment periods (Christmas) where resources are scarce or already committed to other organisations.

THE PROCESS:  As an emerging industry, most landlords have minimal experience with valet parking programs, or are tasked with the project and need experts to create a seamless pop-up valet service.

Providing solutions for peak times is our specialty

First Class Valet in conjunction with some of the biggest retail chains in Australia worked with project & development managers, centre managers, & divisional managers to develop a labourhire program to assist with their pop-up valet program over the 2019 Christmas period.  Their biggest concern was finding trustworthy, skilled labour hire to fulfill the needs of the project.

A key outcome of the pop-up programs was to manage risk, safety, and lower claims through hiring skilled labour. First Class Valet was then engaged with management (divisionally and locally) to help implement, and create sufficient rosters which required skilled labour hire at each site. This was crucial in managing a safe program whilst collaborating to ensure each site was staffed efficiently.  It was important to the organisations as well as First Class Valet that the project was operating under safe conditions for all employees.

As this was a new initiative, many centres had never participated in a pop-up valet program before. Leveraging the experience of a trusted valet provider allowed landlords to gain the internal support for projects to commence.

With the help of experienced valet consultants, valuable time was saved when determining site logistics and operations.

First Class Valet began work immediately with the recruitment, hire, and training of valets to ensure all were well equipped with the fundamentals of valet parking, before stepping foot on any driveway. They embarked on a rigorous recruitment exercise utilising traditional and digitised recruiting methods. Experienced valets were also paired with newly trained staff on sites requiring multiple resources.

Our team are fully-trained to be customer focussed

RESULTS: Within 30 days, First Class Valet placed over 75 candidates across 3 states in Australia at 18 different locations (NSW, Regional NSW, VIC, SA). The skilled team members successfully completed over 750 training hours at the First Class Valet Academy.  Because of sufficient training, experience, and attention to detail the First Class Valet teams parked approximately 7,653 vehicles, over 15,000 total logistical car movements, and tallied 2,436 labour hours worked. During the 3 month period (November – January), only 3 minor claims with total claims valued at less than $4,500 were submitted.  All of this, with an overall NPS score of over 70!

The recruitment process created real barriers of entry to larger scale pop up valet programs given the demand for talent at that time of the year. First Class Valet saved their clients money and many project resource hours (time) through collaborating on an outsourced skilled labourhire program.

First Class Valet were able to keep claims to an absolute minimum, and seamlessly give the client their time back.

Through outsourcing skilled labourhire, the client was able to focus on their core competencies and partner with an approved specialist provider, with a proven track record.

The speed in which First Class Valet were able to recruit, along with precision in recognising complimenting skill sets and attributed in candidates, is a feat to be noted.

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