Driving efficiencies through an engaged workforce
Today’s tech-savvy generation demand information at their fingertips, meaning direct communication and engagement is more important than ever before. Moreover, an engaged workforce is sticky and less transactional, and more likely to remain with their employer.
Andrew Myers gave some great examples of how WorkJam can help retailers digitally embrace their workforce and provide them better ways of interacting with their employer. Using the WorkJam app, employees can use their own devices to connect to both head office and their peers, managers able to share real-time communications with distributed store teams, and also for store-based employees to provide immediate feedback to management. Rostering and shift management can now be passed directly to employees, with appropriately-trained team members able to bid for available shifts in an open marketplace.
Finally – and this is where it really gets interesting – employees can move from a traditional model where they work shifts at a particular store location, to an environment where they can choose shifts from a range of stores in their local area and increase their hours if desired. The power of the employer-employee relationship has truly shifted toward the employee. Where once a manager allocated shifts to team members he or she liked, it is now the employee who will choose to work shifts at stores where they most enjoy working.
Optimising your workforce rostering to drive sales
Store team wages remain one of the largest costs for a retailer, so ensuring that wages are best aligned to drive sales is fundamental. Systemised staff rostering tools such as Ceridian’s Dayforce, can develop sales forecasts to help retailers schedule labour when it is most needed. Nathan Reynolds went further, providing examples of how such tools can also suggest that targeted increases in store labour can help drive sales uplifts. Importantly, rostering solutions can integrate with apps like WorkJam to truly enhance the employee experience to ‘uberise’ self-allocation of shifts for appropriately-trained team members.
It’s clear that in order to truly succeed, retailers must concurrently address all three challenges – compliance, engagement and optimisation.
With the growth in online retail, traditional bricks and mortar retailers have been forced to consider the customer experience – and how to reach their customers in a meaningful way. It’s no surprise that as a result, the employees have become more important than ever to drive this direction.
