BrainTrust Query: Can Workforce Management Systems Bring Qualitative as Well as Quantitative Benefits?
In its Wednesday, Sept. 10 edition, The Wall Street Journal reported on the increased use of workforce management (WFM) systems by retailers. The article takes an interesting perspective of the challenges a company faces when implementing a quantitative approach in the qualitative environment of individual retail stores.
One of the great advantages of computers is their ability to collect and manipulate huge amounts of data. The expansion of the internet "cloud" and smart devices has allowed retailers to monitor operations down to the individual employee and store. But currently, when it comes to WFM systems, retailers are still confined to the traditional measures that focus on recorded sales.
It's not hard to imagine how these limitations in current data collection capabilities might lead to morale problems in the store. The WSJ article presents both the quantitative and qualitative perspectives on WFM. On the one hand, it reports that system vendors claim retailers experience a 5 percent reduction in labor costs and a 15 percent increase in productivity. On the other hand, many of the employees interviewed for the article expressed concern about the short shifts and inconvenient assignments that often come from the system. Whereas before the implementation, it may have been typical for managers to accommodate workers' personal situations, using WFM scheduling makes that difficult. "Computers aren't very forgiving when it comes to an individual's life," one employee said.
From a total operations perspective, there are many preparation tasks that are not measured. Someone who is good at straightening shelves, rotating product and restocking the assortment is not recognized by the quantitative data reflected in sales per employee hour. This is where basing individual compensation on the limited statistics that are captured becomes a problem.
Discussion Questions: What are the risks of implementing Workforce Management solutions? Is there an approach that can achieve both the increased sales per employee hour and preserve quality in the work environment? What kind of challenges does a WFM system create for local supervisors when they are trying to get employees to complete "unmonitored" tasks?
[Author's commentary] Probably the most difficult position in retail is that of the Store Manager. The SM is literally the "person in the middle." They don't set policy but, as the local face of management, they are expected to implement it. Probably the biggest tool they have for building employee devotion is the work schedule. Pay grades and wages are usually established by the central office, so the key way for the SM to accommodate a part-time workforce is through flexible scheduling. I am not sure all the WFM implementations acknowledge this or allow for such accommodations.
I understand the desire to get more productivity from the store workforce. Everyone understands that labor is the number one controllable expense, but it is also necessary to "build a team" in the store. It does not help the situation to have the "alpha dog" be an impersonal scheduling system that pumps out worker assignments from some remote bunker.
Using the computer to grind the data and indicate when employees are needed is a good thing, but it also needs to accommodate the special needs of a part time workforce and it must be clear to the workers that the local management is both able and willing to help them cope with their specific needs. This includes things like allowing employees to remotely access their schedules, allowing them to exchange hours with "qualified subs," put in black-out times when they are not available, etc.
It also means that it might still be too soon to tie earnings directly to the quantitative data that is available. Maybe there can be a "bonus portion" that applies to the store as a whole, but until every single task which is required for a successful store operation can be monitored, there is no way to properly reward total contribution.