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Hibbett Sports Cuts Scheduling Time By 75% Across 1,000 Stores

Real-time responsiveness to changing conditions is vital to success in athletics, and it also has turned out to be an enormous help in athletic apparel retailing. Hibbett Sports’ use of solutions that link its labor budgets and scheduling to fluctuating sales volumes has allowed the retailer control its labor spend in a more proactive fashion.

As an added bonus, the time spent creating weekly schedules has been slashed by 75%. Previously it took Hibbett’s “head coaches” (what the retailer calls its store managers) as long as one hour to accomplish what can now can be done in is as little as 15 minutes. That time savings adds up when multiplied across Hibbett Sports’ 1,000-plus stores.

Hibbett first began using the Dayforce workforce management solutions from Ceridian in February 2010, and adopted the scheduling and time-and-attendance modules late in 2013. During this period, the chain grew from 750 stores to its current total of more than 1,000, with a workforce of more than 8,000 people.

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The Dayforce solutions provide Hibbett Sports with:

• Daily and weekly data visibility to each store and district the chain operates in, helping ensure each store is adequately staffed;

Real-time reporting that allows stores to react to ongoing changes that affect previously established plans;

Streamlined scheduling of store associates; and

• Faster, more accurate gathering and management of data used for store manager incentive program, shortening time between action and reward.

Intuitive Tool Supporting Retailer’s Growth

“With a goal of opening 60 to 80 new stores per year, Dayforce provides an intuitive tool for managers and employees to learn, allowing them to spend less time on operations and more time focusing on our customers,” said Cathy Pryor, SVP of Store Operations at Hibbett Sports. “From a corporate level, it provides a granular level of detail in real time across all of our locations that our legacy system was unable to offer.”

Prior to deploying the Dayforce solutions, Hibbett’s sales and labor budgeting processes were “very manual,” said Pryor. The fastest way for district managers to gather data from the head coaches was on a weekly basis, as well as through payroll data after the period had closed.

“All decisions were being made after the fact, potentially limiting sales opportunities,” said Pryor in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We were looking for a way to not only automate the process based on sales volume and other factors, but to provide more visible reporting tools to the district and store managers so they could be more proactive in controlling labor spend. Now we are using our labor dollars more effectively based on volume, and can see where we need to improve in a much more timely fashion.”

Hibbett’s decision to deploy Dayforce solutions that include budgeting and analytics along with scheduling functionality helped the retailer streamline the operations of an important incentive program. The retailer rewards its head coaches for achieving their sales plans while also managing labor costs.

“Prior to Dayforce the incentive program was very manual, with no connection to our other systems,” explained Pryor. “This made the task of determining eligibility and streamlining the payment process very tedious each month. Extensive validation and accuracy auditing of sales and labor goals took time — typically a week. The incentive payout process on the back end also took one week, which was too long. In Dayforce, we now have a tool that rapidly generates incentive pay for each individual based on eligibility rules.”

In addition to shortening the time from action to reward, Hibbett has gained greater agility — another important athletic advantage. “Since implementation our teams have a better way to react to plans based on trends that may occur after the overall plan is set,” said Pryor. “By reacting to changes in sales trends using the Dayforce tools, we can better insure our stores are staffed appropriately, allowing us to manage labor while maximizing the customer experience.”

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