While it’s great to hear that Marks and Spencer is planning to recruit 20,000 more staff to help with the busy Christmas period they need to approach this in a strategic and targeted manner. With such a large onboarding of staff in a short period of time, it is vital that M&S has sufficient training programmes in place to help new starters get up-to-speed as quickly as possible.

While the majority of recruits are likely to be temporary employees, they will all be seen as representatives of M&S so need to be provided with a targeted induction plan and overview of key processes and policies. The danger when bringing in a high volume of staff is that they fail to be briefed adequately on important areas such as health and safety, gross misconduct and customer service.