Retail Associates' Work, Life, And Your Responsibilities

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

May 2015 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

Regulatory compliance, associate retention, and public perception amount to a pressure cooker for retail workforce managers.

What’s putting so much pressure on retail workforce managers? For starters, a growing volume of federal and state work laws, fierce hiring and retention competition, corporate fiscal expectations, and less-than-glamorous news coverage of retailers’ perceived lack of compassion for associate work/ life balance. To gain some insight into finding the relief valve, we posed a few questions to three of the leading minds on the topic.

How Modern WFM Software Balances Scheduling Efficiency And Quality Of Life
Taken at face value, the labor scheduling needs of the retail business and those of the retail associate are often at complete odds with one another. Handled incorrectly, the application of automated and algorithm-based WFM (workforce management) software can only exacerbate the problem. Labor scheduling that leans too heavily to one side or the other can have disastrous consequences for both parties.

John Orr, SVP retail at Ceridian HCM, says that’s where the art of balance comes into play. “The most accurate and efficient WFM solutions allow for degrees of automation and user interaction. Scheduling efficiency is measured in many ways: compliance with fiscal constraints and performance targets; store-intimate and optimized labor spend distribution; work shift creation and coverage adherence; hour and wage law compliance; predictability and fairness; and, of course, associate skill and assignment optimization,” he says. Complicating those matters, the scheduling solution needs to allow associates to engage in the process. The solution must allow them to assign their own time off and availability, as well as self-manage their shift post, swap, and pickup preferences. “That,” says Orr, “is where the art comes into balancing associate needs with the needs of the business.”

Joe Olson, EVP and GM for WFM at Empower Software Solutions, agrees. “Many of today’s workforce management solutions are equipped with the technology and features to strike that proper balance between scheduling efficiency and associate quality of life,” he says. “After all, if associates aren’t receptive to a system, it has little chance for long-term tenure and success.”

Considering that the associate’s needs introduce a host of management variables, how are those variables balanced with the business’ core scheduling requirements? “Some solutions are outfitted with built-in tools that assist retailers in striking the right balance and generating schedules at the lowest costs, with associate pay rates, forecasting needs, and preferences in mind. Many use the concept of preferred availability, which allows for automated scheduling around soft constraints,” says Olson. “Ultimately, retailers want the ability to generate predictable schedules for the associates, but also continually produce schedules that meet labor and conversion-driven needs.”

Liz Moughan, director of retail and hospitality solutions at Kronos, provides some historical context. “The goal used to be to cut labor costs. Then retailers looked to control those costs. Now, best practice organizations are using WFM tools as a way to invest in their workforce and balance the needs of their business and associates,” she says. “Specific to meeting the needs of the business, one of the most powerful uses of WFM solutions is to accurately forecast customer demand. This accounts for demand not only seen in the store, but also from online — which supports an omni-channel approach to WFM. Retailers can also schedule beyond the sale and schedule to the opportunity with the use of traffic data.”

It’s also important to note that the need for WFM solutions to adapt isn’t just driven by employee and business influences. Laws that call for such measures as posting employee schedules 14 days in advance and extra pay for associates subject to last-minute schedule changes — such as the Retail Workers Bill of Rights in San Francisco — are continually being enacted.

Managing The Change To WFM Automation
Technology is only as good as its user, so ensuring a smooth transition to automated labor scheduling requires store-level associate and manager acceptance of the system. “Managing change requires understanding the culture impacted and how well it embraces change,” says Orr. “It’s also critical to ensure that those affected understand why the change is important and how the change will improve their work. Best practice organizations ensure managers/users first understand how the labor model works and the automated compliance within the scheduling tool. Then, managers can create unfilled schedules or copy prior weeks while being held accountable to performance standards and a labor line road map.” That sounds simple, but Orr advises that success is never a straight line; more often, he says, it’s a series of incremental improvements. Engaging stakeholders early and often provides tremendous feedback from those who are impacted by the proposed change, and the level of autonomy within the culture will also affect the change management effort, he says. But, he warns, it’s important not to overautomate and to recognize that full automation is often met with great resistance.

Olson points to the combination of technology and process change associated with WFM automation as a particular challenge. To that end, he recommends working in stages: communicating the change well before the implementation and splitting up the actual implementation of new labor standards and an automatic scheduling process. “It’s also important to remember that changes in scheduling can limit associates’ receptiveness to a workforce management solution. For example, if a company decides to adjust minimum shift lengths by an hour and doesn’t adequately inform its workforce on the policy changes, the system is likely to be blamed for the process changes,” warns Olson. “When you make the associates feel like a critical part of a large, transformative business process using feedback and open communication at an early stage, you set your change up for success.”

Moughan says the most-often overlooked aspect of WFM change management is bringing the solution’s end users — the store managers and associates who will be interacting with it — into the conversation very early, even during solution evaluation. “Being on the ground floor, they will bring a unique perspective to the process. And by having a seat at the table, they are more likely to turn into internal champions who will work to ensure a smooth transition and the overall success of a project,” she says. An intuitive, easy-to-use interface is also key to widespread end-user adoption. “While this will not eliminate the need for change management, it will make the transition much easier,” says Moughan. “An intuitive interface allows end users to see immediate benefits, such as saving time to create schedules, fewer schedule edits, and more time on the sales floor. In terms of adoption, there is nothing more powerful than a groundswell of positive feedback among managers and associates.”

Current WFM Compliance Considerations
As a host of compliance issues comes down the pike this year, Orr points to automation as the solution to meeting current mandates — and catching up with old ones. “Certainly, compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues to be an important consideration. Retailers that run payroll, time and attendance, scheduling, and benefits administration the way they always have will probably run afoul of the Employer Mandate, also known as ‘Play or Pay’,” he says. And indeed they might pay. Olson says some organizations face lawsuits that could cost them upwards of $50 million as a result of the regulations violations.

“Many retailers are still not compliant with Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) legislation that dates back to 1938,” adds Orr. “Section 7(i) overtime exemptions are another area of dated legislation where retailers often fall down.” Because many legacy solution providers are just now adding logic to properly comply with FLSA and Section 7(i), it’s incumbent on retailers to ensure their compliance with laws both old and new.

“In this complex regulatory environment with multiple sets of federal, state, local, and organizational policies to track and comply with, it can be overwhelming for retailers to avoid costly penalties and stay on the right side of the law,” says Moughan. “Retailers can be proactive in their efforts to achieve compliance by moving away from manual, disparate, or outdated systems for managing WFM-related functions to automated solutions that are easy to use and provide visibility into workforce and operational data.” That visibility, she says, requires a single source of truth and automated scheduling rules around coverage, meals and breaks, and minors. “Cloud-based solutions further ensure that retailers’ systems are current with ongoing legislative updates, allowing for increased focus on core business initiatives,” says Moughan.

The earlier-mentioned Retail Worker Bill of Rights, which takes effect in July 2015, requires that certain retail stores, restaurants, and hotel chains in San Francisco post employee schedules 14 days in advance and give workers extra pay for changing a schedule without the required notice for certain “on-call” hours, or for sending an employee home early in certain circumstances. The legislation also requires that certain retailers provide part-time workers the same access to scheduling and employer-provided time off as full-time employees. The California Meal Break Law requires that any employee who works more than six hours gets an opportunity to take a break before the second half of the shift.

Compliance regulations like these, says Olson, are a direct result of greater focus on providing work/life balance for today’s workforce. “In the past, regulations often focused on what was going on inside the store, but it’s undeniable that some of today’s largest regulations are focused on associates’ lives outside of the store,” he says.

As a result of this focus on rules with an impact on life outside the store, workforce management solutions providers are building systems designed to automate retailers’ compliance. “Systems that can make compliance checks while schedules are being developed give retailers a definitive leg up on systems that do not,” says Olson.

Moughan concludes that there’s a clear relationship between achieving compliance and maintaining work/life balance for associates. “Tools that make it easier to record and verify meal and rest breaks, ensure the accuracy of employee timecards, and fairly and consistently apply attendance and leave policies are critical to tackling the issues of decreased morale and productivity in the workplace, and creating a more engaged, satisfied workforce,” she says.