By John Orr,
Ceridian
With
parents picking their kids up from summer camps and yellow buses revving their
dusty engines across the U.S., retailers know what time it is: back-to-school
season is coming.
Soon
enough, stores will be teeming with eager families hoping to secure the latest
trendy backpacks and essential outfits. But when stores are preparing for the
rush of school shopping season, smarter retailers will look outside the box. While
some are restocking their inventories as usual, others will try to find an edge
in an untapped area: they’ll change how they treat their workforce.
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As
stressful as this time of year is for storeowners, it can be just as
challenging for retail workers who deal with the annual rush. Taking better
care of the workforce has become more of a priority in retail lately, with New
York City’s recent ban
of “clopening” (when the same employee works consecutive closing and
opening shifts) offering a prime example.
Quit “Clopening” And
Plan Better To Avoid “Call-In” Practices
Keeping
workers on such tight schedules can be tempting when stores are packed from
dawn to dusk, but the practice has real
negative effects on efficiency and productivity. Not only is it
better for an employee’s health to get a full night’s rest, but it improves the
company’s reputation and lowers the risk of a bad customer experience.
We
have all seen the
press lately on retailers defending class action suits for “call-in”
practices that flout state labor laws and result in significant monetary
relief. These seasonal and permanent non-exempt hourly employees need
predictability through better planning.
The
last thing an employer needs during back-to-school season, when reputation
among parents can be so critical, is a bad review because an employee didn’t
get the requisite work-life balance that we all deserve, desire, want and need.
Stop Turnover In Its
Tracks
If
there were something that could be used to better engage employees in the
business processes of workforce and improve communication, productivity and
retention would soar. Luckily, modern tools can now help retailers improve
mobile communication and work-life balance, while they also prepare for the
daunting task of organizing their staffs during the back-to-school and holiday
seasons. Turnover can be devastating during this time of year — no retailer
wants to take hours out of the day to interview new candidates and then invest
time in training sessions.
To
combat that problem, companies have developed new software
that provides mobile solutions to prevent disengagement. These solutions can
identify the first warning signs of employee unrest and offer tangible
solutions for employers to manage flight risk. And while potential turnover can
be even more damaging if the employees leaving are the company’s most talented,
these predictive analytics can help retailers offer a better working
environment and stop those departures before they happen.
Plan Better And Schedule
Smarter
As
shoppers search for back-to-school essentials, knowing when unified commerce
crowds will hit poses a challenge of its own. Fortunately, retailers can look
for trends in their unified sales, and then staff properly for the shifts
in-store and online.
Another
benefit of these scheduling tools is their extensive analysis of seasonality
and peak customer demand periods, with those results often sortable by channel
and merchandise zone. Now, retailers can achieve better visibility into peak
power hours by channel, and optimize the curves such that low volume times
in-store could be filled with unified commerce work — thereby leveling out work
demands and providing improved predictability in work for its staff.
With
that insight in hand, stores can adjust their workforce allocation accordingly
and be ready for what’s to come. Having the right team ready at the right time
helps make retailers more efficient at a time when efficiency is hard to come
by.
Train Your Team
Of
course, even the best-prepared retailers will face challenges when faced with
crowds and high demand. To ensure they’re set up for success, retailers should train
their employees for the stresses of school shopping season. While retailers may
face crowds, lines and even stockouts during busy times, training employees old
and new for the busy season will give workers the tools they need to support
customers and keep stores working smoothly even when things get crazy.
It
pays to invest early in these educational activities — things may still be
quiet now, but as back-to-school season rolls right into the holiday rush, newer
employees may have little time to get up to speed. Those who aren’t prepared
will get left behind, leading employers back to the same turnover problems mentioned
earlier.
Back-to-school
season is one of the most lucrative times of the year for retailers, making it
more important to handle things right. Studies have shown that retailers get
2.3 strikes and they are out. These magic moments of service quality between
associate and customer define whether the service quality is a home run or a
whiff.
There
are no third chances, and one bad school cycle can snowball into a down holiday
season. The bottom line is that companies seeking an edge should invest in their
workforces — they’ll see dividends with every sale and each happy customer.
John
Orr is Senior Vice President of Retail Strategy and Execution at Ceridian, an award-winning human capital management technology
company serving organizations across the globe. Over his more than
three-decade career in workforce management provisioning, Orr has worked with
over 330 different retail brands worldwide and is considered an innovator and
thought leader in Human Capital Management and Workforce
Management. Follow him on Twitter @John_Orr.
