Staff Profiling Solution: SWL−PROFILER

Helping retailers align (profile) staff to customer demand / store trade. The goal is to get the most appropriate coverage of staff to customers for each individual store, by hour/day/week, to deliver the best possible customer engagement for the lowest possible labour budget.

For any business-to-consumer organisation, particularly those that adopt a face-to-face customer service interface, it is imperative to have accurate coverage of staff to customer demand. Amongst many other benefits, this improves customer engagement and increases basket size, conversion and sales.

Drawing on our workforce management (WFM) knowledge leadership and experience spanning 20 years in successfully rolling-out dynamic staff scheduling systems, plus the extensive customer feedback that has been accumulated over this period, it has become clear that complex scheduling solutions are more beneficial for large-format grocery retailers with substantial store staff headcounts.

Additionally, as most retail businesses do not need to change their weekly base schedules for over 44 weeks per year, a fully-automated solution isn’t always necessary, as a single workload will give accurate coverage for most of the year, outside of seasonality and local conditions.

With this in mind, stripping down these solutions to only the essential solution functionality, we have developed a unique staff profiling solution that is simpler, more appropriate / ‘lighter’, quicker to implement, and lower-priced than a dynamic scheduling solution, yet with a sophisticated engine that produces accurate results. Called SWL−PROFILER, this helps businesses:

• Generate the workload required in stores, by day and time of day
• Match staff to the workload requirement / customer demand
• Identify where and when the labour budget needs to be increased or reduced
• Manage staff attendance, and
• View what actually happened against the plan via KPIs

Crucially, SWL’s staff profiler considers many factors including store-specific data to improve the accuracy of the workloads and shifts generated. These include:

• Trading data by hour
• Labour budget
• Store characteristics
• Labour standards

Furthermore, this toolkit can be applied for base week and peak season schedules; all that is required is the entry of different trading profile information for the times of year that necessitate a lower or higher budget.

In summary, staff profiling enables best practise translation of budget into staff shifts, by site, aligned to customer demand.

A Fast Return on Investment

The simplicity of this solution, combined with its accurate and actionable outputs, delivers many benefits including:

• Instantly deployable
• Very easy-to-use, leading to faster store user acceptance and adoption
• All the low-cost benefits of an in-house solution yet with no development required
• Accurately calculates the hours required to run your stores through the utilisation of your specific work measurement results (standard minute values)
• Considers your specific daily trading profiles to inform how your hours are to be distributed throughout the day
• View where you are over or under-staffed when your current schedules are matched with the workload outputs
• Can be used to run shift plans for any day of the year; all you need to input are your specific standard minute values and trading profiles
• Considers individual store characteristics, for example selling space, that influence the hours you really need to run different store types
• Calculates hours required for individual task types or areas
• Reports hours and cost variance against planned shifts after actual staff attendance hours have been inserted (or imported - see SWL-T&A)
• View critical measures that affect overall performance including costs per hour, sales per worked hour, labour turnover, absence ratio

Simple Process = Fast Adoption and Acceptance

Initially your business-specific information is entered to ensure accurate and relevant workload outputs. This takes account of essential values including standard minute values, store characteristics, forecasts of transactions and items, and opening hours and sales area. SWL−PROFILER then generates the workload required for every operating hour, via its in-built labour modelling module.

	When the workload has been generated, you then plan your staff against the plan. The toolkit will then tell you where you are over or under staffed, helping to protect your base service levels and optimise your budget. The workload profile can be manually adjusted by day if required.
	So that you can quickly gain an understanding of where stores are over or under staffed, the toolkit displays this information in a simple to understand graphical format, displaying the workload against available staff, by area, by day.
	For fast communication to staff, employee times reports can be produced for printing which show a summary of the planned shifts and weekly hours by area. A whole store summary sheet is also available which will display and print every single planned shift for the week.
	At the end of the week, Store Managers can enter staff attendance per employee into the system, similar to a ‘clockless’ time and attendance approach, or they can quickly import employee clockings via SWL−T&A. The toolkit will then display any variance against the plan, regarding hours and costs, ensuring a fast, accurate and fair payroll process. Finally, performance on absences and other key productivity indicators can be monitored and controlled at all levels from centre to store, through SWL’s benchmarking software.