How retailers stay competitive with Workforce Management

Customers have a wealth of choices on where and how to spend their money, so what makes a consumer choose one retailer over another?

The key differentiator is the customer shopping experience which is impacted by:

• Competitive pricing
• Clean and bright-lit store
• Well-stocked shelves and racks
• Clean baskets and working shopping carts
• Attractive in-store promotions
• Speedy collection services
• Staff on hand to offer assistance and product support
• Short waiting times

Before stock reaches the shelves, retail staff operate day and night receiving, packing, pricing and displaying goods as well as replenishing shelves, rotating stock, removing spoiled goods, and maintaining the store premises.

Inefficiencies and disruption in performing these tasks can greatly impact sales volumes by causing a poor customer shopping experience. Today retailers must effectively drive online shoppers back in-store and increase basket value, by delivering a better shopping experience that meets customer demands. This means having the right number of staff, at the right time, to perform all store operations efficiently and to a high standard.

Traditional methods of scheduling no longer work

In this climate, labor scheduling and budgeting for multiple stores can be challenging due to the unpredictable nature of consumer shopping habits. The traditional methods of annual planning and fixed labor budgeting fails to provide accurate and near real-time forecasting for store managers to deploy staff efficiently, risking understaffing at peak times and increasing staff turnover.

Retailers need to control costs by reducing instances of over-staffing and keeping labor productivity high by avoiding understaffing to increase sales — this involves scheduling staff members efficiently.

Fourth’s automated labor rules, pre-configured to a retailer’s unique operations, calculates the time needed for staff to complete sell and non-sell activities so managers can deploy the optimal number of staff. For sell activities, Fourth’s demand forecasting averages 98% accuracy by analyzing data from POS sales, year-on-year trends, weather, and local events, customized for a retailer’s operations. These capabilities equip store managers with insights to schedule the appropriate number of staff according to where and when they are needed while providing visibility of spare labor capacity that can be deployed to improve labor efficiency across the store.

To analyze labor performance, retail managers have easy access to weekly reports within the scheduling tool. This details labor management indicators, such as actual and forecasted hours across each day, total sales for each day, and performance percentage against the annual fixed labor budget, as well as wage cost calculations for all staff employed throughout the week. This allows store managers to track instances of under or over-staffing and identify opportunities for improvement.

The uncertainty and unpredictability of consumer shopping habits

Competition for the consumer is fierce and even loyal customers can be swayed by competitors offering a better experience. Fluctuating levels of consumer demand could lead to difficulties in staffing stores and controlling labor costs.

While annual labor planning with periodic updates provides a rough guide to recruitment and adequate labor coverage across all stores, it fails to provide agile and accurate forecasting that considers the future variability of customer demand. Equipping local store managers with robust forecasting tools, shaped by near real-time data taken from demand-generating systems, allows managers to schedule their workforce effectively against unexpected changes in customer demand.

Fourth’s AI Forecasting uses machine learning AI-driven algorithms to inform when and where a store should increase or decrease staffing levels. The system detects trends and patterns in customer demand, using historical POS data, and analyses local events that can influence consumer shopping behavior, to predict reliable levels of future customer demand down to 15 minutes for an individual store.

The destabilization of schedules

The retail workforce is largely made up of part-time workers whose schedules vary, with changes often communicated at very little notice. As a result, retailers managing labor budgets stretch staffing levels thinly across stores and control overstaffing by changing staff schedules at short notice.

This widely adopted labor model increases the risk of retailers being understaffed at peak times, causes frustration for staff members, who are unable to plan their work around external commitments, and can lead to higher staff turnover, increasing recruitment costs and reducing productivity.

Fourth’s online scheduling tool equips store managers with an efficient and easy way to build weekly schedules, with a dashboard displaying forecasted hours that the available staff members can take to meet the demand. Store managers can assign staff to cover the required hours across the day, and gain visibility into spare labor capacity that can be redeployed. Keeping track of the labor budget at the point of building schedules is made simple with the wage costs for individual staff calculated instantly within the tool, giving the store manager visibility and control over time.

To communicate schedules effectively and in real-time with staff members, store managers utilize Fourth’s HotSchedules app. Once a schedule is published, the app instantly notifies all employees. Within the app, employees can easily pick-up, release, or swap shifts with their colleagues, pending manager approval. Managers and employees can also easily communicate with one another in the app via private or group messages.

To guarantee ongoing profitability and drive the recovery of the sector, retailers need to master the perfect balance between scheduling staff to accommodate busy and quiet periods and forecasting labor demand to avoid affecting the bottom line. With Fourth’s Workforce Management Solution, avoiding under and overstaffing, and creating smart schedules become effortless.

Our workforce management solutions in a snapshot

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